While the guy is away serving the others, I give the schedule in the Regulations & Morals another look:

7:50

Breakfast

12:00

Lunch

16:20

Dinner

Dinner at four-twenty? Who the hell eats dinner at four-twenty?

Several minutes later, the inmate reappears before my window, the trolley now carrying with a large tin pot, stacks of plastic soup bowls, and covered rice bowls.

The first time his figure darkened my window I got the impression that he was in his forties, but now that I take a good look at the guy—the knobby knees poking out of the bottom of his gray shorts like dried persimmons, the stooped, bony shoulders, and arms like twigs—I’d say he must be pushing sixty.

And the longer I look at him, at his gaunt features, the outdated spectacles, the cap covering his shaved head, the more I am reminded of Gilligan stranded on this uncharted desert isle of ours, aging, yes, but not quite getting older season after season after season, year after year.