By twenty minutes past noon, the regulars had found their favorite stools lining the Formica counter inside the grill. Gin Rummy was the last to sit, the usual banana in his back pocket that he planned to save for later on in the day when he got hungry again while driving his red-and-white Ole Dixie taxicab.

“You can fix me a hamburger?” Gin Rummy asked Spike at the grill.

“Yeah, we can fix you a hamburger,” Spike said, pushing the bacon press.

“Know it’s early.”

“Man, it’s not early.” Spike scraped clean an area of the grill, and slapped down a frozen hamburger patty. “When’s the last time you looked at a clock, Rummy?”

His friends called him that for short. Rummy smiled, shaking his head sheepishly. He usually came in for breakfast but was running a little late today. Seems like those two white ladies usually came in for breakfast, too. Maybe that was the problem. Everything was confusing. He shook his head again, grinned, and adjusted his banana so he didn’t bruise any part of it.

“Why you carry your banana like that?” asked his neighbor, Jefferson Davis, who operated a yellow Caterpillar and still bragged that he had helped build USBank. “Put it in your shirt pocket.” He tapped the pocket on Rummy’s red-checked shirt. “Then you don’t sit on it.”

Other men at the counter, and there were eight of them, got into a deep discussion about Rummy’s banana and Davis’s suggestion. Some were eating beef tips and gravy, others sticking with the fried livermush, collard greens, and cheese grits.

“I put it in my shirt pocket and I see it the whole time I’m driving.” Rummy was trying to explain his philosophy. “Then I eat it sooner. See? It never makes it till three or four o’clock.”

“Then stick it in the glove box.”

“No room in there.”

“What about the passenger’s seat up front? All your fares ride in back, right?” Spike set down the burger, all the way, thousand island instead of mayo, double American cheese, and fried onions on the side.

“Won’t work. Sometimes bags go up front.” Rummy neatly cut his lunch in half. “Or I pick up four fares at the bus station, and one of ’em gotta go up there. They see a banana on the seat, think I eat on the job.”

“Well, you do, man.”

“That’s so.”

“The truth.”

“Tell it, brother.”

“Not with no one in with me, I don’t.” Rummy shook his head, chewing, the banana remaining in his back pocket where it belonged.

Hammer did not recall the Presto being this loud. She eyed the men at the counter, halfway expecting them to get into a fight any minute. Seems one told another to stick something somewhere and others were agreeing. She hadn’t been in a good fight in a while, if she didn’t count arguments with Seth. Of course, she was no fool. She knew there were at least twenty patrol cars cruising the area, watching every bit of Cobb salad she speared with her fork. It was annoying, but she didn’t blame her troops and in fact appreciated their attention and care. She found it touching, even though she knew the motive was their butts and not her well-being, really.