I. The Pink Copy On the last Saturday that Bell's Lunch was open, Ada Bell found a child's tooth in the reservation drawer. It was wrapped in the pink copy of a bill dated nine years earlier. The table had ordered two soups, one lemonade, and three extra spoons. Ada put the tooth in the tin with the lost rings. She did not know what she was going to do with the tin, either. Outside, somebody had already peeled the B off the painted window. It left a clear shape in the glass through which she could see the bus stop without the yellow tint that had made everyone waiting for a bus look unwell. The man taking down the lettering knocked and asked if she wanted the letters. “Can they go back up somewhere else?” she asked. “No.” “Then what would I do with them?” He considered this. “Some people stick them to a fridge.” She told him to keep going. Behind her, her father lifted the lid of the soup pot, put it back, lifted it again, and asked if she had tasted it. There had been a time when she could recognize a shift by the number of times he asked her that question. When there were customers she used to taste the soup. When there weren't, she used to say she had. “It's good,” she said. “You didn't taste it.” “I did before you put any more salt in.” He put the lid down gently. Ada felt, rather than saw, him move the salt away from the stove. On the pass was the seating plan for that evening. The last service would end at seven. At seven fifteen, after the regulars left, there was a reservation for table seven. Five people. No name. Someone had tucked a pink receipt under the clip and written PAID across it in a hand she didn't recognize. The paper had been folded in quarters so many times that she could feel the raised seams from the back. “Who's this?” she asked. Her father was peeling a strip of tape off his apron. “Your mother knew.” “Can I call her?” “She's at the pool. They don't let her have the phone in there.” “She's not in the pool from nine in the morning until the restaurant closes.” “It takes her a long time to get dry.” Ada let the receipt go. This was a thing her father did when he could answer a question and wished he couldn't. He invented a practical difficulty that could not be overcome without putting on shoes. After thirty-eight years, her mother had responded by learning to swim and going to the pool whenever she liked. “Are we cooking for them?” “I was going to do chicken.” “For five?” “That's what it says.” Ada counted the chickens in the refrigerator. There were two, each small enough that her father had turned them sideways to fit a second tray on the shelf. She had been planning to take one home. She shut the door and looked again at the time on the receipt. “I told you I was finished at seven.” “It's one table,” he said. She took a clean towel out of the drawer. It had a hole at one end, neat as a buttonhole. She put it back and picked a different one. “That's what you said about lunch the day I took the driving test.” “You passed your driving test.” “On a different day,” Ada said. II. The Furniture Ilan arrived in a truck at eleven with a boy who wore gloves so large he could hardly open the passenger door. They were taking the furniture to storage while the new kitchen went in. The diner would open again in six weeks under Ilan's name. He made bread at a stall by the station and had promised Ada's father that he would keep the big mirror over the booths. Ada suspected the promise was practical. The mirror was wider than either door. They had agreed to take all the tables except the ones in use. Ilan counted five square tables and two round ones. He looked at the small oval table against the wall and said, “What's that?” “That's seven.” “I know the number. Why is it a different shape?” “Because we bought it from a school.” It had come from the room where children who had to stay late waited for their parents. Under the near edge, six little grooves in the wood showed where somebody had worried at the grain with a pencil. Ada had used to catch the pocket of her apron on them. A friend who could fix anything had sanded the grooves smooth. Within a week they had caught her again. Ilan reached beneath it and lifted a loose felt pad. “This one's marked for me to take.” “After seven fifteen. There are people coming.” “My boy has to be at a birthday at six.” The boy, who was surely twenty-five, pulled off one of his gloves. “It's my birthday,” he said. “And I have a name.” “His name's Teo,” Ilan said. “Tell her how many flights of stairs you've got to carry this stuff up.” “Two. Also, I don't care if we come back for one table.” Ilan put the felt pad in the palm of his hand. He pressed down the sticky edge with his thumb. Ada had seen him do something like that with a torn bread bag, patiently and past the point at which it made any difference. “Come tomorrow morning,” she said. “I'll be here to meet the man about the keys.” “You said