“Three waters coming up.”

Picking up forks and steak knives, the three fall silent and focus on the task at hand.

“Damn good,” Hunter said. Looks over at Johnny and says, “Good recommendation.”

Johnny raises his cup of coffee. “Glad you like it,” he says, and takes another sip.

As the three hungry travelers slice and chew and swallow and slice some more, Johnny turns around in his seat, looking at something in the parking lot. Turning to Hunter, he says, “I think there’s some guys outside in the lot loading up one of your-all’s bikes.”

Itch turns around and springs to his feet. “Motherfucker,” he mumbles around a bite of ribeye and baked potato. “That’s my damn bike!”

Crossing from the bar, they speed-walk through the dining area and out the door. Outside, Itch’s motorcycle stands in the bed of a faded and rusted Dodge Ram, cinched down with straps and come-alongs. Rubber chirps on the blacktop, and the pickup speeds away with two bearded guys in the rear gleefully waving the middle finger at Itch.

Hunter had come out just behind Itch. Still chewing his food, he says, “Thought your business was squared away.”

JACK

JACK

Pulling his hand from his mouth, his mother clasping his digits in hers the way mothers do, telling him, Jack, all that time away was time lost.

What did she mean?

Jack squeezes his eyes shut. Inhales deep.

This isn’t real, he tells himself. He opens his eyes again.

In that blink of an eye, in that exhalation of breath, everything changes. He is no longer sitting in Fabiola’s home.

He is living in that memory that haunts him, that is too familiar. He is back in the hospital, his mother lying in a bed. Thin and quivering. Smell of isopropyl alcohol. The skin of her face translucent over the bones that construct her cheeks, chin, jaw, forehead. Stretched and connected. Pink tissue beneath. Hair from her head pressed back like a bathing cap. Arms lifted. Sag of flesh, loose folds. Hands webbed with veins and shaped by years upon years of labor, gripping Jack’s hand, a hand wet with his own blood. Indentations of teeth as if bitten by another human being. Parched lips part and speak. “Jack, look what you’ve gone and done to yourself.”

Her words echo as if he were in a canyon. His hand swells and throbs in rhythm with his heartbeat. It feels damp and warm.

And Jack asks, “What have I done, Mother?” Weak, smiling with a lost stare.