The Methuselah Gene by Jonathan Lowe

top of it.   Since I was early and therefore the only customer, I was almost immediately approached by a middle-aged waitress wearing the name plate EDIE.   She looked like I imagined an Edie might look, too: shoulder length curly red hair, and freckles, possessing a kind face with lots of laugh lines radiating from her startling green eyes.
    â€œHowdy, stranger,” Edie greeted me, smiling to keep those lines flexed and healthy.   “Gonna do some bird watching, are ya ?”
    â€œYeah,” I joked.   “Ever seen a yellow-bellied sapsucker around these parts?”   I smiled back, but saw her laugh lines retreat a bit, while her smile froze and then frayed at the edges.   Perhaps she thought I was making fun of her, which was not my intention.   After taking a seat at one of half a dozen tables in the small room, I opened the menu she handed me.   It was handwritten on notebook paper taped in a plastic holder.   “I’ll have a western omelet and coffee, please,” I decided.
    Edie frowned at me.   “That’s breakfast, honey,” she scolded. “Try the other side?”
    She hooked an index finger over the right side of the menu I held.   I scanned the ‘supper’ selections, then looked up into Edie’s inquisitive green eyes.   She seemed about to ask me where I was from when I said, “How about the chicken fried steak, with biscuits and gravy.”
    She scribbled my order on her pad, nodding.   “And to drink?”
    â€œIced tea, sweetened.”   I grinned and handed the menu back to her.
    â€œComes unsweetened,” she informed me, “but here’s sugar, sugar.”   She touched the little chrome cage in front of me, which also held salt, pepper, Tabasco, and napkins.
    â€œMake that Coke, then,” I told her, visualizing my attempt to make the sugar mix into a tall glass crammed with ice cubes.
    â€œBottle or can?”
    â€œYou don’t carry the syrup for fountain drinks?”   I waved one hand.   “Never mind.   Sorry.   Bottle.”
    Edie made the note.   I glanced at her name tag again, and almost asked her right then if she knew Walter Mills.   But it occurred to me that I should probably be more careful than I’d been with Wally.   A little less obvious, at least.   If my lies got too tangled and out of hand, I might be introduced to a hanging judge before I unraveled the Mills mystery and thereby restored my shaky reputation.   Instead, I substituted, “So you get a lot of birders around here, do you, Edie?”
    Edie stared at my camera and binocular cases first.   “We get a few,” she admitted.   She met my eyes, doubt forming in her own.   “You one of ‘em, are you?”
    Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we . . .
    â€œNo,” I confessed, then added impulsively, “but my friend Walter Mills is.   This is his stuff.   He left it with me by mistake when he visited me in Richmond.   I’m here to return it to him, and to see where he’s moved, now.”
    Edie’s expression never changed.   The name Walter Mills hadn’t registered with her.   After five long seconds she said, “What does your friend look like?”
    I dodged the question with a sneeze.   “You see a lot of newcomers here, do you?”   I’d added the ‘do you’ at the last moment, trying to mimic her without being noticed.
    â€œNot really.”   She shrugged.   “Let me give your order to Paul, sweetie.”   She turned from me, and disappeared through a squeaky swinging door.
    I loved it.   She’d called me sweetie and honey and sugar, already.   And that, after we both might have appeared to be condescending.   It beat the sour glares or the robotic have-a-nice-days one got in cafes around DC, unless your first name was