Someone moved the sugar container, and the propped booklet fell flat.
Therese looked at the pair of hands across from her, a woman’s plump, aging hands, stirring her coffee, breaking a roll now with a trembling eagerness, daubing half of the roll greedily into the brown gravy of the plate that was identical with Therese’s. The hands were chapped, there was dirt in the parallel creases of the knuckles, but the right hand bore a conspicuous silver filigree ring set with a clear green stone, the left a gold wedding ring, and there were traces of red polish in the corners of the nails. Therese watched the hand carry a forkful of peas upward, and she did not have to look at the face to know what it would be like.
It would be like all the fifty-year-old faces of women who worked at Frankenberg’s, stricken with an ever-lasting exhaustion and terror, the eyes distorted behind glasses that enlarged or made smaller, the cheeks splotched with rouge that did not brighten the grayness underneath.
Therese could not look.
“You’re a new girl, aren’t you?” The voice was shrill and clear in the din, almost a sweet voice.
“Yes,” Therese said, and looked up. She remembered the face. It was the face whose exhaustion had made her see all the other faces. It was the woman Therese had seen creeping down the marble stairs from the mezzanine at about six thirty one evening when the store was empty, sliding her hands down the broad marble banister to take some of the weight from her bunioned feet. Therese had thought: she is not ill, she is not a beggar, she simply works here.
“Are you getting along all right?”
And here was the woman smiling at her, with the same terrible creases under her eyes and around her mouth. Her eyes were actually alive now, and rather affectionate.
“Are you getting along all right?” the woman repeated, for there was a great clatter of voices and dishes all around them. Therese moistened her lips. “Yes, thank you.”