At 5:10 that evening, Alexander Blake walked into Lindy's with a gym bag on his shoulder and asked her mother for a job.
Emma was in booth six with her chem book open and her pen not moving, and she heard it from forty feet away. The bell over the door. Dot's chair squeaking on the tile. Then his voice, polite and strained, saying, "Mrs. Wilson. Dana. I was hoping there might be work."
She put the pen down very slowly.
Behind the counter, her mother set the coffeepot on its burner and wiped her hands on her apron. She looked at him for a long time. He stood in the middle of the floor in yesterday's shirt, hair flattened, a smear of boathouse dirt along one cheek and the bag hanging from his hand like something he'd found on the road.
"What kind of work?"
"Anything. Floors. Dishes. Wha
