Now hungry, Frances trudged up the gravel driveway to Mal’s Pico Diner and parked her bicycle. A girl in a mint-green dress rushed to serve a plate of crackers and butter as Frances sat, then the girl moved silently behind the counter, pulling a box of frozen food from a hamper and throwing its contents into a metal well for frying.

“It will be ready in a moment,” the girl said, and while the food boiled, the girl began to cry. She disappeared into the kitchen, came back, and standing again beside the fryer, cried rather softly into the crook of her arm. Frances felt vaguely at fault and wished for the girl to go home to bed, though she blurted out, “Drink a glass of water!” which sent the girl into a wrenching storm of further tears before she fled to the kitchen through a swinging door. Some minutes later, the cook, a man in a dirty smock, emerged. He shook the food from its basket onto a plate, which he set before Frances.

“That waitress—” Frances began.

“She’s jes’ that way,” said the cook, and returned to the kitchen.

Staring at the yellowish food, then at the cafe around her, Frances struggled inside herself. The place was too empty. No longer hungry, she raised herself from the booth and straightened her skirt, lonely, wiping her nose, and she pushed through the same door as had the girl and the cook.

The kitchen’s long, warped, diagonal cutting board extended far to the rear of the building alongside a table that also seemed indefinitely long. A light-bulb hung overhead. The cook stood behind the stove, squinting; he wore a blank name-tag on his smock. Behind him a smallish teen boy with light hair sat on a milk crate, eating slowly and absorbedly from a bowl of mush.

“Hello!” Frances cried loudly.

The cook looked at her, smoking.

“I went to see Palmer today,” she told him conversationally.

The old cook leaned on the cutting board, looking through the pass-through and into the cafe. “Th’ doctor?”

“That’s right.”

The cook waited, eyes moving, seeming to recall something.

“He said I’ve got a scar.”

“Th’ doctor did.”

“Yes, and he said other people in town certainly may have them, too!”

“Got a scar, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“Got a big scar on the belly, don’ ya?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that—it’s on my leg,” she replied.

“I’ll tell you,” the cook said, squinting, grabbing up a metal spatula from the stove, tapping it on the grill, “that’s no scar, Missy. That’s a tumor.”

The room seemed to spin for Frances, and she placed her hand on the cool refrigerator door. “How do you know that? Did you hear something in town?”

“Mebbe I did, mebbe I didn’t.” The cook paused, leaning on a stove. “Doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“No.”

“And it came up real silent-like, right?’

“I don’t know. I just noticed it one day!”