If he has something else to distract him, eating feels so much less insurmountable. Curtis keeps tearing at his own pancakes, reducing each piece to shapes barely the size of his thumbnail, but -- swift, darting, like a bird pecking at its food -- he starts to shuttle them one at a time to his mouth once he's done. Each time, he has to turn his head away for a brief instant.

But he's eating. With another person watching him from less than a foot away. It's a damn sight better than that disaster with the cookies and coffee.

"But I've got a heartbeat," he says, bemused. "And I'm breathing. I've got body heat -- none of that shows up?"