“Hunter,” I said.
“Sit down.”
“And tell me again what kind of restaurant this is.”
PART 4
Hunter turned.
For a moment, he did not understand.
He looked at the stained jacket and the torn pocket, and the coffee running down my face, and he laughed, a short, incredulous bark.
“Sit down?”
“Who do you think you are?”
I walked past him.
I walked to the wall, to the plaque above the hostess station, where my mother’s photograph hung in its plain wooden frame.
Graciela Meza, thirty-eight years in an apron, smiling at the camera as if she had somewhere better to be.
I put my hand on the brass.
“Read it out loud, Hunter.”
“What?”
“Read it.”
He did not.
So I read it for him.
“Nobody leaves Graciela’s hungry.”
The room was very quiet now.
I turned around.
“My name is Alonzo Meza.”
“Twenty years ago, I washed dishes at Ray’s Diner on this exact corner for six dollars an hour.”
