From where I sat, I could see the entire room.
At Table 4, a man in a gray suit was reading a menu he was not reading.
At Table 9, a woman with a notebook was writing nothing.
I knew them, though I had never met them.
Detective Trevino’s people.
At Table 6, in the corner booth, sat two familiar faces I had not seen in months.
Mrs. Dena Lathrop, in her blue felt hat, with her cane across her knees.
And across from her, Mr. Benito Alvarado, thin as a coat hanger, with his dominoes in a leather pouch.
“Come at one-thirty,” he had told them, “and I’ll make the dumplings.”
Mrs. Lathrop saw me.
She looked at me for a long, quiet moment, at the beard, the frayed collar, the torn pocket.
Then she looked at my hands, which have a burn scar across the left knuckles from a grease fire in 1998.
