"How early?"
"Six a.m. I'm sad to say, but before you whine about it in yourheart, you remember that I'm up baking biscuits at four-thirty. My Jackand I used to do that together. In fact he got his heart attack rollingout the dough, so if you ever come in early and see me spilling a fewtears into the powdermilk, I'm not having a bad day, I'm justremembering a good man, and that's my privilege. We got to open atsix on account of the hotel across the street. It's sort of the opposite ofa bed and breakfast. They only serve dinner, an all-you-can-eat family-style home-cooking restaurant that brings 'em in from fifty miles around. The hotel sends them over here for breakfast and on top of that we geta lot of folks in town, for breakfast and for lunch, too. We do goodbusiness. I'm not poor and I'm not rich. I'll pay you decent and you'llmake fair tips, for this part of the country. You still see the nickels bythe coffee cups, but you just give those old coots a wink and a smile,cause the younger boys make up for them and it's not like it costs thatmuch for a room around here. Meals free during your shift but notafter, I'm sorry to say."
"Fine with me," said Rainie.
"Don't go quittin' on me after a week, darlin'."
"Don't plan on it," said Rainie, and to her surprise it was true. Itmade her wonder -- was Harmony Illinois what she'd been looking forwhen she checked out in Bremerton? It wasn't what usually happened. Usually she was looking for the street -- the down-and-out half-hopeless life of people who lived in the shadow of the city. She'dfound the street once in New Orleans, and once in San Francisco, andanother time in Paris, and she found places where the street used tobe, like Beale Street in Memphis, and the Village in New York City, and