Amelie Desjardins understood very quickly that she was having a bad day—and that it would only get worse.

George, the manager at the Goodtime Grill, had put her on a split shift for the week. She worked from eleven-thirty to two-thirty, took an afternoon break, then she was back from five-thirty to eight o’clock at night. Which pretty much fucks up your day, Amelie thought, since she was too tired to do much after the lunch rush except trek back to St. Jamestown for a nap—her nap having been interrupted this afternoon by the woman looking for John.

Which was mysterious in itself, and Amelie might have worried more about it … but she had other things on her mind.

First she had come in to work a little late, and George climbed down her throat about it. Then there was prep and set-up, and it seemed as if every salt shaker in the place had gone empty all at once, which was a hassle. Then Alberto, the cook, chose this terrific time to start coming on to her, and that was a balancing act you wouldn’t wish on a trapeze artist, because you have to be on good terms with the cook. A friendly cook will juggle substitutions, fill your orders fast, do you a hundred little favors that add up to tips … but when you came right down to it Amelie thought Alberto was about as oily as the deep-fat fryer, which, not coincidentally, he seldom cleaned. Alberto rolled through the steamy kitchen like a huge, sweating demiurge, when he wasn’t peeking through the door of the changing room trying to catch a waitress in her underwear. So it was “You look really good tonight, Alberto,” and winking at him, and sharing some of her tips, and then getting the hell out of his way before he could deliver one of his patented demeaning gropes. It amounted to a nasty kind of ballet, and today Amelie was just slow enough that she was forced to dislodge Alberto with her elbow—which left him in a vengeful sulk throughout the dinner rush.