Someone turned the music up.
The grill lid slammed shut.
My mother began talking loudly about how sensitive people had become, as though humiliating a child was simply another family joke that I had failed to understand.
We walked three blocks before finding a little diner glowing beneath a red neon sign.
Dany climbed into a booth and slid across the cracked vinyl seat.
A waitress with tired eyes and a coffee stain near the pocket of her apron handed him a children’s menu and asked what he wanted.
“Fries,” he said.
“A whole basket?” she asked.
He looked at me before answering.
I nodded.
“A whole basket,” he said.
The waitress smiled and wrote it down as if his request mattered.
When the fries arrived, they were hot enough to send up little curls of steam.
Dany picked up the first one, studied it, and then held it toward me.
