The woman at the next table holds up a checkbook filled in with a series of actions she will take if anyone tries to humiliate her in public. I sound out the whole thing slowly then make eye contact; she smiles. When my family starts chatting with her husband, we learn that they have been contracted to remove the floors of our house to make for a single vaulted space from the basement to the attic. There is some disagreement about when this will happen. What is the what? my mother asks. This isn't the Washington Post, says my brother. So we walk out for some faster food.