Denise made a small sound, amusement trying to recover its seat. “All right,” she said. “The woman with the coffee can read. The boy miscopied. We have restored the dignity of the printing industry. You can go and bring someone a plate.”
“Mom.”
“I am being fair. She found a typo made of pencil. That is not the same as solving a regional practice set between the soup and the club sandwich.”
Emily’s order was up. She knew it without looking, because the bell had a pattern and because Toni, the other waitress on the floor, had passed behind her twice already with the particular silence of a person covering your station and keeping a tally. Emily should have gone. The turkey club would be cooling into a complaint. Ruth did not love complaints. Emily felt the old pull of duty in her feet, the black shoes wanting the straight line to the pass. She also felt the boy’s hand on the paper, the way it had flattened, the way he had asked. She had spent a long time arranging her days so that nobody would ask her this. The arrangement had been a mercy. Standing inside it now, she could feel its edges.
“I can come back to it,” she said, which was both true and a test of whether they wanted the thing they had asked for.