you weren't coming back tomorrow.” “I said it once,” Ada told him. “I said it to the man about the keys.” Ilan put the felt back on the table leg. They started with the two unused booths. When they removed the first bench, it left an oblong of pale linoleum with a pound coin in the middle. Teo put the coin on the counter for her. “All yours,” she said. He hesitated. Then he put it into the tip jar, where it rolled onto its edge and stayed there. The jar had come from the house when Ada was a girl. It used to contain screws, then bus fare, then the money she was saving to buy a bicycle. It had been in the restaurant long enough for the glass to wear dull at the bottom. At the back door her father was trying to put on a jacket without bending his left knee. Ada had seen him do this easily before the accident, by leaving the jacket open and letting it settle on him as he stood up. Now he sat on a crate and pulled at the lining. She reached for a sleeve. He pulled it out of her hand. “I can put on a jacket.” “I know.” He got the arm in. On the inside pocket, over his heart, there was a small square of cloth where somebody had mended a burn. It was one of her old aprons. She recognized the crooked green stitches. The stitching had been her mother's, but the burn had been hers. “Go find my mother,” Ada said. “I need to know who I'm feeding.” “I'll be back before the rush.” “Stay out as long as you like. I've got it.” As soon as the door shut behind him, she went to the pass and crossed out the words she had written on her own schedule: LOCK UP, 7 PM. III. Five Places At half past two, while Ada was trying to give away the last of the pie to a man who did not want pie, Ruth came in through the delivery door. She was in the navy trousers she wore to work at the hospital. She stopped at the edge of the rubber mat and looked down at her feet as if she had been caught wearing slippers in a church. “I thought I'd be late,” she said. “I finished early.” “If you've come for the stockpot, it's still got stock in it.” “I've come for a chair.” Ada remembered the receipt and took it from the clip. Ruth flattened it against the counter with the heel of her hand. It was a copy from the old receipt book, the one that had a flap to keep you from writing through three pages at once. Under PAID, somebody had written two amounts. Ruth told Ada how to read them. “That first one is for dinner. The second is to pay somebody to cook it.” “Dad said he was going to do chicken.” “He can't cook on a stool. He'll keep standing up until he falls over.” “You know about his knee?” “I work two floors above where they put it back together.” She tapped the receipt. “Your mother took the money. Ask her.” Ada counted the available chairs. Without the booths there were only fourteen places in the room. If there were five at seven fifteen, there would be room for people who had come late and expected their regular tables, provided they were prepared to eat with the furniture half gone. She felt the small, familiar relief that came when a number fit, even if it fit badly. “Who are the five?” “Me, your mother, your father, Dev, and the person who used to bring a plate to table seven after a close. I remember her by the way she'd always bring four forks and have to go back for the fifth.” “I always counted myself last,” Ada said, and understood. Ruth let her take the receipt. Ada read the time again. For years, after the last customer went, the five of them had eaten together when there was enough food. Dev had washed dishes, Ruth had cooked, Ada's father had criticized the cooked food, and Ada's mother had taken off her shoes under the table. Ada had kept her apron on because at some point somebody would have to get up. She could remember this without remembering a single one of the meals. “Do you still eat chicken?” she asked Ruth. “If I'm not the one who has to get it to the table.” “What if we're one short in the kitchen?” Ruth looked out at the shopfront. Most of the lettering had come down. Through the newly clear glass she could see a woman push the button for the crossing with the handle of an umbrella. Ruth waited until the woman stepped off the curb. “Then we eat something that takes one person,” she said. From her trouser pocket she took a small envelope. Ada thought it might contain more money and started to tell her they had enough. Inside was a photograph, color that had gone pale in the corners. Ruth had taken it from behind the pass. It showed the four of them at table seven, each looking down at a plate, with a chair empty at the near end. “I was getting a fork,” Ada said. “That's what I thought.” Ruth reached for the picture. “I'd like that back, please.” Ada gave it back to her. For a minute neither moved. Then Ruth pushed off the counter and asked if she could have a cup of coffee from the front. Ada started to turn to make it, and Ruth pointed toward the public side of the