He looked at the check.
Then he looked at my boots.
Then he looked at George’s hat. At the dirt on my knees. At my hands on the counter, the knuckles big and knotted from arthritis, the fingernails black from the tomato bed.
I watched him look at all of it.
Then he leaned toward the glass and talked very loud and very slow.
“MA’AM. DO YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT WITH US?”
He said it like I was a foreigner. Or a child. Or someone who’d wandered in off the highway by mistake.
“I do,” I said.
“I’LL NEED TO SEE SOME IDENTIFICATION.”
I’m seventy-nine.
My hearing is better than his manners.
I didn’t say that. I just reached into the front pocket of my work shirt, where I keep my license in a little plastic sleeve, and I handed it to him under the glass.
