And even that I explained away, because you have to explain such things away to do this job; you cannot treat every strange customer as a threat or you would go mad.

So I brought them their wine and their steaks and their check, and I never once suspected that the odd couple in my section had come not to dine but to confirm, with their own eyes, that the waitress serving them was the woman a downtown law firm had spent six months and a small fortune trying to find.

When the plates were cleared, the man caught my eye and made the small universal gesture for the check, the little scribble in the air, and I nodded and went to ring it out.

The total came to just over four hundred dollars.