counter. She waited there until Ada brought her the cup. IV. Something Cold By four, the pie was gone, the soup had gone cold in its pot, and the lock on the back door had worked loose from the wood. Ada called the man about the keys. He told her to put two screws in it. She asked if he had seen what happened to a screw when there was no wood left for it to go into. He thought about it long enough for her to wish she hadn't asked. Her mother came in, with the dry end of her hair tucked into the neck of her blouse. She sat on a stool and took the reservation money out of her handbag. It was in two separate envelopes. On one she had written DINNER. On the other, WORK. Ada's father had stayed at the swimming pool to watch a race. “He doesn't know anyone in the race,” her mother said. “Good. It's time he watched somebody he didn't know.” Ada counted the money in the envelope marked WORK and set it down between them. It would pay for somebody to come in and cook a simple supper. It would not pay for someone to know which burner took time to catch, where the plain plates had been moved, or why you couldn't put a full tray on the corner of the pass. Ada had been about to tell her mother all this when she realized she was making a list of things she could write down. “You could ask Leila,” her mother said. Leila worked the lunch shift on Wednesdays and Saturdays. She had quit to start at the post office the week after the shop closed. She was also the only person Ada had ever seen tell her father to step away from the stove and have him do it. “I sent her home at two,” Ada said. “She has a life.” “You're allowed to ask someone with a life,” her mother said. “Tell her what you'd pay.” Ada went outside to call. She had expected Leila to say no. In fact Leila said yes before Ada had got to the amount, then made her say it anyway. She asked whether she would have to make the menu food. Ada looked through the window at the pie stand, empty except for the foil from the base of a crust. A man at the counter had his hand around the soup spoon Ada had brought him with his coffee. He had known her long enough to use the spoon without asking what she thought he would do with it. “There's chicken,” Ada said. “And I'd like something cold.” “Cold what?” “Cold to drink. Something I haven't got to keep hot for other people.” Leila was quiet for a second. Then she said, “Get yourself a glass. I'll be there at six fifty-five.” Ada went inside. From the bottom shelf of the refrigerator she took out a bottle of water that someone had opened and put back. She poured what was left into a glass. The glass was cracked on the rim. She drank from the other side. V. Last Orders The first people to come for dinner were the people Ada had expected last. Two women in long coats who had once pushed prams into the same corner brought their sons, who were now tall enough to take their own coats off the hooks without stretching. A man called Ed bought soup for himself and a portion to take home. He asked whether he could keep the bowl. Ada said she had already promised the bowls to someone, which was true, although all she could remember about the person was a purple scarf. “What about the spoon?” he asked. “You can have the spoon.” He put it in his pocket. It had soup on it. She thought of telling him and decided that a man who would put a wet spoon in his pocket had perhaps paid the right amount of attention to the important part of their conversation. Her father came in at quarter past six with two medals around his wrist. A woman at the pool had asked him to hold them while she got changed, and she had gone home without them. He laid them down next to the till. “She took two seconds off her time,” he told Ada. “Do you know her name?” “I know which lane she was in.” Ada put the medals in the lost-property tin. She imagined some future customer asking for a ring and getting back a medal or a tooth. The best solution was probably to leave the tin where it had always been and tell Ilan it belonged to the neighborhood. She wrote that down on his list, just below the light switch that only worked from the far end of the room. Her father tried to go around her and open the refrigerator. She told him what she had agreed with Leila. “She'll need to know when to do the potatoes.” “She'll do them when she thinks they need doing.” “I've got a way.” “Write it down,” Ada said. He looked at the seating plan, at the space Ada had cleared for Leila's instructions. Then he took out a pen and began writing. At first she thought he meant to give her a recipe. When he handed her the paper, all he had written was, “Large knife sticks in the block. Pull from the handle, not the blade.” Below it, on a fresh line, he had written, “I will stay in the front.” The man taking the letters off the glass had stopped at the final apostrophe. He packed up his ladder and left it there, a little yellow mark above head