Phantoms

of your croissants.”
    “Yes, sir,” the waiter said.
    “Are they very flaky?”
    “Yes, sir. Very.”
    “Oh, good. And eggs,” Flyte said. “Two lovely eggs, of course, rather soft, with buttered toast.”
    “Toast?” the waiter asked. “Is that in addition to the two croissants, sir?”
    “Yes, yes,” Flyte said, fingering the slightly frayed collar of his white shirt. “And a rasher of bacon with the eggs.”
    The waiter blinked. “Yes, sir.”
    At last Flyte looked up at Burt Sandler. “What’s breakfast without bacon? Am I right?”
    “I’m an eggs-and-bacon man myself,” Burt Sandler agreed, forcing a smile.
    “Wise of you,” Flyte said sagely. His wire-rimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose and were now perched on the round, red tip of it. With a long, thin finger, he pushed them back into place.
    Sandler noticed that the bridge of the eyeglasses had been broken and soldered. The repair job was so distinctly amateurish that he suspected Flyte had soldered the frames himself, to save money.
    “Do you have good pork sausages?” Flyte asked the waiter. “Be truthful with me. I’ll send them back straightaway if they aren’t of the highest quality.”
    “We’ve quite good sausages,” the waiter assured him. “I’m partial to them myself.”
    “Sausages, then.”
    “Is that in place of the bacon, sir?”
    “No, no, no. In addition,” Flyte said, as if the waiter’s question was not only curious but a sign of thick-headedness.
    Flyte was fifty-eight but looked at least a decade older. His bristly white hair curled thinly across the top of his head and thrust out around his large ears as if crackling with static electricity. His neck was scrawny and wrinkled; his shoulders were slight; his body favored bone and cartilage over flesh. There was some legitimate doubt whether he could actually eat all that he had ordered.
    “Potatoes,” Flyte said.
    “Very well, sir,” the waiter said, scribbling it down on his order pad, on which he had very nearly run out of room to write.
    “Do you have suitable pastries?” Flyte inquired.
    The waiter, a model of deportment under the circumstances, having made not the slightest allusion to Flyte’s amazing gluttony, looked at Burt Sandler as if to say: Is your grandfather hopelessly senile, sir, or is he, at his age, a marathon runner who needs the calories?
    Sandler merely smiled.
    To Flyte, the waiter said, “Yes, sir, we have several pastries. There’s a delicious—”
    “Bring an assortment,” Flyte said. “At the end of the meal, of course.”
    “Leave it to me, sir.”
    “Good. Very good. Excellent!” Flyte said, beaming. Finally, with a trace of reluctance, he relinquished his menu.
    Sandler almost sighed with relief. He asked for orange juice, eggs, bacon, and toast, while Professor Flyte adjusted the day-old carnation pinned to the lapel of his somewhat shiny blue suit.
    As Sandler finished ordering, Flyte leaned toward him conspiratorially. “Will you be having some of the champagne, Mr. Sandler?”
    “I believe I might have a glass or two,” Sandler said, hoping the bubbly would liberate his mind and help him formulate a believable explanation for this extravagance, a likely tale that would convince even the parsimonious clerks in accounting who would be poring over this bill with an electron microscope.
    Flyte looked at the waiter. “Then perhaps you’d better bring two bottles.”
    Sandler, who was sipping ice-water, nearly choked.
    The waiter left, and Flyte looked out from the rain-streaked window beside their table. “Nasty weather. Is it like this in New York in autumn?”
    “We have our share of rainy days. But autumn can be beautiful in New York.”
    “Here, too,” Flyte said. “Though I rather imagine we have more days like this than you. London’s reputation for soggy weather isn’t entirely undeserved.”
    The professor insisted on small talk until the champagne and caviar were served, as if he feared that, once business had been discussed, Sandler would quickly cancel the rest of the breakfast order.
    He’s a character out of Dickens, Sandler thought.
    As soon as they had proposed a toast, wishing each other good fortune, and had sipped the Mumm’s, Flyte said, “So you’ve come all the way from New York to see me, have you?” His eyes were merry.
    “To see a number of writers, actually,” Sandler said. “I make the trip once a year. I scout out books in progress. British authors are