“Helen,” he said. He had already pulled the door open and stood squinting into the muted light of the interior, the room quieting as diners turned to look, their forks suspended in the air, his shape in the doorway rigid, uniformed. Then the waitress was beside him, her voice hovering somewhere between whisper and wail: “I’m sorry but you can’t be in here. We just can’t serve you. I’m sorry but it’s just our policy,” and his response was baffled surprise, not even understanding until that moment what kind of room, what kind of business, he had stepped into. “What? What?” focused all the while on Helen, his eyes still adjusting to the muted light. He felt himself pulled toward her even as the waitress continued to speak, “You can’t be in here, it’s not for you, didn’t you see the sign?” and him continuing to mumble, “What? What?” even as he pushed past her.

When he reached Helen’s table, the waitress was still there like some insect fluttering around his face, repeating something so that Helen had to look from Ray to the waitress and then to her dining companion who had stood now and was also talking, “Can I help you, bud? What’s the trouble here?” his voice amicable, his hand on Ray’s arm as if to reassure him that everything would be fine.

“Helen,” he said.

And her voice, when it came, was like an exhale: “Oh Ray.”

“I’ve been trying—”

But the waitress now, again: “You’re gonna have to leave. We don’t serve you people here. We just don’t. It’s policy.”

“I just need to speak to—”

“You’ve gotta go right out that door or I’m calling the police.”

“Ma’am, if you’ll just—”

“Right out that door. I’m calling the police. They’ll—”

“Go ahead! Go ahead and call them. Call whoever you want.” And when the waitress did not move he shouted at her again: “Well, go on then. Make your phone call.”

“Whoa bud,” the man at his elbow said. Ray looked at him now. A plain-faced young man barely out of his teens, white of course, skin tanned from a summer of sunlight, his shirt clean denim, dressed, Ray thought, not unlike how he might have dressed in those days before. He turned to see the look on Helen’s face, her sense of confusion, guilt, fear, horror at seeing him there.

“Will you talk to me?” And when she did not respond he said her name.

“Look, bud,” the man said, “maybe you and I should head outside.”

“Helen,” Ray said again.

“You’ve got to go, Ray,” she said then, quietly, not looking at him now, her eyes averted. “Just leave. Just leave us alone.”

“Please,” he said.