height. At half past six a cyclist came in to order a coffee, looked around at the empty patches on the floor, and asked if this was a new place. Ada brought his cup over and told him how old it was. “That's a long time to have a place,” he said. “It's a long time to have a cup,” Ada said. She had bought this one the first month. There was a place on the handle where the glaze had run and left a lump like a drop of wax. He drank the coffee at the counter and left the cup on its saucer. Ada took it back to the sink. For a few minutes she had the feeling, which used to come at the beginning of a shift, that there was an ordinary amount of time between what she had finished and what she had to do next. VI. The Wrong Door Leila came through the delivery door at six fifty-three. She was wearing a green dress under her coat. Ada thought she must have somewhere to be afterward, but Leila said she had bought the dress that morning and had nowhere better to put it on. “Do you want an apron?” Ada asked. “Do you have one without the phone number printed on it?” Ada looked through the stack and found a plain one, folded on the bottom. She handed over the money before she gave Leila the apron. Leila counted it once, thanked her, and tucked it into the pocket of her dress. They stood together in front of the stove. Ada explained about the gas ring and the tilted corner of the pass. When she got to the two chickens, she said, “I know that's not going to be ready at seven fifteen.” “Is anybody going anywhere?” Ada had once been going somewhere after seven. She hadn't made a plan. She had thought that if she put a time on the end of her shift, she would find out what she wanted to do with the rest of it. “No,” she said. “We can wait.” Leila looked in the refrigerator. “I can do a warm salad first. There's enough bread if nobody puts it in the fridge again.” “That was once,” Ada said. “It was in there this morning.” Ada went to the front. Her father was sitting at a table with one leg stretched out. He had finished the coffee she brought him and was turning the cup in small increments, following the seam in the glaze. At the window Ruth sat with a coat over her lap, looking out toward the bus stop. She kept checking the delivery door. When Ada asked her why, she said Dev would come through it. Dev had washed dishes at Bell's for twelve years. For five of those years he had come in before the morning bus and waited outside in the dark. Later, when he learned Ada was riding her bike to work, he began to bring a thermos and pour a cup for her, whether he had seen her ride in or not. Ada had sent him a text that morning. He had answered it with a photo of his shoes. At seven twelve, a figure in a good blue coat went past the front window. Two minutes later there was a knock at the delivery door. Ruth made a sound of satisfaction. Ada went back to open it. Dev took off his cap and started to put it on the hook where it used to go. The hook had come down with the shelf. “Is there a different hook?” he asked. “Come in the front,” she said. He looked behind her, into the kitchen. “Through the front door,” she said. “I'll let you in.” He put his cap back on. She saw him walk along the front window again. This time he looked through it. By the time she reached the door he was standing with his hand raised, ready to knock on the glass. “I never knew you had a bell,” he said when she opened it. “You fitted the bell.” “I fitted it from inside. I've never heard it from out here.” He stepped back once so he could hear it again. When he went through the door the second time, Ada let it close by itself. VII. A Place at the End There were five chairs at table seven, but they had put out only four forks. Ada saw this before she sat down. Her hand was already on the back of the chair when she heard Leila behind her. “I know,” Leila said. “I've got it.” Ada sat. The chair was a little lower than the others. From here she could see a round patch on the ceiling where the steam had discolored the paint. At the counter, which she had been looking across for most of her adult life, there was a shelf underneath that she had forgotten existed. Dev put his cap on it. He pulled a napkin toward himself and tucked one end into the space between two boards in the table, where the napkin could not blow away. At some point he must have done it a great many times. Leila brought bread and a salad of warm beans. Ada's father thanked her. Then he began to stand up. “What are you doing?” Ada's mother asked. “She's forgotten the pepper.” “You can ask for pepper from where you are.” He sat down. He asked for pepper. Leila brought it with the fifth fork and a glass with ice in it. The ice was nearly all one piece. Ada took a sip and felt it touch her top lip. For a few minutes they talked about the swimming race. Ada's father said he had been able to see how fast the woman was going because the line on the bottom