oupees are made from human hair. That Giles Gunderson’s hairpiece doesn’t altogether match the tussocks sprouting above his ears galls him. His real hair is brown, but get close enough and you’ll see strands of blond and orange. Not that anyone has gotten close in years. Had he known he’d be shiny-domed by age thirty, he would have begun stockpiling hair decades ago. Every young man should do so; they should teach it in health classes. He pictures bulging trash bags of hair crowding his childhood closets, lugging them from his parents’ house to his first apartment and beyond. He chuckles. No, sir, nothing strange about that.

Giles pockets one pair of his glasses, moves a second pair down from his forehead, tugs shut his suede coat, and steps from the cream-colored Bedford van that Mr. Arzounian, the Arcade’s owner, lets him park behind the theater, that of the rusted sliding door and water-stained upholstery, dubbed by Elisa as “the Pug” for its buggy headlights and flat snout. Baltimore hasn’t had a drop of moisture in months, but the wind is a cat-o’-nine-tails. Giles feels his toupee begin to lift from his scalp. He mashes his palms to his skull to restick the double-sided tape and rounds the Pug, head lowered against the wind.

It’s the posture of a bruiser, but he feels the opposite, feeble and overweening. He fights the van’s side door and removes his red-leather, brass-buckled portfolio case. Carrying it makes him feel important. He scrimped for a full year in his thirties to buy it, and it remains the single piece of professional gear he’d set right alongside anything owned by Manhattan hotshots. He heads up the sidewalk, the gale giving him a brisk shove. Negotiating a door with a portfolio case is a sophisticated procedure; by the time he’s through, everyone inside should be buzzing about the debonair gent with the giant leather bag.

Giles feels a familiar jab of doubt. His need to cushion his ego is pathetic, especially at a joint like this. Look around. Not a single soul has noticed his arrival. Giles stands taller in his own defense. Can these diners be blamed for their distraction? Dixie Doug’s Pies is a fun house of colored lights and reflective surfaces, from the pedestals atop which plastic pies revolve to the refrigerated display cases backlit with jukebox plastic and piped with chrome.

Giles mazes into the queue. It’s a weekday midafternoon, a peculiar time for pie, and he’s second in line. He likes being here, he tells himself. It’s cozy and warm and smells of cinnamon and sugar. He doesn’t look at the cashier, not yet; he’s too old to feel this nervous. Instead, he studies a five-foot glass tower, each level presenting a different dessert. Double-decker pies like department-store hat boxes. Sculpted pies like the bout of a cello. Pie puffs like a woman’s breast. There is room for all kinds, all kinds.