pushes his plate toward me and says he didn’t order eggs. On the bar-stool next to him a woman in penguin pajamas is filling out a job application. I take the eggs, replace them with a bowl of acorns and he salts them down, licks his upper lip, each fleshy tip of tongue curling away from the other. My dad had hair like yours, I say, thick and red. When I was five I used to brush it, but one day he asked me to and I said no. He pours dirt in his coffee and stirs it with a piece of wood. The door jingles open and a young couple stand on the mat shaking ice from their curls. The woman in penguin pajamas is asleep with her thumb in her mouth. Soon after that he went away and I never saw him again. A teakettle whistles and the young couple begins to dance, the bells on their shoes ringing, flashing silver shards of light across the walls. Forty-five years old, some days still think it’s my fault. The man with the lizard tongue leans in, mouth opening. His tongue traces the swell of my bottom lip; I taste salt and dirt. Outside a catfish swims by the window, its eyes as big as dinner plates.