“Since 1984. Nine long years. You know what gets me the most about the choicers?”

“What?” Lois asked quietly.

“They’re the same people who want to see guns outlawed so people won’t shoot each other with them, the same ones who say the electric chair and the gas chamber are unconstitutional because they’re cruel and unusual punishment. They say those things, then go out and support laws that allow doctors-doctors.-to stick vacUUM tubes into women’s wombs and pull their unborn sons and daughters to pieces. That’s what gets me the most.”

The waitress said all this-it had the feel of a speech she had made many times before-without raising her voice or displaying the slightest outward sign of anger. Ralph only listened with half an ear; most of his attention was fixed on the pale-green aura which surrounded her. Except it wasn’t all pale green. A yellowish-black blotch revolved slowly over her lower right side like a dirty wagon wheel.

Her liver, Ralph thought. Something wrong with her liver.

“You wouldn’t really want anything to happen to Susan Day, would you?” Lois asked, looking at the waitress with troubled eyes.

“You seem like a very nice person, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.”

The waitress sighed through her nose, producing two jets of fine green mist. “I ain’t as nice as I look, lion. If God did something to her, I’d be the first wavin my hands around in the air and sayin ’Thy will be done,” believe me. But if you’re talking about some nut, I guess that’s different. Things like that drag us all down, put us on the same level as the people we’re trying to stop. The nuts don’t see it that way, though. They’re the jokers in the deck.”

“Yes,” Ralph said, “Jokers in the deck is just what they are.”

“I guess I really don’t want anything bad to happen to that woman,” the waitress said, “but something could. It really could.

And the way I look at it, if something does, she’s got no one to blame but herself. She’s running with the wolves… and women who run with wolves shouldn’t go acting too surprised if they get bitten.”

Ralph wasn’t sure how much he would want to eat after that, but his appetite turned out to have survived the waitress’s views on abortion and Susan Day quite nicely. The auras helped; food had never tasted this good to him, not even as a teenager, when he’d eaten five and even six meals a day, if he could get them.

Lois matched him bite for bite, at least for awhile. At last she pushed the remains of her home fries and her last two strips of bacon aside. Ralph plugged gamely on down the home stretch alone. He wrapped the last bite of toast around the last bit of sausage, pushed it into his mouth, swallowed, and sat back in his chair with a vast sigh.

“Your aura has gone two shades darker, Ralph. I don’t know if that means you finally got enough to eat or that you’re going to die of indigestion.”

“Could be both,” he said. “You see them again too, huh?”

She nodded.

“You know something?” he asked. “Of all the things in the world, the one I’d like most right now is a nap.” Yes indeed. Now that he was warm and fed, the last four months of largely sleepless nights seemed to have fallen on him like a bag filled with sashweights. His eyelids felt as if they had been dipped in cement.

“I think that would be a bad idea right now,” Lois said, sounding alarmed. “A very bad idea.”

“I suppose so,” Ralph agreed.

Lois started to raise her hand for the check, then lowered it again.

“What about calling your policeman friend?

Leydecker, isn’t that his name? Could he help us? Would he?”

Ralph considered this as carefully as his muzzy head would allow then reluctantly shook his head. “I don’t quite dare try it.

What could we tell him that wouldn’t get us committed? And that’s only part of the problem. If he did get involved… but in the wrong way… he might make things worse instead of better.”

“Okay.” Lois waved to the waitress. “We’re going to ride outing to stop at there with all the windows open, and we’re go’ the Dunkin’ Donuts out in the Old Cape for giant economy-sized coffees. My treat.”

Ralph smiled. It felt large and dopey and disconnected on his face-almost a drunken smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

When the waitress came over and slid their check facedown in front of him, Ralph noticed that the button reading LIFE IS NOT A CHOICE was no longer pinned to the frill of her apron, “Listen,” she said with an earnestness Ralph found almost painfully touching, “I’m sorry if I offended you folks. You came in for breakfast, not a lecture.”

“You didn’t offend us,” Ralph said. He glanced across the table at Lois, who nodded agreement.

The waitress smiled briefly. “Thanks for saying so, but I still kinda zoomed on you. Any other day I wouldn’ta, but we’re having OLir own rally this afternoon at four, and I’m introducing Mr. Dalton.

They told me I could have three minutes, and I guess that’s about what I gave you.”

“That’s all right,” Lois said, and patted her hand. “Really.”

The waitress’s smile was warmer and more genuine this time, but as she started to turn away, Ralph saw Lois’s pleasant expression falter.

She was looking at the yellow-black blob floating just above the waitress’s right hip.

Ralph pulled out the pen he kept clipped to his breast pocket, turned over his paper placemat, and printed quickly on the back.

When he was done, he took out his wallet and placed a five-dollar bill carefully below what he had written. When the waitress reached for the tip, she would hardly be able to avoid seeing the message.

He picked up the check and flapped it at Lois. “Our first real date and I guess it’ll have to be dutch,” he said. “I’m three bucks short if I leave her the five. Please tell me you’re not broke.”

“Who, the poker queen of Ludlow Grange? Don’t be seely, dollink.”

She handed him a helter-skelter fistful of bills from her purse.

While he sorted through them for what he needed, she read what he had written on the placemat: Madam: You are suffering from reduced liver function and should see your doctor immediately. And I strongly advise you to stay away from the Civic Center tonight.

“Pretty stupid, I know,” Ralph said.

She kissed the tip of his nose. “Trying to help other people is never stupid.”

“Thanks. She won’t believe it, though. She’ll think we were pissed off about her button and her little speech in spite of what we said.

That what I wrote is just our weird way of trying to get our own back on her.”

“Maybe there’s a way to convince her otherwise.”

Lois fixed the waitress-who was standing hipshot by the kitchen pass-through and talking to the short-order cook while she drank a cup of coffee-with a look of dark concentration. As she did, Ralph saw Lois’s normal blue-gray aura deepen in color and draw inward, becoming a kind of body-hugging capsule.

He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on… but he could feel it.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention; his forearms broken out in gooseflesh. She’s coming up, he thought, flipping the switches turning on all the turbines, and doing it on behalf of a woman she never saw before and she’ll probably never see again.

After a moment the waitress felt it, too. She turned to look at them as if she had heard her name called. Lois smiled casually and twiddled her fingers in a small wave, but when she spoke to Ralph, her voice was trembling with effort. “I’ve almost… almost got it.”

“Almost got what?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is I need. It’ll come in a second.

Her name is Zoe, with two dots over the e. Go pay the check.

Distract her. Try to keep her from looking at me. It makes it harder.”

He did as she asked and was fairly successful in spite of the way Zoe kept trying to look over his shoulder at Lois. The first time she attempted to ring the check into the register, Zoe came up with a total of $234.20. She cleared the numbers with an impatient poke of her finger, and when she looked up at Ralph, her face was pale and her eyes were upset.