An imagined continuation of the restaurant scene.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
The woman in burgundy pointed at the waiter, then set her tumbler on his silver tray. He steadied the glass and took a step back.
“I wasn’t finished,” she said. “Are you going to stand there and pretend you didn’t hear me?”
The woman in black stepped beside him. “Ma’am, he heard you. The whole table heard you.”
The man in the navy suit lowered his wineglass. He had seen the waiter try to speak twice already.
“Hold on,” he said. “What were you going to say?”
The waiter set his tray down and looked at the woman in burgundy.
“Before I go, there’s something you should know.”
The guest she had asked him to move
“The woman you asked us to move from this table is sitting right behind you,” the waiter said. “She was invited to sit with you.”
The woman in burgundy turned. A guest in a black floral dress looked back at her, her hands folded in her lap.
She remembered seeing that dress when she arrived. The woman had been sitting in the chair beside her place setting. Convinced the seat was reserved for someone important, she had called the waiter over and asked him to find the woman another table.
He had started to explain. She had cut him off.
“Who invited her?” she asked.
“I did,” said the man in navy. “You asked to meet the person who kept the neighborhood kitchen open last winter. That’s her.”
Earlier over dinner, he had told them what happened when the kitchen’s heating failed. The woman in the floral dress had found space at a nearby church and spent three weeks organizing meals around two borrowed ovens. Families kept coming. The volunteers kept cooking.
The woman in burgundy had put down her fork when she heard that story.
“I’d love to meet her,” she had said.
From the next table, the woman in the floral dress had heard every word.
The empty chair
The woman in burgundy looked at the seat beside her. It had stayed empty through dinner.
“I should have let you finish,” she told the waiter.
He reached for his tray. Before he could lift it, she spoke again.
“And I’m sorry I spoke to you like that.”
He nodded. The woman in black stepped aside to let him pass.
Then the guest in burgundy stood and pulled out the chair herself.
“Would you sit with us?”
“For a few minutes,” the woman in the floral dress said. “I have to be at the kitchen early tomorrow.”
When the waiter returned with a fresh glass of water, she was explaining how the volunteers had staggered dinner service so every family could take home a hot meal.
The woman in burgundy waited until she finished.
“What time should I show up to help?”