It was enough to put a grown man in the hospital, but it looked good to me. I did my best, but the yawning emptiness in me suddenly filled halfway through the eggs. The plates looked like something feral had been at them, but Apron Boy didn’t say a word, just took them as soon as I pushed them away, then came back with the coffee pot and a slice of coconut cream pie.

I didn’t even know if I liked coconut cream pie. I sat there and looked at the piped decorative cream and the little shaved bits of toasted nutflesh and felt sick. Then I wondered if chocolate cream would’ve been worse. Or cherry. Or…

How could I know about pie and not know who I was?

The gun’s heavy weight rested against my side. Jill. You’re Jill, and you’re armed. Focus on that, the rest will take care of itself.

“Sure be glad to close up early tonight.” Apron Man shuffled back with another cup of coffee. He wedged himself into the other side of the booth with a sigh. “Get off my old dogs. I’m going into town, give you a lift.”

Another one of those silences, and I figured out he was waiting for me to say something. “Really? That’s…nice.” My voice was a papery husk. “Town?”

He shrugged. “Santa Luz. The bad old lady herself. You’d have to walk a fair ways. Told your friend I’d give you a lift, since he was goin’ elsewhere.”

Was he, now. I’ll just bet. I picked up the clean fork, cut off the tip of the pie slice. “Nice of you.” Awkward, like the words were sharp edges and I had to hold them just right.

“Yeah, well. Got to do what we can to he’p each other. You got somewhere in town you’re goin’?”

I don’t even know my name. Just how to hold this gun. And that if I wanted to, I could be across this table with this cheapass fork stuck in your carotid in a hot half second. It played out in vivid Technicolor inside my head—spurting blood, the greenstick crack of a neck breaking, the things I could do. “No. Just the city limits will do.”