The door rattles again. The ghosts are gone. Miriam pushes her way out of the bathroom, past some blonde country yuppie in pink.

The waitress approaches, carrying an almost-impossible armload of plates.

"Your friend said you were done eating?" she asks Miriam, gesturing to the plates with her chin.

"Uh. Yeah. Yes, thanks." She pauses. The words come out of her mouth before she even thinks to speak them: "Do you have a Honda? A Honda hatchback?"

"No," she says, and Miriam's heart leaps like a bullfrog with a dart stuck in his ass. A tiny glimmer of hope grows wings and starts banging against her insides, a bee against a window. "But, you know what? I have been thinking about getting one. Old Tremayne Jackson down on Orchard Lane, he has one sitting out in his driveway. Was his daughter's, I guess, but she got a scholarship – first one in the family to go to college – so now the car's just sitting there, collecting pollen and leaves and whatnot on the hood. He said he'd sell it to me, but I hadn't decided yet. Heck – maybe I'll go for it! I'd forgotten about it until now."

Miriam's insides tighten. She screams within her own head. The thoughts rage at her, throw things, kick down mental doors and hurl bricks through windows: See what you did? See how it all happens? You say something, and bad shit happens. Before she wasn't sure about buying that goddamn car, but now you open your lippy bitch mouth, and now she's got the idea planted in her head like a bad seed growing an ugly tree, and one night she's going to get crunched into that tree by some drunk dumb fuck in a pickup truck – way to go. You have to keep trying, don't you?

And even then, a littler voice chimes in: Tell her no. Tell her that Honda hatchbacks are known to spontaneously burst into flames when you turn on the radio. Or better still, go down to Orchard Lane and stuff a rag in the gas tank and blow that sucker to Timbuktu. Or maybe take fate into your own hands right now – grab a butter knife off the counter and saw this stupid woman's head clean off. If you kill her first, it doesn't count, right?

But Miriam just smiles, shrugs, and pushes past.

The waitress watches her go, equal parts confused and pleased.

Miriam sits, and Ashley's polishing off his coffee.

"So, how's Flo bite it?"

"Car accident. Truck slams into her." He cocks an eyebrow. "What, do you want me to prove it? Hold on, we just have to get to my time-traveling Delorean parked out back by the dumpster. We'll go back to the future and you can see I'm telling the truth."

"All right, all right, let's say I believe you."

"Lucky me."

"I have a proposal for you."

"No, I will not marry you. The baby's not yours. It's a mixedrace baby, and last I checked, you don't look Eskimo."