Just when my interviewee had reminded me what I was supposed to have been interviewing him about, before I could get myself back on track, my damn phone rang.

I picked it up and immediately recognized the incoming call as Achilles, the supposedly ancient Hero who’d spontaneously offered to let me interview him. “I need to take this, do you mind?”

Gilpatrick just smiled at me, waving his hand in a ‘shoo’ gesture. “Just hurry back, or your food’s gonna get cold.”

I went over to the area where folks would wait for seating on busy days and answered. “Nelson Samuels speaking.”

“It’s good to hear that some young people still understand basic phone etiquette. I cannot tell you how many times I call someone only to hear them say nothing but ‘hey’, ‘hello’, or even just ‘go’ when the pick up the phone.”

“I do try to remain professional, Mr. Perez. How can I help you today?”

“I was hoping you could recommend a decent hotel down where you are.”

I kinda wished I’d even looked at what might be considered a ‘nice’ hotel, because the one I’d slept at last night? Nowhere near even my definition of nice, and I was absolutely certain that an A list Super would have higher standards than a perpetually broke grad student. “Just a moment, Mr. Perez.”

I muted my phone and leaned over to the hostess. “Pardon me, but can you recommend a good hotel in Vineland?”

She shrugged. “There’s a super cheap place across the road. I’m told the place next door has some really nice rooms. Never stayed there myself, though.”

“Thank you.” I stepped outside to see the sign in front of the hotel next door, then un-muted my phone. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Perez. I’m told that Tower Hospitality has some nice rooms.”

He hummed a moment, then said, “Thank you, Mister Samuels. I’ll see you on the overmorrow.”

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“See you then.” The moment I finished speaking he hung up, and I brought my recording app back up as I walked back to the table where Gilpatrick sat eating his way through a stack of pancakes and a plate filled with fried steak and sides. I slipped into the booth and, after pouring a decent amount of syrup over my chicken and waffles, started eating.

“Kinda backward, y’know.”

I swallowed and asked, “What is?”

He nodded toward my plate. “Putting the syrup on first. If you do that, not only do you get syrup mess all over your knife, you wind up with less syrup per bite, and a lot of the syrup you pour on is gonna just wind up on the plate.”

“So how do you do it?”

He nodded toward his own pancake stack, which had been cut into bite sized pieces already. They looked a little swollen or something, and after he swallowed his latest bite he explained., using his fork as a pointer. “See, the surface of the pancake is fried; that makes it pretty syrup-proof. The interior of the pancake, on the other hand, is super porous. If you expose it before pouring the syrup on, the pancake winds up absorbing way more syrup.”

“How does one become such an expert in fried breakfast bread product consumption?”

He laughed at that, chuckling until he swallowed, then laughing out loud once he wouldn’t spray pancake and syrup everywhere. When he’d settled, while I finished slicing up my chicken and waffles, then poured syrup over them, mystified at how the new syrup got soaked up but the stuff I’d poured earlier just lay under the food slowly congealing, he said, “you live long enough, you learn a lot about a lot of things. Not technical or artisanal things, although you might pick those up too, but everyday things. Eating. Women. Men. People. How to hold your liquor. How to survive when you’ve got no money, how to stretch it when you’ve only got a little, and how to know what to buy when you’ve got a lot. Sturdy, comfortable shoes are really high on that list. Cooking, to go with the eating.”

He took another bite, and I said, “you cook?” When he nodded, I said, “I’d really like to try your cooking sometime.” When he grinned at me, keeping his mouth closed but otherwise letting his face just light up, I realized what I’d just said. “Though that’s not what we’re here to talk about, really, is it?”

He swallowed and said, “so, what did you want to ask me next?”

“What would you call someone who lives forever?”

He sat back in his chair, mouth settling into a friendly smile as he thought. I knew a lot of people got resting bitchy face when they got older, just a factor of letting your face slump when the muscles had gotten old, but Gilpatrick was the first person I’d met who had resting smiley face. Then I watched as the smile slowly melted into the purest expression of melancholy I’d ever seen. “Funny. If you asked me half a lifetime ago what I thought of someone who lives forever? I’d have said they were cursed.”