The man, who is reading at a table in the café at the bookstore, looks as though he’s been badly burned in an accident. An ear is fused to the side of his head. And an eye—the left one—is gelled shut. No eyebrows or hair to speak of. Except there’s this small, wiry tuft at his crown, like an infant’s. I imagine an overturned car or house fire. Cramped, unescapable spaces. A commercial kitchen mishap involving a deep fryer that’s turned his skin pale and smooth. Hard looking.

Maybe I’m wrong. Whatever caused his burns might not have been an accident. There’s been an inexplicable rise in acid attacks. Could be he’s a veteran of Iraq, Afghanistan, or Mogadishu. Throw a dart at a world map. A casualty of white phosphorus. A roadside IED. A purple heart in his top dresser drawer.

Like me, this man reads at a table at the bookstore, the one on Wichita’s east side at Bradley Fair.

Unlike me, he reads alone.

I am not alone.

I am with my son, Beckett. I get Beckett two weekends a month. I’m lucky I get to get him at all, and I should pay more attention to him and the rows of thin, brightly colored children’s books that interest him, but I can’t focus on anything except the man and his burns. How long it does it take the body to heal?

A year? Five? Twenty?

Never?

“Daddy?” Beckett yanks my sleeve. His voice high, girlish. His pale hair curtains his eyes. I promised his mother I’d take him to get his hair cut before I return him. Beckett points to the burned man. “What’s wrong with his face?”

Beckett, who is five, recently entered that stage of childhood where he needs to know everything.

“Buddy,” I say.

I’m relieved to find that the man is as absorbed as before in the magazine. Its glossy pages glow beneath the café’s pendant lights. Steam geysers into the air from the espresso machine behind him where a barista heats a milk substitute.

I try to think of something to say to Beckett. An anecdote from my childhood. A stern reprimand or blunt reminder over the importance of politeness. The barista pulls an espresso. The clearest noise comes from the ceiling—duct work. 15 feet above, thin metal tubes rattle with hot air.

Beckett says, “Daddy, why?”

Teenage girls are congregated at a nearby table and flip through their books, talking in hushed tones, giggling, They snap performative photos for social media, but they have noticed us, noticed my son, his arm pointing at the burned man.

The prettiest girl, a tall, thin blond with hoop earrings, short white cotton shorts, and a purple K-State sweatshirt, swoops her eyes to my son’s arm and turns her head in the direction he points.

“Quit that,” I whisper, and push his arm down.

The man looks up from the magazine, licks a finger, flicks a page. His gaze lingers on me before shifting it to the girl, who gasps. The man goes back to his magazine.

The pretty girl crams a finger down her throat and fakes a loud, guttural gag.

The pretty girl waves her posse into a close, practiced huddle. The girls loop their arms over each other’s shoulders and duck their heads. It so stereotypically high school that I almost laugh, but don’t because the last thing I want is to find myself in their crosshairs.

“Fuh-reek alert,” says one of the girls, I’m not sure which, and then all their shoulders bounce like crazy. Their laughter splits the air.

Employees behind the registers look over. So do the baristas.

I should say something. Call them out. To hell with crosshairs. I can reach down and cover Beckett’s ears. I could shout, Do you think you’re fucking immune to bad luck?

The ringleader, the pretty one, takes a few cautious steps toward the café and pulls a phone from a small black purse. She lifts the phone above her head, flashes a peace sign, and snaps a selfie, turning at the last second so that the man, I’m positive, is visible in the background. She trots to her friends to show them and pulls at the screen to enlarge the photo. The girls cringe. They laugh as they walk off and disappear behind a row of shelves.

“Daddy,” Beckett tugs my sleeve again.

“Stop that,” I say, but I am threatening, intimidating, the way I stand over him. I imagine tears in his eyes beneath his long bangs, though I can see them. I squat and bring my face close to his. I move the hair out of his eyes.

