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raised a hand to fluff my hair.
    Walter waited. Betty Jane giggled. “Oh, my, are you going to eat, or are you here just to stare at li’l ol’ me?” she said.
    “Is she flirting with that guy?” I asked. My confusion combined with the awareness that I was the only one who seemed to be missing something here rushed at me.
    Ruffles narrowed her eyes.“No. But she’s up to something. I may need to intervene.”
    “Hush,” said Betty Jane. She pressed my hand against my lips. “We will have none of that.” Walter smiled as if the comment
were addressed to him, and not me and the Committee that he couldn’t see. “How about you sit down right here?” My hand waved at a just vacated table.
    Walter sat down. Betty Jane stood with poised pen and order pad at the ready. “I need a menu,” he said.
    “Of course you do.” She sashayed my body to the counter, retrieved the menu, and sauntered back. With my short legs and wide hips, I never had the confidence to blatantly do the cat-walk like that for any man. Somehow, when Betty Jane was in control, I had a model’s body—thin and very tall.We all watched, mesmerized.
    Betty Jane held out the menu for him to take. “Why, here you go.”
    Walter’s gaze burned so intently it seared me where I sat on the Committee’s couch inside my head.
    Betty Jane smiled coquettishly.
    “That’s enough!” said Ruffles. Sarge stood up.“You step back, or I’ll have Sarge make you.”
    Betty Jane could read Sarge’s scar thermometer. She didn’t hesitate to cede control.
    Walter ordered eggs, toast, and coffee from me.A few minutes later, I felt his eyes on my back as I ceded control to Ruffles, whose favorite customer had just walked in the door. Just as with Betty Jane, my body felt different. Uncomfortably different, like a severe bloat that accompanies a late period. And I knew from the way Walter was watching me, because I was grew up with a man just like him, that he was a man who hated an ounce of fat on a woman. Good thing Ruffles didn’t care about her bulk. In fact, she celebrated it.
    I turned my attention to the other hungry patrons in my area and forgot about Walter. After about twenty minutes, Robbie
entered with another tall, casually dressed man.They sat down at Walter’s table. I saw them speaking; then Walter pointed at me. Robbie nodded in agreement.
    “Miss?” a voice behind me said. I turned around.The woman speaking pointed at the food in front of her. “I didn’t want these as an appetizer. He doesn’t have his meal.” Her finger now aimed at her thin companion sitting across from her. “We wanted our food together.”
    I split my gaze between her table and the table one over from it, where Walter and Robbie conferred while the companion listened. If I read their faces right, Robbie was selling something Walter wasn’t too keen on buying. I couldn’t read the other guy.
    Robbie noticed me surveilling them. He made a gesture I didn’t know how to interpret.
    “Well?” barked the woman. I shook off my confusion. “Are you going to stand there staring into space or are you going to do something?”
    “Oh—”
    Betty Jane pulled. As I landed on the Committee’s floor, she fixed my eyes on Walter and his companion and fluttered my fingers at Robbie, and then she turned to the unhappy woman. “Miss,” Betty Jane purred, “I am terribly sorry for the mix-up. I can take these and bring out a new batch with your order.” My hand reached for the plate.The woman grabbed my wrist. “I am going to take these right back to the kitchen and have them make three orders. No charge.”
    “Could be Violet,” said Walter. “I don’t know. What do you think?” he asked the guy sitting between him and Robbie.
    “Or, if y’all like,” said Betty Jane,“I can leave these as a li’l ol’ snack for you to share. I’ll bring the other two orders with his meal. Sound nice?”The woman nodded and let go of my wrist.

    The guy sitting between