But Audrey had been right. There was no need to hurry here. Henry took his time and in doing so found that not only could he taste the food he was eating, but each item on the plate had a separate flavor and texture, and all of it was good—very good.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.” Audrey walked up just as Henry was finishing the last bite of his steak. “New in town?”

“Just passing through,” Henry said as he chewed the rest of his steak, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and then put the napkin on his plate. “Actually, maybe you could help me. I’m looking for work. You don’t know of any outfits looking for help around here, do you?”

“Not around here,” she said picking up the plate. “The drought really hurt a lot of the ranches in the area. Then that storm hit and nearly wiped out all the little guys.” She took the plate over to the counter, and placed it in a plastic tub already full of dirty dishes sitting on a chrome cart. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Henry said as he took the last sip from his coffee cup and set it down softly on the table. He was used to hearing there wasn’t any work. All it meant to him was he’d have to go a little farther down the road before the day was over. “What do I owe you?”

Audrey pulled the green and white pad from her apron and the pencil from behind her ear. “Steak and eggs, one coffee and one orange juice,” she said to herself as she wrote down the prices next to each item and added them up. “Looks like the damages are six dollars even.”

“Fair enough,” Henry said getting up from the table and taking the fresh wad of one hundred dollar bills from his shirt pocket. He pealed one off as he got to the cash register and handed it to her. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I don’t have anything smaller.”

“Hey,” Audrey gently took the bill from his hand. “Money’s money, right? It all spends the same in my book.”

“That it does,” Henry replied.

Audrey pushed the wide, round typewriter-like buttons on the old cash register, and a yellowed tab with the number six with a decimal point after it popped up in the window at the top of the antiquated machine. At the same time the register dinged loudly and the money drawer popped open. Audrey pulled four twenties, a ten and four ones from the drawer and counted them back to Henry as she placed them in the palm of his calloused, open hand. “Six,” she pointed at the bill still attached to her pad. “Seven, eight, nine, ten, ten is twenty, and forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred.” She slipped the hundred-dollar bill Henry had given her in the slot under the rest of the twenties, and closed the drawer with her hand.