of the pool kept coming up in photographs he took through the water. Ada's mother said he could have seen how fast she was going by watching her swim. Ruth cut a piece of bread and listened with her eyes closed, as if she had a headache. When Dev asked how the soup had been that evening, Ada said she had tasted it before the last of the salt, and her father said, “You were right.” It was her mother who asked Ada where she was going to eat the following Saturday. Ada thought she was asking about a plan for the family. She looked around the table, wondering how many plates the kitchen at home held. “I meant you,” her mother said. Ada thought about the hot bread at the station. She thought about the old swimming pool, which was on the wrong side of town if you were coming to work and the right side if you weren't going anywhere afterward. “I don't know yet,” she said. Her father rubbed a thumb across the tabletop. “I told someone at the pool we might take the stall in the market.” Ada put down her glass. He had mentioned the stall before, almost in passing, the way he used to mention that they were out of milk. “You can take it if you want,” she said. “I'd have trouble doing the early shift.” “I know.” He waited. She had always filled this part of a conversation for him. She could feel several versions of the offer waiting to come out of her mouth. She took another piece of bread. After a while he said, “I don't think I'd like it on my own.” “I don't think you would either.” He nodded. He didn't promise not to ask again. She didn't make him promise. Leila came through with the chicken and put the dish in the middle of the table. It smelled of lemon peel and the edges of the pan. Ada lifted her own plate toward it and discovered that at this angle she was able to serve herself before anything got cold. VIII. Tomorrow Morning When it was time to close the door, they had all eaten. Leila was still in the kitchen. Ada started to gather the plates, then stopped and looked at the woman whose job it was to tell her what was going on in the kitchen. “Would it help if I took these through?” “It would help if you stacked them on the pass.” So Ada did. It was a small task and took exactly as long as it looked as though it should. She rinsed her glass. Her father put the lid on the soup pot and left it alone. Dev brought his cap down from the shelf, then lifted the tip jar with both hands, as if something alive might be in it. They divided the tips at the counter. The coin from under the bench rolled out last. Ada pushed it toward Leila, who pushed it into the little pocket on the front of her apron. On the way out, Ruth stopped at table seven and took a picture of the empty plates. This time there were five of them. She took another with Ada in it. Ada had not known what to do with her hands and was holding the chair by the back, caught halfway between pulling it out and putting it away. She asked Ruth to send her that one. The next morning Ilan was early. Ada found him at the bus stop with two paper bags. Teo was in the truck, asleep with his head tipped against the closed window. He had a piece of gold ribbon tied around his wrist. “Birthday go all right?” Ada asked. “I made him a cake,” Ilan said. “He said it was a little dry. That's how I knew he liked it. If he'd hated it he'd have told me it was nice.” The man with the keys turned up as Ada was finishing the roll Ilan had brought. They walked through the rooms. At the door to the kitchen she found herself telling Ilan about the corner of the pass. He got down on his knees and had a look. “There's a screw missing underneath,” he said. “I can put one in.” Ada had done thousands of things in that kitchen because there had been no time to fix the conditions that made them necessary. She had put thousands of trays on the safe end of the pass. She had never got down on her knees and looked for the screw. Outside, Teo woke up. He came in and put on his ridiculous gloves. He and his father lifted table seven through the front door, tipping it at the last moment so that the oval cleared the frame. For a second the pencil grooves turned toward Ada. They were still there, though she could barely see them in the daylight. “It fits the front window,” Ilan said when they'd set it down in the truck. “That's where I'm putting it when we open.” “The floor slopes near the glass,” Ada said. She thought about the felt pad. “You'll see.” Ilan waited while she handed the keys over. There was no reason for her to stand in the doorway after that, but she did, until Teo got out of the truck again and came back for the small chair. He reached past her and lifted it by the seat. Ada stepped to one side. From the pavement she could hear the bell she had never, in all those years, heard from outside. Across the road, the bus was coming. She didn't have to take that bus. She went over and stood at the stop to read where it was going.