Chapter Ten
Of course, there was a bit of a learning curve.
“What the hell is this?” Clark demanded, soon after I put in that first order. “A novel?”
I felt my face flush. I’d written each item the customer asked for, with an explanation of the additions or subtractions. I’d thought it was very specific, as well as—
“Hello? Anyone? Who took this to-go breakfast?”
“It was me,” I told Clark.
He looked up. “You?”
“Great.” Lana was passing with a full tray of dirty dishes. “Now can you bus?”
“Bus?” I repeated.
Kasey, suddenly at my elbow, handed me a black plastic tub. “Dirty tables. Everything in here, then over to the trash cans. Scrape the plates and throw out any paper products.”
“But not the check,” Lana said as she blurred by again.
“Not the check,” Kasey repeated. She tucked a spray bottle and rag in my back pocket. “Go.”
I went. Three of the four booths were empty except for piles of dishes. I could feel eyes on my back as I moved to the first and started cleaning.
One plate was dripping jelly. Another held a wad of napkins soaked in orange juice. Sticky water glasses, pieces of egg and toast. Well, at least I wasn’t hungry anymore.
“Food up!” Clark said from the window. “Lana. Now!”
“Dude,” she replied, the word a warning.
“Got it,” I heard Kasey say. “Where’s my side of grits?”
“Right here.” A clank.
I moved to the next table, gathering up mugs and water glasses. As I turned, a woman with three kids was standing behind me, menus in hand. “Can we take this?”
“Um…,” I said, glancing at Kasey, who was handing out plates at a middle table. There was still a large crowd at the door. “I don’t—”
“Yes,” Lana said, popping up on my left. To me she added, “Get the phone.”
I gave the table a final wipe, then grabbed the bin, hustling behind her. Dropping the dishes by the trash, I wiped my hands and answered. “Egg. Can I help you?”
“Yeah. Four breakfasts. Two with scrambled eggs, two with over hard.”
The pad was buried under a sheaf of napkins, so it took me a beat to find it. “Right,” I said, getting this down. “Anything else?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me about toast?”
Kasey, passing with a tray of dirty dishes, bumped me from behind. “Toast?” I said.
“Doesn’t it come with toast?”
I looked at Kasey, who put down the tray, gesturing for me to hand her the phone, then the pad. She squinted at what I’d written, before ripping it off and crumpling the paper. “Hi. You cut out. Can I get that order again, please?”
As the man repeated himself, I watched as she wrote. brEK SCRAM. brEK SCRAM. brEK HARD. brEK HARD. Of course. That explained the “novel” comment.
“What kind of toast with those?” Kasey asked now as Lana pushed past us with more dirty dishes. “Right. Grits or potatoes?”
“Tell me again why we agreed to this?” Clark asked.
“Before, business was down thirty percent,” Lana told him.
“Right.” He sighed. “How are those eggs coming?”
“Fifteen seconds,” Ben said, his voice level.
I’d only been there a short while, and part of all this even less.
Already, though, I could see the way the stress of the moment was carried by each of them.
Clark, loudly emoting as he pushed out plates.
Kasey’s almost military-like ability to compartmentalize, Lana’s impressive speed.
And finally Ben, who had gotten more and more quiet even as the chaos built around him.
I looked at Kasey’s pad again. brEK SCRAM WW GR. brEK SCRAM WHT POT. AM SAND H SW. Like a foreign language that I could now speak. Okay, then.
“Food in the window!” Clark bellowed.
Kasey hung up, adding the order to the stack. “Finley, listen up. Table numbers.” She turned, pointing. “Back booth is one. Two, three, four, five.”
I followed her finger. “Right.”
“Middle tables six through ten,” she continued, grabbing a tray and pulling down two plates. A piece of bacon wobbled on the edge of one for a second, but hung on. “Then counter: eleven through nineteen, starting by the wall.”
“Got it.”
“Table number is here,” she said, grabbing a ticket from above a plate of pancakes and pointing to a box at the top. “Just run it, ask who got what. Do your best.”
And with that, I had a tray in my hand and was walking, somehow, up to table—I glanced at the ticket—four. They looked so hopeful as I approached, I could only wonder how long they’d been waiting.
“Hi. Who got the—” I consulted the ticket. “Pancakes?”
Three of the four hands went up. Whoops. Easing the tray down onto the table, I grabbed the ticket, looking again at the writing there. PAN-b. PAN-b. PAN-s. brEK SCRAM WHT GRT. Also some squiggle, circled.
