“Like hell” and “You don’t know your butt-hole from the road to China.” Suddenly she stands up and starts hitting him on the side of the head with her purse. Her stiff hair wags excitedly. The man bends his head down and accepts the blows as if he has known all this time they were coming, like pie for dessert. Taylor is relieved that Turtle has her back to this event.

“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t said you’d drop everything and come,” she tells Alice. “I swear I was at the end of my tree.”

“Well, it was good timing,” Alice says. “I’d run out of marriage and I needed a project. Have you heard any more about,” she moves her eyes slowly toward Turtle and back.

“It’s okay to talk about it, Mama. Turtle knows. I called Jax last night and he said there was nothing new.”

They both look at Turtle, who has put the menu very close to her face and is quietly reciting the names of different foods.

The woman who was hitting her husband sits down for a breather. She drags heavily on her cigarette, as if her only possible oxygen must come through that less than ideal source.

“This is the twilight zone of humanity,” Taylor announces.

“That’s what Jax would say right now: ‘We have arrived at the twilight zone of humanity. Let us bow our heads in a moment of silent prayer.’ ”

“I believe he’s making you turn cynical,” Alice says. She adds, “That waitress over there has been staring at us like a stuck pig.”

“I know. I hope she’s getting her eyes full.”

Turtle twists in her seat to look at the staring waitress.

“How’s that Jax treating you, anyway?” Alice asks.

“Oh, he treats me good. Too good. I don’t deserve him.”

“You hush. You know better than that.”

Taylor smiles. With her left hand, the one that isn’t holding Alice’s, she puts down the menu and rubs the bone behind her left ear. “Yeah, I know better.”

“I picture him as looking exactly like that.” Alice points to the photo of Rhett Butler.

Taylor laughs out loud. “Oh, that’s Jax to perfection. If you leave out the hair, the face, the body and the mustache.”

“Well, that’s how he talks, anyway. Like a southern gentleman. Except for some of the wild things he comes up with.

He’s real entertaining over the phone.”

“I’m glad you think so. He keeps asking me if I’m truly in love with our garbage man. He’s a lot more insecure than Rhett Butler.”

“If you’re having trouble sticking with him, that’s my fault.

I didn’t bring you up with men as a consideration. I think single runs in our family.”

“It’s nothing you did wrong, Mama, I never missed having a dad. Plus I don’t think your theory holds water. My friend Lou Ann grew up without her dad, and she feels like if she doesn’t have a man in the house she’s not worth taking up shelf space.”

“Well, you’re solid gold, honey, don’t let that slip your mind. You deserve the King of France.”

“Maybe that’s my problem then. Jax is definitely not the King of France.”

The staring waitress walks toward them. When she gets to the table she stands staring while three glasses of ice water sweat it out in her hands. She is tanned and blonde, her hair in a tight ponytail, almost aggressively pretty; the jawbones and cheekbones push up hard under her skin as if something in her might burst. Finally she says, “Oprah Winfrey, right?”

Alice makes a surprised smile with raised eyebrows and her tongue against her lips. Taylor waits a second before saying, “Is that the whole question?”

“I saw you on Oprah Winfrey, right? The show where the Barbie Dream Convertible was used to save a young girl’s life? I have it on tape. It’s you, right?”

“Kind of.”

She thunks down the glasses of water with conviction. “I knew it! When you came in I saw you sit down over here in my station and I’m like, ‘It’s them, it’s them!’ and the other girls go, ‘You’re nuts,’ but it is. I knew it was.”

She extracts a pencil and pad from the pocket of her low-cut uniform, a short, red showboat outfit with frills. She stands gazing at them some more. Up close, Taylor decides, she looks slightly apart from the mainstream of the human race; she has hair of an unnatural color, pure yellow, and little curled bangs, and blue eye makeup that exceeds the size of her actual eyes. Her figure is the kind you notice even if you’re not all that interested in women’s great figures.