Publisher's blurb: The Receivers sit on faux-cushioned chairs within Mama Jennifer’s, digesting their plates of sweet and sour and General Tso’s chicken, and finally crack into the individually wrapped cookies that sat on the receipt which reads ‘on the house’ with a smiley face doodled next to it. A silent TV flashes on one wall across from an aquarium, its two aquatic inhabitants perpetually disturbed by the bubbling volcano that aerates the tank. The personalized fortunes stored inside the cookies are the real dish, reading “Receiver, handle of V3l0cir4pture, to be executed in Camp Freedom machine shop. Rescue imminently.” That the Receivers had been given their ‘reservation’ here at the last minute means the execution is soon. Very soon. Before they can get up and leave, the bell at the door jingles as four men enter. Half-grubby, too-heavy jackets have become common with the waning economy, of which this quartet are clearly a victim of, but the way each keeps to the weight in their pockets speaks of guns, too. The namesake Mrs. Jennifer at the register doesn’t break her happy smile, but the atmosphere of the restaurant grows tense as one of the men, hair shaved down to his scalp, begins to accost her, hurling accusations of sedition and Communist-born treachery that Mrs. Jennifer tries to defend against in unaccented American English.