motion, but with all his energy in the movement, and turn anxiously to look for the waiter. “I think that woman’s choking,” said Jay flatly, pushing out his chair. “That’s the best excuse you can come up with? Do you even know CPR?” Kel—Daisy didn’t turn but just watched Jay, stunned. The woman’s wheeze seemed to gather force with each of Jay’s slow steps down the endless alleyway, apparently much more finite than he anticipated, crescendoing in a matter of seconds. And just as he arrived in front of her, the recollection washed over him that, no, he did not know how to perform CPR, or even the Heimlich for that matter. Jay stood there watching the old woman, felt the old man watching him. He shuffled left, then right before he noticed the waiter amble in from the kitchen. Jay felt small, sheepish as he waved over the server, watching the sleeve of his one-size-too-large pastel polo sway from his slender arm. “God, you really don’t know it.” She brushed by him, her voice echoed the violent clack of her flats on the scuffed walnut floor. Jay watched as Daisy wedged herself between the old woman and the next table. She flung her left arm over the woman’s shoulder, across the body, and anchored her hand beneath the woman’s right armpit. The heel of Daisy’s right palm beat two dull thumps between the old woman’s scapulae and an abrasive hacking flooded the dining room, like the death knell of a small furry mammal crushed beneath a Prius. A bronze wad of Vidalia onion, sweated to perfection in a twenty-quart stockpot that very morning, shot from the old woman’s throat, plunged, with a soft plunk, into a piping crock of French onion soup. The hearty, aromatic broth splashed onto Jay’s baby face. He felt his complexion turn the deep red of quinoa-crusted ahi.
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