Beckett’s eyes are deep green. Like his mother’s, a deep jade. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but in the initial months after his mother and I separated, there were times I’d notice a physical feature they share—primarily their eyes—and find myself resenting him, resenting the resemblance.

“Hey, buddy,” I say, pushing these thoughts aside. “It’s okay to be curious, but that’s not the right way to go about it. It sounds funny, but there are some things we don’t ask about. This is one of those times. Make sense?”

Look at me, I think. Real Father-of-the-Year material. Or at least of the weekend.

Beckett tilts his head back and looks up as if the answer might be there in the rafters. The ducts have gone silent. “I think so?” Beckett says.

It’s too warm. I’m sweating.

“How do you think the man would feel if he heard you talk about him?”

“Probably . . . bad?”

“Probably,” I say. “Now, how would you feel if you were him?”

He shrugs and points to the man again. “Bad?”

This time, I am more forceful when pushing his arm down.

“Ouch!” he says. “Don’t hit me.”

“What have I told you about pointing?”

“It isn’t very nice,” Beckett says, massaging his wrist.

His chest gives a small kick, and a burp explodes from his throat. It’s impossible not to laugh. Which means he laughs, too.

I fan the air between us. Before speaking, I make an effort to put a slight, serious edge to my tone.

“Right,” I say. “Not nice at all.”

He gulps down a breath and digs the toe of a sneaker into the carpet. Beckett does this thing with his lips when he wants to say something. Pushes them to one side, holds them there. His mother does this too. Usually when she is about to say something I don’t want to hear.

“All right,” I say. “What is it?”

He shakes his head.

“C’mon, Beck.”

“You were the one looking at him all funny,” he says. “For, like, a really, really long time.”

“You’re right. That wasn’t very nice of me,” I say.

“You should say sorry,” he says.

“Why don’t you come with me. We’ll apologize together.”

He shakes his head. “No thank you,” he says, and takes a step back.

“Fine. Okay. You’re off the hook. This time,” I say, and tousle his hair. I tick my head at the bookshelf. “Stay right here. Have a book picked out by the time I get back.”

On my way over, the male barista who, I see as I get closer, has large, and I’m assuming fake, diamond studs stuck into his earlobes, holds up the drink he’s finished pressing a carryout lid onto, and shouts, “Lavender oat milk latte for Harder? I mean Harper.”

He laughs at his own joke.

His coworker, a girl with tattooed arms and blue hair, rolls her eyes and leans into the pastry case and begins to rearrange baked goods and breakfast sandwiches.

Before I can turn, K-State sweatshirt—The Ringleader—blows by to grab her drink, her shoulder colliding with my arm.

I say, “I suppose you want me to apologize?”

She turns, glares at me, callous and condescending. I am nothing to her. I know what she sees: this mid-40s, semi-recently divorced dad in too-tight jeans and the same flannel he wore the day before, the ghost of a mustard stain on the breast pocket. A man who is too lazy to shave. Who could lose 10 or 15 pounds.

I bet she’s never been told no before. She has never faced real consequences for anything she’s done in her entire life.

She flips me off. She already knows I’m not going to do a damn thing about it. And, if that isn’t enough, Ringleader flourishes the gesture by bringing her finger to her glossy lips, kissing it.

She swiftly recalibrates to skip past where the man sits. He remains fixated on his magazine.

What the hell’s he reading, anyway?

At the counter now, Ringleader leans over it and flails her arms in an attempt to snag the drink from the barista who holds it out of reach.

Here, I see the red spot on the back of her shorts. About the size of an acorn.

You deserve this, I think at her.

In the corner of my vision, the man looks up. The girl and barista continue their flirtatious game. He holds the drink close, pulls back as she reaches. They go through these motions several times. It makes me think, oddly enough, of taunting zoo animals. The barista does this one more and this time when The Ringleader—Harper—reaches, her feet leave the floor.

