Hank stayed at the grill, scraping it down, moving slow against a barking right knee.
"Receipts," Marge said, counting bills at the register. "You want the bad news first, or the worse news?"
"Give me the bad news. I like to warm up," Hank said.
"Tuesday is Tuesday. Nobody eats out on a Tuesday." She banded a stack of ones. "And the tax letter came today. Did you see it?"
"I saw it."
"Assessment's up eighteen percent, Hank. They're taxing the chrome like it's made of gold."
"It's the lot they want. Hale's been circling since spring," Hank said.
"Richard Hale can circle all he wants."
"I'm standing here, ain't I?"
Marge zipped the money bag and set it under the counter. "Barely standing, from the look of that knee."
"It's fine." She came around the counter with a wet rag and started wiping down the stools. "That boy came in again tonight."
"Yeah."
"That's three nights running."
"He was hungry."
Marge stopped wiping. "Hank Callahan. You're feeding that boy like he's yours."
Hank kept scraping. The metal hissed under the blade. "Somebody's got to."
A beat. The lights hummed. Marge hung the rag on the edge of the sink and looked at the hook by the office door, where a faded blue apron hung, the pockets frayed, the strings tied in a neat bow nobody ever untied.
"How long you going to keep that up there?" she asked, quieter.
Hank glanced at it. "It's Ellen's apron."
"I know whose apron it is, sugar. I'm asking how long."
"As long as I got a hook."
Marge leaned against the counter. "Eight years last month," Hank said. "October. She never even saw the leaves turn."
"You don't talk about her much."
"She ran that register thirty years. Knew every regular's order and half their troubles. She was fifty-four. Heart just quit on her one morning before the breakfast rush. She made the coffee, went to unlock the front door, sat down on that stool right there, and never got up."
Marge was quiet. "I remember."
"I found her," Hank said. "Right there by the door. Coffee was still hot."
"I'm sorry, hon."
"She loved this place more than I did, if you can believe it. I told her, the day we buried her, I'd keep it open. That was the promise."
Marge nodded. "And now the county wants to tax it out from under you."
"County, the distributor, everybody. Beef's up, coffee's up, and folks buy their breakfast at the gas station now." Hank limped to the register and looked at the thin money bag. "Most months we clear just enough to keep the lights on."
"And on top of that," Marge said, "you're running a one-boy charity kitchen."
"Kid eats like every meal might be his last."
"With the Barkers, it might be." Marge's voice went sharp. "You should see the way that woman looks at him, Hank. Like he's a stain she can't scrub out."
Hank's jaw worked. "He tell you that?"
"He didn't have to tell me. I got eyes." She picked up the rag again. "You never said much about being nine yourself."
Hank looked at her. "What?"
"You heard me. You look at that boy like you're reading your own diary. So tell me."
He was quiet a long moment. Then he sat down on one of the counter stools, which he almost never did.
"My old man took off when I was seven," Hank said. "Mama worked the mill. Two shifts, some weeks. Some nights there wasn't enough to stretch, no matter how thin she sliced it."
"Oh, sugar."
"Don't," Hank said, but not unkind. "I'd walk down Main Street after school and stand in front of Krause's bakery and just breathe. Bread coming out of the oven. I told myself if I smelled it long enough, I'd feel full."
Marge set the rag down. "Did it work?"
"Not once." Hank tapped his chest. "But I remember the wanting. That ache right here. I see it in that kid, Marge. When he thinks nobody's watching him eat. He's got the same look I had."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying the books say what they say." Hank stood up, slow, and went back to the grill and turned off the burners one by one. "But as long as I'm standing behind this grill, that boy eats. Every night he shows up, he eats. I don't care what the assessment is. Somebody fed me once, a long time ago, and I never forgot it."
Marge stared at him. "Somebody fed you? Who?"
"Krause's wife. One winter night she saw me standing out there in the snow and brought me a roll, still warm." Hank smiled, a small thing. "Told me to come back tomorrow. I did. Every day that winter."
"Well." Marge's voice had gone soft. "Then I guess Ellen would be proud of you, you stubborn old goat."
"She'd tell me to lock up and go to bed."
"Smart woman." Marge walked to the office door and straightened Ellen's apron on its hook. "She kept this place like a church, Hank."
"She kept me like one too."
Marge killed the dining room lights, leaving just the glow over the grill. "Come on, hon. Let's go home before that knee gives out."
Hank picked up his jacket. At the back door he paused and looked out at the empty alley, rain starting up again on the dumpster lids.
"You think he'll come back tomorrow?" Marge asked.
Hank thought of the boy's face over the soup bowl, the chocolate milk held in both hands like it might disappear.