I put a glass of water in front of him and a menu, and he looked at the menu for a long time. Not reading it, I thought. Studying it. The way my father used to study the racing form at the Waterford Park betting window when he had exactly two dollars and no intention of losing them.
"You need a minute?" I said.
He looked up at me. Gray eyes, or green, the kind that change with what you're wearing. He looked at my face for long enough that I almost reached up to see if I had ketchup on it. Then he leaned forward over the counter, and I leaned in too, because that is what you do when a child leans toward you, and he said, so quietly that Stosh's brick on the griddle almost covered it:
"I don't have any money."
He said it like it was a confession, like he'd been rehearsing it on the bus and it had come out wrong anyway. His face had gone red from the neck up. He did not ask for anything. That was the thing I remember most. He did not say, can I have something anyway, or I'm hungry, or anything at all after it. He just said the fact and then sat there with it, his hands flat on the counter on either side of the water glass, and waited to see what I would do.
I have been a waitress since I was seventeen years old. I have been stiffed and cried on and tipped a single Canadian dime folded inside a napkin on which a man in a Lincoln had written "Smile more." I have had hungry kids come in and kids come in running a game, and you learn to tell the difference, or you think you do. This boy's hands were clean. He had washed them somewhere on the way, maybe in the gas station bathroom at the corner, and that undid me a little. You don't wash your hands to run a game.
"Well," I said, at normal volume, picking up the menu, "that's a relief, because Stosh just burned a grilled cheese for a guy who walked out, and I was going to have to throw it away. You like grilled cheese?"
He looked at me. He looked at Stosh, who had heard every word, the way Stosh always heard every word, and who without turning around said, "Burnt it something terrible," and pulled two slices of white bread out of the bag and slapped them on the flattop.
"It's not burnt yet," the boy said.
"He's very slow," I said. "He's going to burn it in a minute. Tomato soup comes with it. Milk or pop?"
"Milk," he said, and then, because somebody had raised him, "please."