The spot is more noticeable. Bigger. The size of an oak leaf. The boy says something through a laugh and hands her the drink.

The Ringleader says, “God, finally.”

The barista lowers his head as if from the weight of his ridiculous, gleaming fake earrings, for a kiss.

The Ringleader, in a fluid, ballerina-like twirl, walks away, tossing her hips side to side. Ringleader makes it about three or four steps before the barista says, “What’s on your shorts?”

Ringleader freezes mid-sip. She reaches and drags a hand across her butt. Now, she quickly brings her fingers to her face, horrified as she rubs them together. Afterward, she clutches the drink in both hands, tucking elbows into her stomach to hold the cup close.

The barista repeats himself louder this time. Here, his coworker extracts herself from the pastry case, twists to look down at herself. Her pants are black.

The boy’s coworker joins him at the counter. It doesn’t take long to see what he sees. She slaps his shoulder.

“You are such a jerk,” she says.

“What’d I do?”

The coworker gives him a harsh, whispered explanation. Taking advantage of this distraction, The Ringleader—whose lips quiver when we make eye contact right as the first of what I assume will be many tears begins to roll down her cheeks—breaks into a sprint across the store.

I walk over to the burned man. He is larger up close. Thick neck. Broad shouldered. Meaty hands he uses to close the magazine. He is built like a club bouncer or a soldier. Like he’d have no problem defenestrating some violent and unstable drunk or trudging through a jungle carrying a 100-pound rucksack and an injured soldier.

He slides the magazine to the edge of the table. Its back cover sags over the lip of it, the pages fanning out like spines of a fish fin. There’s something hostile about his calmness, like he’s charging up, like he might strangle me.

“Can I help you?” he says and remains sitting.

His voice, deep and smooth. I’m ashamed to admit that I expected different. A voice transformed by injury. The vocal cords altered by heat and smoke.

“I scratch my neck.” I want to apologize for my s—” I stop. “I’m not sure if you noticed me back there. Earlier.” I throw a thumb over my shoulder. “With my son.”

“You mean when you were staring.”

“Yes,” I say, feeling hotter now. The ducts are rattling again. Using my sleeve, I wipe sweat from my forehead. “Listen, I’m sorry.” I cough.

“For staring?” he asks.

“Yes.”

The man nods and lowers his head. He moves a hand to his nose—the only part of his face that is not deformed. An index finger slides up the bridge as if he’s readjusting a pair of invisible glasses or is about to sneeze. He jerks his head to the left while pulling his hand to the right. There’s a faint pop, and then his nose is gone.

There is a large hollow space in the middle of his face. The entrance to his nasal cavity is two imperfect, shadowed triangles separated by a thin strip of cartilage.

He sets the prosthetic on the table.

I look away.

“Don’t do that,” he says. His voice deeper. “This is your chance. Look here. Look at me and tell me how fucking sorry you are.”

My mouth goes dry. I peel my tongue from the roof of it. I try to make spit. I can’t.

“I’m waiting,” he says, and with one enormous finger taps his cheek an inch from the hole in his face. “Let’s hear you say it.”

“I don’t,” I begin, but nothing else comes out. My tongue has stopped working.

“You sorry for staring or for having to look at me at all, for exposing your son?” he shouts, but I am walking away. I stop at the shelf where my son should be. I look around but don’t see him. The employees behind the registers scroll on their phones. The loud, blue-haired barista calls her coworker a dipshit. A guy who pushed the cart past me ten minutes ago reemerges cartless, carrying a stack of books. “What’s their deal?” he says to me as he passes. I don’t answer. A young man—caretaker or grandson—and an elderly older woman who is hunched over a walker push through the entrance.

“Beckett?” I yell. The caretaker or grandson—whatever—looks over his shoulder. The doors slowly closing behind him. “Beckett?”

The grandson—this is the more believable assumption, I decide—whispers something to the old woman, who nods at the floor, her feathery white hair undulating.

