He stayed an hour that first day.

He did not have to; I think he sensed, with the radar the young have for a grown-up who is not all right, that the old man in the shop needed the company more than the company needed him, and he stayed out of a kindness he would have been embarrassed to have named.

He sorted the basket with me and told me who each note belonged to — this one lived above the pharmacy, that one had moved but still came back for Franny, this coat belonged to a man who would cry if I mentioned her, so best to just hand it over quick and talk about the weather.

He knew the whole street the way I knew the inside of a machine, intimately and without sentiment, and I understood that Franny had made him her apprentice in the real trade long before either of them touched a needle.