“After the rush, then,” she said. “We’ll order pie we don’t need. Caleb will pretend not to listen and will listen. And if you decide we haven’t earned it, you can bring the pie and say nothing, and I will leave a tip that attempts to cover the fact that I spoke to you as if you were a function of the coffee.”
“The tip isn’t the interesting part,” Emily said.
“I know,” Denise said, and for the first time she smiled without using the smile to put anyone in their place. “That’s what worries me.”
She left them with the worksheet turned right side up and the ninety-three circled not by her but by Caleb, who had asked, absurdly, whether circling was allowed, as if the regional committee might be hiding in the vinyl. The turkey club had been delivered and partially eaten by a man who told Toni the soup was fine, which was code for the soup having been late and the man being too decent, or too tired, to make a speech. Emily took table four’s water and the soccer father’s bill and a spill of orange juice near the high chair, the juice already traveling along a groove in the chrome like a river that had found a surveyor’s line. She smiled where smiling was the right tool. She did not think about ninety-three while she smiled, and then she did, and the number sat in her like a coin under the tongue.