Jorge was in the middle of flipping seven hamburger patties when he heard a loud, familiar clicking sound made by high heels on the diner tiles.

The first thing that came to Jorge's mind was, Shit.

The second thing that came to his mind was that the rear exit wasn't close enough for him to reach without knocking over Emmanuel and his eggs, and nobody separated Emmanuel from his eggs.

With a sigh, Jorge raised his eyes and met Shelley's expectant expression.

"Ready for tonight?" she asked. Her smile brought forth faint, wiry lines at the edges of her mouth. Jorge considered pretending he'd forgotten and making up an excuse that he already had other plans, but Shelley pointed at the comer booth and said, "You finish your shift. I'll wait over there."

She did just that, leaving an echo of clicking shoes behind her. She was still in her check-out clerk's uniform, meaning she'd just gotten off work. It showed in the tired line of her spine, the way her shoulders slouched slightly as she rested her eyes on the heel of her hands, elbows on the tabletop.

" 'Ey," said Emmanuel in Spanish, above the sizzle of his eggs. He nudged up his cap before gesturing in Shelley's direction with the same knuckle. "Be nice to her. She's a nice woman. I hear you try anything. . . ." He raised the back of his hand, the gesture completing his sentence.

Jorge raised his fist in silent retort. He wasn't a little boy anymore. Still, he ended up walking to her booth half an hour later, one hand clutching his jacket. He would've put it on to hide the stains on his T-shirt but it was too hot for that. His armpits were sweaty and he was sure they weren't the only parts of him smelling like beef.

By the smile Shelley gave him, though, you'd think she never even noticed.

"We don't have to do this," he started, scratching the back of his neck.

"Don't be silly," she replied primly, standing and retrieving her purse. He had to back away in order to allow her out of the booth. "We made a pact. Where do you want to do it? Here?"

"No!" He flushed at the automatic answer. "Um, no, I mean, really, we don't have to do this."

Shelley tugged at the coin that had been resting beneath her uniform, hanging, around her neck on a cheap silvercolored chain. "This says we does." She paused and glanced down at its inscription, then grinned, and for a minute she looked young again. "Ninety-nine days. How about that?"

"Congratulations, Shelley," Jorge said, and he meant it sincerely. "I'm proud of you."

"Why don't we go to my place?" On seeing his expression, she added, "Nobody's there but Ronnie. Unless you have somewhere else you prefer?"

He ended up shuffling alongside her to her house. The ragged hems of his jeans made thwup-thwup noises on the sidewalk, creating a strange kind of melody combined with her clicking shoes. As they got closer to her home, a few of her neighbors who were out for a nighttime stroll cast Jorge wary looks, before clutching their belongings closer to them and hurrying off. Shelley didn't falter in wishing them a good evening. Jorge resisted an urge to fake a lunge at them and bare his teeth, show them just how dangerous a real Latino could be.

Ronnie was in the kitchen doodling with crayons and milk by his side. Jorge had only met Ronnie once, six months ago when he'd brought Shelley home during one of her drunken spells and blasted the shower right on her head. Ronnie had been scared and doing his best to stifle his sobs. Whether the boy had been afraid of Shelley, Jorge, or a combination of both, Jorge couldn't say.

The six-year-old glanced up and stared at Jorge wide-eyed, and for a moment Jorge thought the tyke would start screaming bloody murder.

"Hi, honey," said Shelley before laying a wet one on Ronnie's cheek. "This is Jorge. Remember him?"

Ronnie made a big show of grimacing and wiping his mother's lipstick from his face, then sneaked a couple more glances at the newcomer.

Shelley thumped her purse on the table and started wrenching off her shoes. "Have a seat," she told Jorge. "Want something to drink? Juice, milk, water?" She poured and placed a glass of milk on the table in front of Jorge before he could answer. "Sit. I'll be with you in a minute."

He exchanged wary looks with Ronnie as he waited. Ronnie appeared to be drawing a purple sabre-toothed tiger, but instantly covered his paper with his free hand when he caught Jorge peering at it.

A pad of foolscap paper slid between Jorge and his glass of milk, followed by a Bic pen and a yellow children's book. Shelley sat down next to him, her red hair out of its rubberband and curling its way to oblivion. She looked tired but forced on a smile anyway.

Jorge dragged his chair backwards to get up. "Look, this was a bad idea--"

She grabbed his wrist to pull him down. She didn't succeed, considering he had youth in addition to strength on his side, but she had quite a grip. "We made a pact, Jorge."

He squirmed. "Shell, mi amiga. I helped you because. . ." he flicked his eyes at Ronnie, wondering if he should carry this conversation elsewhere, "you know, it was the thing to do. Anyone would've done the same."

She looked at him with eyes older than her thirtysomething years. "But they didn't, did they?"

He was quiet, remembering the last time he'd seen her look that way. They'd been huddled in her bathtub, soaking wet with their clothes still on, she with her back against his chest. His arms had remained wrapped around her stomach even though she wasn't struggling and screaming anymore. Instead, she was shaking from cold and lack of drink, and he was shivering too, and her tears mingled with Ronnie's stifled sobs in the next room.

"No more," she kept whispering, "no more." And this time, Jorge knew she really meant it. And he knew she wasn't just whispering, she was begging.

So he helped her through the night, even though he had a 6 a.m. shift just three hours away, telling her anything -- stupid things -- to take her mind off the craving pain. That his sister had died of pneumonia when he was three. That the diner made their mashed potatoes with real potatoes. She even managed a weak laugh when he told her that big and burly Emmanuel was afraid of cats. It was a lie, of course. Emmanuel was afraid of spiders.

He didn't tell her about the number of times Emmanuel had told him to stop serving Shelley whenever she stumbled into the diner late at night, bruised and drunk and lonely. Instead, when she started shaking so bad he thought she'd go into convulsions, he told her he'd never made it to second grade. That he had to help Papa support the family, that teachers didn't miss him because he was from the barrio, and he wasn't the only one who'd dropped out of school because of family. He'd memorized how to write his name but that was all, the letters meant nothing to him, and that Emmanuel had filled his job application for him.

In the wet enclosure of tiles and dripping faucets, they made a promise. He'd help her climb out of this deep hole, and she'd teach him to read.

He now looked down at her, where she still sat, Ronnie scribbling intently in his comer, and said quietly, "I would've done anything just to not see you like that again." That wretched, that desperate, with your son crying in the next room and both of you living in fear of yourself.

"You went to my first two months' AA meetings with me," Shelley said. "You and Ronnie were the reasons I kept going. You have no idea how close I came to quitting and walking out of that room."

"I wouldn't have let you walked out."

"I know." She paused. "I never thanked you. For everything."

"Sure you did. When you were, you know," he gestured and fumbled with words, "at the john."

Shelley chuckled. "I was thanking you for holding my hair back while I threw up. Not for everything."

He managed to smile himself. "I thought holding your hair back did include everything."

She smiled, her expression its most serene since Jorge had known her. Then again, it might've been because she was ready to collapse into bed and start snoring.

"You're right. It does." She reached for his wrist and he let her. "Now come on. You don't want to spend the rest of your life having other people tell you what to do, do you? You want to grab that piece of notepaper and find out for yourself what the guy in Booth No. 5 wants in his burger."

Jorge shrugged but was still smiling. "Martha has bad handwriting anyway."

"How would you know?"

He allowed her to pull him back to his chair and place the Bic pen in his hand. She flipped open the children's book, where four lines of big letters stood above a picture of an elephant, and began showing him the words.