“Well, this is sweet,” she said. She looked around the Clover, squinting through her glasses. “Whatever gave you the idea, Joe?”

“I was here last week,” he said. “I remembered how we used to come here on Saturdays, and thought it was my turn to treat you.”

“Yes, we did, didn’t we. But only when you were older. I liked to go to Higbee’s for the welsh rarebit, but you threw up there once from the smell and that was the end of that.”

“So we came here because it didn’t make me puke?”

“Yes, that’s about right.” She picked the cherry off her sundae. “You threw up a lot.”

“I did? Why?”

“Oh you had such a nervous stomach.” She set the cherry down on the placemat. “Just about anything besides white bread and Velveeta, and Katie bar the door. And Katie open the window, let me tell you.”

“Really. I don’t remember that.”

“You don’t? Well, it stopped around sixth grade. After that bully kid across the street moved away.” She turned around in her chair and looked back at the counter, where a thin kid in a white smock was drying glasses. He lifted his chin up: yes? Joe waved him off: no. “It’s the same, isn’t it?” she said. “That’s nice, when they don’t modernize the place just for the sake of it. Everyone’s doing it to look different nowadays but they just end up looking the same. Restaurants on the moon or something.”

They ate their ice cream in silence for a while.

“So,” she said, looking up over her glasses. “Any Valentine’s Day plans tonight?”

“Not at press time,” he said. He shrugged. His mother studied him for a few moments, then looked back at her ice cream.

“Do you ever hear from that –“

“No.”

“Good.” She nodded. “She was troubled. Didn’t she have an uncle who went mad? After the war?” Joe nodded. “Well, it’s hereditary, they’re finding out.”

“Yeah, Mom, I used to sit up nights thanking my stars she canned me, because there was a chance our kids could have gotten shell-shock ten years down the line.” He put down his spoon and shook a cigarette out of his pack.

“I’m just saying. Are you too busy to meet nice girls? You should come by to the church instead of sneaking in the house on Sundays.”

“I met one the other day.” She brightened, and he regretted it as soon as he said it. “And that’s it. I mean, I just met her. She sat next to me at the coffee shop in my building.”

“What was she like.”

“Classy.”

“Joe. People who are classy don’t use words like ‘classy.’” She took another spoonful of ice cream, and pointed it at him. “It’s low.”

“But it fits. You’d think the same thing. Okay, she had poise. Is that better?”

“It is. And nothing came of it?”

“No. In fact I came here last week, because I thought, well –“

“She might come here.” She looked around the room: the cracked ceiling, the empty counter, the bored jerk polishing glasses. “Because it’s classy?”

He grinned. “Because it’s noon and people gotta eat.”

“If she came in now would you get up and leave me here to go say hello?”

“This is our date, Mom. Come on.” She held his gaze. “Okay, yeah, sure.”

She patted his hand. “Good.”

When they finished she insisted on paying. She opened up her purse, fishing for change; Joe looked around the Clover, wondering why he ever thought she would have come here. No one came here, it seemed. But maybe that meant she’d be more likely to choose this place – no one to bother her, a high-backed booth where she could curl up and read Vogue. In his mind she was still wearing the green dress. Would I recognize her without it?

“Is a quarter enough for a tip? He hardly did anything. Didn’t even get a refill on my coffee,” his mother said.

“Quarter’s fine.”

“Good. Oh, say. This came for you at the house last Friday.” She took an envelope out her purse and laid it on the table.

“For me?”

“For you,” she said. “Who do you know in Salt Lake City?”