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Bill didn’t know him. Bill’s wife might have, Bill said, but she’d passed in ’19. Frank the Younger squinted at it and said the face looked like somebody, and then thought about it and said no, he was thinking of an actor. Gordon looked the longest of any of them, long enough that Nate stopped breathing, and then said, “Must have been before my time. Sorry, son.”

He showed the phone to Walt. “You want to have a look? No, what am I saying.” Gordon laughed. “You’ve only been in this town for like five minutes.”

Walt seemed displeased at the reminder, but didn’t say anything as Gordon handed the phone back to Nate.

“He could have put on something decent for the portrait,” Bill said.

“You’re wearing a sweatshirt yourself,” Frank the Elder pointed out.

“Nobody’s painting me.”

Nate put the phone away.

Walt stood a minute later, put a five under his cup, and left.

Gordon looked after him. “When did he get so sensitive?”

“It’s his hip,” said Bill, and that seemed to close the matter.

Frank the Younger held his hand out. “Give it here again.”

Nate gave it. Frank the Younger turned in his chair and flagged the waitress. “Patty. Come look at this. You know this fella?”

Patty looked with the coffeepot still in her hand. “A redhead,” she noted. “No. Should I?”

“He was in the house, they think.”

“Which house?”

“The house.”

“Oh.” She looked again, longer, like the information should change the face. “No. Hang on.” She turned toward the counter. “Denny. Come here.”

Denny came. Denny, apparently, was the cook. He looked at the painting with his arms crossed and flour on his elbow, and he said, “That’s Carter Grant.”

“He looks nothing like Carter Grant.”

“He looks like somebody.”

“Everybody does,” Frank the Elder said. “That’s not the question.”

The phone left the table. Nate watched it go to the counter, then to a booth of women his mother’s age, one of whom put on her glasses for it and took them off again, disappointed. It went to a table by the door where two kids sat with a basket of onion rings, and one of the kids said, “Wait, is this the ghost house guy?” and looked over at Nate like he was the exhibit.

“Send it to your grandma,” the other kid said. “She knows everybody.”

“She’s at bingo.”

“So? She has her phone.”

The kid took a picture of the picture.

“Don’t put it online,” Nate warned.

“Why not?”

“Because I asked you not to.”

The kid shrugged and bent over his phone. “Okay.”