I’m at the grocery store, standing in the produce department. An old Italian woman in a babooshka approaches my cart. She presses her face so close to Henry’s face that for a second his curious mug is eclipsed by her curious mug.
“He is a bootiful,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say.
“His face, it is a bootiful!”
“Thank you,” I say again.
“He is the only one?”
“Yes,” I reply. “He is my only one.”
“He is a so bootiful you could a make a thousand of him.”
I laugh, picturing a thousand Henrys.
“One day,” I say. “I might make another one of him. A thousand seems excessive.”
She kisses him on the top of his head, oblivious to my sarcasm and shuffles away to the cheese section. “Ciao ciao,” she says, her voice carrying over the clang of carts and drone of adult contemporary music.