The man stuck around to nearly closing time, Holly finding herself looking out the big windows to the parking lot to see if TJ had come back with her momma’s minivan. Most nights TJ was there fifteen, twenty minutes early just in case things got slow and the manager let Holly go. But TJ wasn’t there, probably making out with Ladarius somewhere, listening to her Cheap Trick or fucking Quiet Riot, telling tall tales about how her daddy had been a folk hero and things might’ve been different if her momma had stayed with him and made him a better man.

“You mind me asking you something?” the pervy man asked. Holly looked away from the window and back toward him. He had the corner booth, a table that could seat six, situated right under an old fisherman’s net seeded with conch shells, starfish, and rubber turtles. The man had his right arm extended over the back of the orange vinyl seat as if putting an arm around a ghost.

“No, sir.”

“How’d you get so damn fine?”

Holly shrugged, having about enough, and not being able to help herself. “Genetics?”

The man reached a finger into his mouth to pry loose something in his back teeth. “Sure your momma and daddy didn’t have nothing to do with it?”

Holly shook her head, taking in a long deep breath, as the man stood up and patted her on the rear, reaching into his wallet and leaving a twenty. The meal with tax had been nineteen dollars and some change. He winked as he zipped up his hunting coat and tugged on an orange ski cap and headed for the door.

As he walked out, cold air rushed in, past the two other waitresses and Phil Jr., the son of the owner of Captain’s Table. The little group was huddled around the register and staring at a small television that they usually only turned on for Ole Miss games. Phil Jr. had the till pulled from the register, the till just sitting there while he stared up at the screen. Some woman from the Tupelo station talking in front of a stretch of yellow tape, the flashing lights of police cars down a dark, dirty road. Body found in Parsham County.

“Has everybody quit but me?” Holly asked. “We got two tables need busing.”

“You see this?” asked Becky, one of the older waitresses who’d worked at the Captain’s Table since Holly was little. Becky was tall and thick, with arms as big as Christmas hams and a soft, wrinkled face with lots of loose skin around her throat. She wore perfumed powder and makeup, her dark hair dyed and teased high in what looked like a football helmet.

“I don’t have time.”