Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина

A young girl with cropped hair and a pierced nose looked at me insolently as I marched up to the counter, then thrust her elbow in front of me, just missing my face.

“Waitcher turn, hе, mеm?re,” she said smartly, through a mouthful of gum. “Can’tcher see there’s people waiting?”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing, sweetheart?” I snapped. “I thought you were just looking for business.”

The girl gaped at me, and I elbowed past her without a second glance. Mirabelle Dartigen, whatever else she might have done, never raised her children to mince their words.

The counter was high, and I found myself looking up at a young man of about twenty-five, good-looking in a dirty-blond sharpish kind of way, hair past his collar and a single gold earring-a cross, I think-dangling. Eyes that might have done something for me forty years ago, but nowadays I’m too old and too particular. I think that old clock stopped ticking just about the same time men stopped wearing hats. Come to think of it, he looked a little familiar, but I wasn’t thinking about that then.

Of course, he already knew me.

“Good morning, Madame Simon,” he said in a polite, ironic voice. “What can I do for you? I’ve got a lovely burger amеricain if you’d care to try it.”

I was angry, but I tried not to show it. His smile showed that he was expecting trouble, and that he felt confident to withstand it. I gave him one of my sweetest.

“Not today, thank you,” I told him. “But I would be grateful if you’d consider turning your radio down.

My customers-”

“But of course.” His voice was smooth and cultured, his eyes gleaming porcelain blue. “I had no idea I was disturbing anyone.”

Beside me, the girl with the pierced nose made an incredulous sound. I heard her say to a companion, another girl in a halter and shorts so small that fleshy half-moons showed beneath the hem,

“Did you hear what she said to me? Did you hear?”

The young blond man smiled, and reluctantly I saw charm there, and intelligence, and something oh-so-familiar that needled and nibbled.

Leaning over to turn the music down. Gold chain around the neck. Sweat stains on a gray T-shirt. Hands too smooth for a cook, oh there was something wrong about him, about the whole thing, and for the first time I felt not anger but a kind of fear…

Solicitous: “Is that all right for you, Madame Simon?”

I nodded.

“I’d hate to be thought an intrusive neighbor.