She asks me what I want to eat and I tell her a hamburger and the man makes his order and tells her to add fries and a chocolate sundae to mine and she goes off into the kitchen. While she is out of the room I relax a little, noticing that near the ceiling the walls are bare drywall and the carpeting is not wall-to-wall, but one beige piece spread upon bare concrete. When she comes back he has told me the prices of housing in the area, in case my good mother decides she would like to consider relocating. As the waitress nears us, I try to get him off the topic (in case she might put location and face together and think I look like an Asian or Mexican) by bringing up a hunting discussion we covered earlier.

He ignores me by turning to the lady and telling her I’m from Los Angeles but I’m different and what a smart kid I am to listen to.

She looks at me, So you’re from Los Angeles?

I nod.

Yeah, we get a lot of travelers coming through, she says. I don’t think too much of most of them.

Oh, he’s okay, the man says.

She pretends to scrutinize me: You’d better not be too nice to the boy, Stone. He might have a rich mother who’ll come up and jack up our housing prices.

She winks at me and thucks down a water glass. Ice clicks against the sides.

The man tells her my mother has to sleep in the living room due to unprovoked drive-by Asian gang shootings, but I do not remind him it is really that the gangs are Mexican—which I had told him—or that they are mad at me and my brother—which I had not.

The waitress shakes her head sympathetically and clicks her tongue. She seems about to say something but the door opens, letting in a breeze and a sharp flood of daylight, making her face and the room glow like breath-blown embers. She frowns as she sees a teenage girl coming in, and without a word she walks off and puts her head into the kitchen door, as if she were preoccupied.

The girl sits right next to us, shifting about as she gets comfortable on her stool and setting a handbag on the counter, her leather strap drooping off the edge. She opens a plastic menu.

The waitress comes back, ignoring the girl.

It sounds like you know how to take care of your good mother, she says to me. She is speaking very loudly.

She doesn’t pay attention when I nod, but steps in front of the girl. Suddenly she takes the menu from the girl’s hands.

The girl looks up. Why’d you do that?

You know what’s on the menu, Becky. Just tell me what you want.