Four pieces of white bread, slop on each of them a spoonful of mayonnaise and a spoonful of mustard. Each one gets a leaf of lettuce and a slice of tomato. It's when she goes for the deli-wrapped provolone that his cold breath moves over her cheek.

That's just how it always goes.

"Hi Pop."

He breathed on her one more time, just to be creepy. Francesca Vecchio remembered bringing home a report card one day, all red cheeked from the cold. Pop's breath was hot then, and it smelled like that Milwaukee beer that always smelled just like baking bread to her. "What's this -- 'talks too much'? Like we didn't know that! Every thought you ever had falls out. You got diarrhea of the mouth, Cissy." Nobody called her Cissy anymore. Nobody did then, except Pop.

Since he died, Pop's breath was always cold, and it didn't smell like anything at all.

"Frannie, you ready or what?" Ray ducked into the kitchen then and looked right through Pop's ghost. Nobody saw but her; but that's pretty much same as it ever was. Ma never even noticed the bruise on her jaw when she turned fourteen. That bruise was in every one of her birthday pictures. Ma used to make Pop look at those over and over, just ignoring that big old bruise.

So Francesca turned around, pretending to be able to look right through too. "Go without me." Otherwise he wouldn't have time to shoot the shit with Benton before work. Throw off his whole day and make him cranky like you wouldn't believe. She could catch a ride.

"Fine." And then it was just her and Pop. Same as it ever was.

"You goanna call him today?"

They had this conversation all the time. "No, Pop. Divorced means not having to call him."

"So you go make eyes at the looney in the hat?"

Good description of Benton Fraser if she ever heard one. He walked the walk and he talked the talk, but he was a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic sometimes. She slapped on cheese and turkey. "That's right Pop. I just sell sandwiches as an excuse to make eyes at the looney in the hat."

"Listen here, Cissy, I didn't raise you to pant around after some frog like a bitch in heat." He'd been using that bitch in heat line since she was nine and had a crush on that Marco kid, the one whose face got turned to hamburger on a basketball court one time by Frankie Zucko.

"Frogs are the French, Pop. The looney's a Canuck." She didn't say anything about the Mountie part. Pop hated cops. He didn't like to be reminded that all his son's friends were cops, that Ray was a cop.

She finished wrapping up the provolone and turkey and started cutting baguettes for the roast beef.

"Just go find a man, Cissy, a real man for crissake."

"Like who, Pop?" God, she got tired of games like this.

"A man who'll treat you like you need to be treated. A man who knows how to keep you in line."

She dropped the spoon and mayonnaise splattered on the floor. "How's that, Pop?" She tried to keep her voice tight enough that she wouldn't just cry. It was a fifty-fifty every day. She won, no tears, just drips of mayo making little spackle designs on her good blue pumps.

He went wherever it was he went. Francesca pulled out a napkin and wiped up the mess on the floor. Same as it ever was.