P. Oswald Boone, four-hundred pound culinary black belt in white silk pajamas, whom I'd recently awakened, moved with the grace and swiftness of a dojo master as he whipped up breakfast in the kitchen of his Craftsman-style house.

At times his weight scares me, and I worry about his suffering heart.  But when he's cooking, he seems weightless, floating, like those gravity-defying warriors in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - though he didn't actually bound over the center island.

Watching him that February morning, I considered that if he had spent his life killing himself with food, it might also be true that without the solace and refuge of food, he would have been dead long ago.  Every life is complicated, every mind a kingdom of unmapped mysteries, and Ozzie's more than most.

Although he never speaks of how or what or why, I know that his childhood was difficult, that his parents broke his heart.  Books and excess poundage are his insulation against pain.

He is a writer, with two successful series of mystery novels and numerous nonfiction books to his credit.  He is so productive that the day may come when one copy of each of his books, stacked on a scale, will surpass his body weight.

Because he had assured me that writing would prove to be psychic chemotherapy effective against psychological tumors, I had written my true story of loss and perseverance - and had put it in a drawer, at peace if not happy.  To his dismay, I had told him that I was done with writing.

I believed it, too.  Now here I am again, putting words to paper, serving as my own psychological oncologist.

Perhaps in time I will follow Ozzie's every example, and weigh four hundred pounds.  I won't be able to run with ghosts and slip down dark alleyways in quite the swift and stealthy fashion that I do now; but perhaps children will be amused by my hippopotamic heroics, and no one will disagree that bringing laughter to children in a dark world is admirable.

While Ozzie cooked, I told him about Dr. Jessup and all that had occurred since the dead radiologist had come to me in the middle of the night.  Although as I recounted events I worried about Danny, I worried as well about Terrible Chester.

Terrible Chester, the cat about which every dog has nightmares, allows Ozzie to live with him.  Ozzie cherishes this feline no less than he loves food and books.