He trots toward me.

“Little dude?” he says, showing me how little with his hand hovering about four feet above the ground, taller than my kid’s height, who is short for his age. “Spider-Man sweatshirt. Gray sweats. Classic bowl cut?”

I nod my head yes about a hundred times, shivering. He points toward the plate glass windows. “He’s out front being a little ladies’ man with a group of chicks.”

I think I say, Thank you so much. I can’t be sure, since in what feels like superhuman speed, I am already though the doors.

It’s cool outside. Windy. The air feels frozen against my sweat. I look right—cars, bushes, trees mostly empty of leaves; a ball of trash tumbles through the parking lot. To my left—the girls. Two of them stand off to the side of The Ringleader who, I see, has my son’s sweatshirt wrapped around her waist. She has a hand out, which Beckett holds in both of his. My heart seizes. The Ringleader covers her mouth with her other hand and nods at whatever my son is saying; I don’t hear it. Whatever he’s said is lost in the wind.

Isn’t he cold? The Ringleader must think this, too. She begins to undo the knotted sleeves of my son’s sweatshirt. Beckett shakes his head and lets go of her hand to palm the knot. A large black SUV screeches up the curb. The fourth of their group behind the wheel. The two other girls hop in back. The girl driving pops the horn. The Ringleader flashes a finger in the air—“One sec, Risrita!” she says—and bends to hug my son. Beckett’s arms are barely long enough to wrap all the way around her waist. She kisses his cheek.

Once she’s in the car, framed behind the windshield, the driver hands the girl her drink. She honks twice and floors it. The tires bark. In no time, the huge, expensive car is at the mouth of the entrance waiting for a break in traffic. Beckett, still waving, turns. When he sees me, he drops his hand, and smiles.

“You were supposed to wait by the bookshelf,” I say, and hear the residual panic leave my voice. I drop to the ground too quickly. Pain rattles my kneecaps.

“Don’t be mad, Daddy,” he says, and rubs his arms together. “I said she could keep my sweatshirt.”

“What were you thinking?”

“About the sweatshirt?”

“Running off like that.”

“She was crying,” he says. “I wanted to know why she was so sad and to see if I could make her feel better.”

“Did you get it all figured out?”

“There’s a boy inside who’s not really her boyfriend, but sorta, kinda.” Beckett’s eyebrows smush together. He’s not sure what to make of their arrangement now that he’s the one saying it out loud. “She does like him a whole bunch, though. She sat in ketchup. And he saw it. She said she was totally embarrassed,” he says, mimicking the lilt in her voice she must have affected when she told him the story. “I asked if it was McDonald’s like we had this morning, and she said it was!”

I pull him in close, hug him tightly. I feel like crying.

“What’d you say to her, pal?” I say, hiding this from my voice.

“I told her about the time I dropped my yogurt onto my pants at school. That was not the best day ever.” He starts to wriggle from my embrace. I loosen my hold and set my hands on his shoulders. I hold him out at arm’s length. He says, “Did you apologize to the man?”

I talk about Beckett’s hair, which, in the wind, pulls to one side. His entire face is clearly visible. I mention the promise I made to his mother. “She’ll kill me if I don’t get you a haircut,” I say. I ask if he’d like to go back in to pick out a book. But I don’t give him time to answer. I tell him not to worry about the sweatshirt. The sweatshirt is no big deal. To h-e-double-hockey-sticks with the sweatshirt, am I right? We can get him another one at Walmart. Walmart is just only a couple miles away. That’s where his mother bought it, right? That’s right, isn’t it? But I don’t know if this is right, because he can’t tell me whether it is. Not when I’m back on blabbering about Supercuts, talking a mile a minute and naming one hairstyle after another, never once stopping to ask which one he actually wants to get. “Undercut? Crew cut? Buzz cut?” I say, while all Beckett is able to do is blink at me with his mother’s eyes.