June Whitfield had been specific about the hands.
A nervous man's hands fly everywhere, she'd said, demonstrating with her own β fluttering, tapping, drumming. A liar's hands go still, because he's afraid they'll give him away. A scared woman's hands do small jobs β folding napkins, lining up the silverware β because small jobs are the only thing she can control. And a man who's done something bad? June had gone quiet then, the way she did when the lesson mattered. His hands are always busy being innocent.
Carol carried the waters to booth nine and set them down one by one, and while she did it she watched.
The older man β Vince, the younger one would call him later, Vince β had his hands flat on the table, palms down, fingers spread. Busy being innocent. The kid β Jesse, acne scars, left ear β had his under the table, and Carol could see his knee jumping. The girl sat with her hands folded in her lap, perfectly still, and that was the worst of it, because stillness like that wasn't calm. Stillness like that was a decision.
"Know what you want?" Carol asked, pencil ready.
"She'll have the cheeseburger," Vince said, not looking at the menu, not looking at the girl. "Fries. Coke."
The girl didn't move. Didn't nod. Didn't object. Her eyes were on the tabletop.
"And for you two?"
"Same," Jesse said quickly. Too quickly. He touched his left ear.
"Chicken-fried," Vince said. "Gravy on the side."
Carol wrote it down. She'll have the cheeseburger. Not she'd like. Not what do you want, honey? He had ordered for her the way you'd order for a dog.
"Anything to drink besides the Coke? Coffee's fresh."
"She's fine," Vince said.
Carol looked at the girl then, directly, for the first time. Up close she was younger than twenty, maybe β or older than twenty and worn down past it. Her face was pale in a way that had nothing to do with the rain. There was a yellowing bruise along her left jawline, the color of old mustard, half-hidden by wet hair. Her sweater was too big and too thin for November. And her hands, folded in her lap β Carol saw the nails bitten to the quick, the raw red rims, the tremor she was working so hard to hide.
"Okay," Carol said softly. "I'll get that right out."
She walked back to the kitchen and put the ticket up, and her hands were shaking again, and Rosa the cook took one look at her and said, "You okay, mija?"
"Fine," Carol said. "Just cold."
It was a lie and they both knew it, but Rosa had worked the line for eleven years and knew when to push and when to flip a burger. She flipped a burger.
Carol went to the register and pretended to count singles and watched booth nine in the mirror over the pie case. Vince had his phone out now β his own phone, Carol noted; the girl had nothing, no phone, no bag, no purse, nothing a twenty-year-old girl carries into the world β and he was texting with his thumbs, fast, the way men text when they're angry. Jesse was watching the door. The girl was watching nothing. Her gaze sat on the middle distance like a bird on a wire, there because there was nowhere else to be.
Priya laughed at something at the counter and Sam woke up and started the cranky pre-cry whine, and Carol went over on autopilot, all smiles, warmed the bottle, made the faces that made Sam laugh with milk on his chin. Her body did the job. Her mind stayed at booth nine.
Faces lie. Hands don't.
What were the hands saying? The girl's hands said don't hit me. Vince's hands said I am in charge here and I have always been in charge. Jesse's hands said I don't want to be here β the ear-touching, the knee, the way he'd flinched when Vince's phone buzzed.
And what were Carol's own hands saying, shaking around a coffee pot?
They were saying what her gut had been saying since the door banged open at eight-oh-five: something is wrong at booth nine, something is very wrong, and you know it.
She had sixteen-year-old Emily at home doing algebra at the kitchen table. She had a mortgage she could barely afford and a ten-year-old sedan with a check-engine light that had been on since August. She had every reason in the world to mind her own business, serve the cheeseburgers, take the money, and forget booth nine by closing time.
June's voice, three years in the grave and clear as the bell over the door: Honey, the waitress eye isn't a gift. It's a responsibility. You see it, you own it.
Carol set down the coffee pot. Her hands had stopped shaking.
That scared her more than the shaking had.