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that bodachs seem to have no more substance than do shadows, I’m not sure how they could harm me. I’m in no hurry to find out.
    The current specimen, apparently fascinated by the rituals of short-order cookery, lost interest in me only when a customer of peculiar demeanor entered the restaurant.
    In a desert summer that had toasted every resident of Pico Mundo, this newcomer remained as pale as bread dough. Across his skull spread short, sour-yellow hair furrier than a yeasty mold.
    He sat at the counter, not far from the short-order station. Turning his stool left and right, left and right, as might a fidgety child, he gazed at the griddle, at the milkshake mixers and the soft-drink dispensers, appearing to be slightly bewildered and amused.
    Having lost interest in me, the bodach crowded the new arrival and focused intently on him. If this inky entity’s head was in fact a head, then its head cocked left, cocked right, as though it were puzzling over the smiley man. If the snout-shaped portion was in fact a snout, then the shade sniffed with wolfish interest.
    From the service side of the counter, Bertie Orbic greeted the newcomer. “Honey, what can I do you for?”
    Managing to smile and talk at the same time, he spoke so softly that I couldn’t hear what he said. Bertie looked surprised, but then she began to scribble on her order pad.
    Magnified by round, wire-framed lenses, the customer’s eyes disturbed me. His smoky gray gaze floated across me as a shadow across a woodland pool, registering no more awareness of me than the shadow has of the water.
    The soft features of his wan face brought to mind pale mushrooms that I once glimpsed in a dark dank corner of a basement, and mealy puffballs clustered in moist mounds of forest mast.
    Busy with his mess of eggs, Chief Porter appeared to be no more aware of Fungus Man than he was of the observing bodach. Evidently, his intuition did not tell him that this new customer warranted special attention or concern.
    I, however, found Fungus Man worrisome—in part but not entirely because the bodach remained fascinated by him.
    Although, in a sense, I commune with the dead, I don’t also have premonitions—except sometimes while fast asleep and dreaming. Awake, I am as vulnerable to mortal surprises as anyone is. My death might be delivered through the barrel of a terrorist’s gun or by a falling stone cornice in an earthquake, and I would not suspect the danger until I heard the crack of the fatal shot or felt the earth leap violently beneath my feet.
    My wariness of this man came from suspicion based not on reason, either, but on crude instinct. Anyone who smiled this relentlessly was a simpleton—or a deceiver with something to hide.
    Those smoke-gray eyes appeared to be bemused and no more than half-focused, but I saw no stupidity in them. Indeed, I thought that I detected a cunningly veiled watchfulness, like that of a stone-still snake feigning prestrike indifference to a juicy mouse.
    Clipping the ticket to the rail, Bertie Orbic relayed his order: “Two cows, make ’em cry, give ’em blankets, and mate ’em with pigs.”
    Two hamburgers with onions, cheese, and bacon.
    In her sweet clear voice, which sounds like it belongs in a ten-year-old girl destined for a scholarship to Juilliard, she continued: “Double spuds twice in Hell.”
    Two orders of French fries made extra crispy.
    She said: “Burn two British, send ’em to Philly for fish.”
    Two English muffins with cream cheese and lox.
    She wasn’t finished: “Clean up the kitchen, plus midnight whistleberries with zeppelins.”
    An order of hash, and an order of black beans with sausages.
    I said, “Should I fire this or wait till his friends join him?”
    “Fire it,” Bertie replied. “This is for one. A skinny boy like you wouldn’t understand.”
    “What’s he want first?”
    “Whatever you want to make.”
    Fungus Man smiled dreamily at a salt shaker, which he turned around and around on