AIDS or cancer, in my book that's just flat wrong.
So I'll wave my sign around and make sure the Norma Kamali feminists and Volvo liberals can see that the word on it is MURDER.
They hate that word. They don't use it at their cocktail parties and fundraisers.
You folks need ketchup?"
"No," Ralph said. He could not take his eyes off her. A faint green glow had begun to spread around her-it almost seemed to come wisping up from her pores. The auras were coming back, cycling up to full brilliance.
"Did I grow a second head or something while I wasn't looking?"
the waitress asked. She popped her gum and switched it to the other side of her mouth.
"I was staring, wasn't I?" Ralph asked. He felt blood heating his cheeks. "Sorry."
The waitress shrugged her beefy shoulders, setting the upper part of her aura into lazy, fascinating motion. "I try not to get carried away with this stuff, you know? Most days I just do my job and keep my mouth shut. But I ain't no quitter, either. Do you know how long I've been marchin around in front of that brick slaughterin pen, on days hot enough to fry my butt and nights cold enough to freeze it off?"
Ralph and Lois shook their heads.
"Since 1984. Nine long years. You know what gets me the most about the choicers?"
"What?" Lois asked quietly.
"They're the same people who want to see guns outlawed so people won't shoot each other with them, the same ones who say the electric chair and the gas chamber are unconstitutional because they're cruel and unusual punishment. They say those things, then go out and support laws that allow doctors-doctors.-to stick vacUUM tubes into women's wombs and pull their unborn sons and daughters to pieces. That's what gets me the most."
The waitress said all this-it had the feel of a speech she had made many times before-without raising her voice or displaying the slightest outward sign of anger. Ralph only listened with half an ear; most of his attention was fixed on the pale-green aura which surrounded her. Except it wasn't all pale green. A yellowish-black blotch revolved slowly over her lower right side like a dirty wagon wheel.
Her liver, Ralph thought. Something wrong with her liver.
"You wouldn't really want anything to happen to Susan Day, would you?" Lois asked, looking at the waitress with troubled eyes.
"You seem like a very nice person, and I'm sure you wouldn't want that."
The waitress sighed through her nose, producing two jets of fine green mist. "I ain't as nice as I look, lion. If God did something to her, I'd be the first wavin my hands around in the air and sayin 'Thy will be done," believe me. But if you're talking about some nut, I guess that's different. Things like that drag us all down, put us on the same level as the people we're trying to stop. The nuts don't see it that way, though. They're the jokers in the deck."
"Yes," Ralph said, "Jokers in the deck is just what they are."
"I guess I really don't want anything bad to happen to that woman," the waitress said, "but something could. It really could.
And the way I look at it, if something does, she's got no one to blame but herself. She's running with the wolves... and women who run with wolves shouldn't go acting too surprised if they get bitten."
Ralph wasn't sure how much he would want to eat after that, but his appetite turned out to have survived the waitress's views on abortion and Susan Day quite nicely. The auras helped; food had never tasted this good to him, not even as a teenager, when he'd eaten five and even six meals a day, if he could get them.
Lois matched him bite for bite, at least for awhile. At last she pushed the remains of her home fries and her last two strips of bacon aside. Ralph plugged gamely on down the home stretch alone. He wrapped the last bite of toast around the last bit of sausage, pushed it into his mouth, swallowed, and sat back in his chair with a vast sigh.
"Your aura has gone two shades darker, Ralph. I don't know if that means you finally got enough to eat or that you're going to die of indigestion."
"Could be both," he said. "You see them again too, huh?"
She nodded.
"You know something?" he asked. "Of all the things in the world, the one I'd like most right now is