“Get out.”
“Get out of my restaurant.”
Noelia stepped between us.
She was a head shorter than Hunter, and she stood there with her small chin up and her hands at her sides.
“If you touch him again,” she said, “I’m calling the police.”
“You’re calling the police.”
“On me.”
He laughed.
Then the laugh went out of his face.
“Noelia,” he said.
“You’re fired.”
“Take off your apron and leave.”
She stood very still.
She reached behind her back, and she untied the knot, slowly, the way you untie a wound.
She folded the faded striped apron once, and then again, and set it on the table beside the bowl of soup.
“Then I’ll go,” she said.
“But he eats first.”
“Nobody leaves hungry.”
Somebody in the dining room began to clap.
It was one pair of hands at first, the church ladies at Table 12.
