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over his head in no particular pattern) Rattup thumbed through each bag, taking careful stock of his goods. “Excellent,” he whispered to himself after each item was inventoried from his shopping list. “You’ve done it,” he whispered, gazing at Zephyr and offering a thumbs up. “Success!” he belted, reaching across his Formica kitchen counter with a folded twenty dollar bill in his hand. “For you, good sir.” Zephyr took the gratuity with a pause, still unsure if the man had been putting on a ruse with his newly unearthed niceties. When he had the money in his grasp, Rattup did not pull it away, and so that eased Zephyr’s initial concerns to some degree. He pocketed the bill. It had already been earmarked for a past due rent payment, but he appreciated it all the same. It was a step towards financial freedom, though that stairway’s total height was immeasurable.
    “ That’s too much,” Zephyr replied to the gratuity, but was grateful all the same.
    “ A deserved tip for unfettered success. A bit more than I would tip for deliveries, more so than than the last grocer who made transport for me, but consider it a precursor to my asking that you stay for a spell. I don’t get that many visitors these days. Would you sit and have lunch with an old timer like me? I make a delicious hummus dip. Do you like pastrami, young man?” His snowy white eyebrow raised in anticipation.
    Zephyr felt rushed into this proposition, a moment of frenzy without underlying purpose. “Well, I’ve got, ahhhh...” he stammered, searching his brain for a good excuse or believable ruse. He looked down at his cell phone, palmed in his hand, noting the time. Jackie would be waiting for him, but it would not hurt to give the man a moment or two of his time, given that he did not seem as harmful as he had perceived him from the onset. If he committed, there would be another healthy tip after his next delivery. A gift horse’s mouth was slapping open before him. “I guess, but I have to be really quick. And thanks, but I don’t eat pastrami. I don’t eat meat at all,” he replied, readying himself for another barrage of crotchety angst. Zephyr noticed that older people only hated one thing more than his unique “hippie” name, and that was his aversion to eating once-living animals. It roused a ferocity in some meat eaters that terrified him, as though his avoidance of meat was spitting in the eye of fervent carnivores. When they became wild-eyed about his nontraditional life choice, he often wondered to himself if he would eat them if they were a dinner option. They didn’t seem as harmless as a deer or a moose. “But the hummus sounds great,” he added a dab of honey to the top of his anti-meat statement.
    “ Don’t eat meat?” Rattup queried, furrowing his brow. “Well, that is quite the interesting development. Don’t hear that very often. I’d like to hear all about it!” he shouted with great bravado, as though he was standing on a ledge in a Shakespeare tale, patting Zephyr’s shoulder with resounding approval. “Please find your way to my living room. I take all of my meals there. I have a delightful magazine collection that you are welcome to peruse. I will be along in a few minutes with our lunch. One pastrami on wheat with Dijon mustard for me, and extra hummus for the young vegetarian. Lemonades for both. I assume that vegetarians drink lemonade. There were no lemons killed in the making of this lemonade, I assure you,” he stated, chuckling at his own barb.
    Zephyr could not help but feel comforted by the man’s warmth. The Eyeball had, in an instant, transformed himself into a three-dimensional being with a beating heart, as though through an act of magic. Though this baffling transition had confused Zephyr, it was welcome all the same, at the end of an otherwise pointless day.
     
    4.
     
     
     
    He scanned the aforementioned magazine collection, a majority of which were literary journals and