They wanted to know if the seat across from you was taken, or they were someone you knew. He assumed ketchup. "Excuse me." The voice was soft, careful. The kind of voice that's been deliberately turned down several notches from its natural register.
Marcus looked up. The woman standing beside his booth was thin. Not the kind of thin that looks healthy, but the kind that looks recent, like weight that left in a hurry. She was wearing a dark green jacket that was at least a size two large, the collar turned up. Her hair was tucked under a plain wool cap, the kind you pick up at a gas station for $5.
Her jeans were clean but worn. Her shoes were waterlogged. She wasn't making eye contact. She looked by every visible measure like someone who hadn't eaten a full meal in a while. "I'm sorry to bother you," she said.
"I just saw you were maybe done eating and I was wondering if I could" She stopped, swallowed. "Could I eat your leftovers?" Marcus Carter froze. Not because the question surprised him. Not because he was afraid of her.
Not because he was disgusted or offended or even particularly uncomfortable. He froze because he recognized her. It didn't happen all at once. It happened the way recognition sometimes does, like a photograph developing in real time, the image swimming up slowly from nothing until suddenly it's there and you can't unsee it. Her face, the angle of her jaw, the way her eyes moved when she glanced up at him for just a half second before looking back down at the floor.
He'd stared at that face for the better part of three years. Not because he was obsessed with her. Because her photograph had been on every piece of official correspondence, every press release, every framed portrait hanging in the lobby of the building where he used to work. Her face had been on the website of Brooks Urban Living when he was still an employee. It had been on the cover of Atlanta Business Chronicle the month after he was fired alongside the headline "Evelyn Brooks, Building a Better City for Everyone."
Everyone except Marcus Carter, apparently. Because Evelyn Brooks, CEO of Brooks Urban Living, worth an estimated $4 billion at last public estimate, named one of the 50 most powerful women in American business, was standing next to his booth in a gas station, wool cap, asking if she could eat his leftover meatloaf. His first instinct was anger, not the hot explosive kind, the cold kind, the kind that lives in the back of your chest and never fully goes out, the kind you learn to manage like a pilot light, keeping it just low enough that it doesn't burn the house down, but never letting it die because you need it. You need it to remember. His second instinct surprised him.
He picked up the to-go box he'd just had the server bring him, opened it, slid the cornbread inside next to the remaining meatloaf, closed it carefully, set it on the edge of the table, and said, "Sit down." She blinked. "You don't have to." "I know I don't have to," Marcus said. His voice was even, controlled.
"Sit." She sat. He flagged down the server. "Can I get another meatloaf special, full plate, and a sweet tea?" The server, young, maybe 19, not particularly interested in the dynamics of who was sitting with whom, wrote it down and walked away.
Evelyn Brooks stared at him across the table. "You don't have to do that," she said again. "You said that already," Marcus replied. He folded his hands on the table in front of him. "You're hungry.