“Um…,” I said, feeling panic rising. “Let me—”
Just then Lana appeared, bumping me aside with one hip. She picked up a plate. “Pancakes with bacon?”
Hands went up again. From the kitchen, I heard Clark swear.
“Phone,” Lana barked, as if I’d gone rogue in taking the food to the table. “Then get a pitcher and fill waters.”
By the time I’d gotten around the counter, Kasey had already answered and was taking an order. I grabbed the plastic bin, clearing plates from some now-empty seats. As soon as I was done, Kasey slapped down a menu and silverware. Slap. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk.
“Waters!” Lana hollered. Right. I spotted a pitcher by the food window, moving to the nearest empty glass and pouring. Immediately, some ice clogged the spout, kicking liquid back at me.
Lana zoomed around me. “Pour from the side.”
I did. No clog. Imagine that.
After a while, I had a system. Approach.
Customer pushes glass over to signal they want refill.
Do that. Move on, repeat. Coffee meant doing the same steps, just more carefully.
In time, I started to even be able to look up now and then.
It was then I realized I hadn’t thought about Colin, or my mom, once.
At around eleven, when it finally began to slow down, Kasey told me to take a break. A moment later, she brought me a breakfast sandwich. I was bent over the kitchen trash can like an animal, devouring it, when Lana saw me.
“Whoa, slow down there,” she said, punctuating this with another ticket on the spindle. “Don’t want you puking again.”
“Who’s puking?” Clark asked, pulling down more plates.
“Finley,” Lana told him, inclining her head at me. “Last night. Drowned her sorrows after she got dumped.”
What was next, making an announcement to the customers?
“See, that’s exactly why I have my no-relationships rule.” Clark rearranged the tickets with both hands. “Too much trouble.”
“And it must be so hard to follow,” Lana said, clicking her tongue sympathetically. “Considering all the girls constantly swarming you, begging for a commitment.” Ben snorted.
Kasey put another ticket down. “Six-top in! All sandwiches. And no one’s waiting. I think the worst is over.”
“Never say that,” Clark warned her. “You open umbrellas inside and walk under ladders, too?”
Kasey ignored this, instead looking at me. “Finley? I know that was a lot. You okay?”
I nodded, half expecting Lana to again put what had happened the night before on blast. When she didn’t, I said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
And I was, weirdly. Even with the puking. And the dumping. Maybe for everyone else the morning had been a nightmare. But I’d take a distraction.
Kasey picked up a pitcher, refilling the counter’s waters just as the phone began ringing again. I picked it up.
“Egg. Can I help you?”
“This is Catherine Hope. I’m trying to find my daughter. Is Kasey there?”
Just like that, it all came back: the papers on the floor, lab results, treatments listed. “It’s me, Mom,” I said.
“Finley?” She sounded confused. “Why are you answering the phone?”
“I was helping out,” I explained. “I’m coming home now, though.”
“Oh.” A beat. “Well, good. Will you bring me something?”
“Sure.” I swallowed. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you think I’d like.”
We hung up as I scribbled, AM SAND B SW on a ticket, then put it on the spindle. So weird how, a few hours earlier, I hadn’t even known what that meant.
“That’s on the house. And double it,” Kasey told Clark. When I took a breath to object, she held up a hand. “You want anything else? Least I can do, considering you saved us today.”
“I’m good,” I told her. To be honest, my stomach hurt a little from eating so fast earlier. Was Lana ever wrong? “Thanks, though.”
I went back behind the counter, where two people had just left. It only took a second to bus their plates and grab a spray bottle to wipe it down. By the time I finished, it had slowed enough to hear the music—Dolly Parton, again, I noticed—for the first time.
“Order up,” Clark called out. “Finley. It’s yours.”
In the window, a bag sat, top folded neatly. As I grabbed it, he looked up at me. “Hey. Sorry about, um, yelling at you earlier. It wasn’t personal.”
“Look at you, getting an apology,” Lana said, sticking another ticket. “He never tells us he’s sorry.”
“True,” he agreed. “But she doesn’t actually work here.”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “It was actually kind of… I liked it.”
“Well, feel free to come back tomorrow. Or any morning. Like the rest of the county, we’re chronically understaffed,” Kasey said. “And if you do, grab an apron. Bin under the register.”
I looked down at my shirt. It was sticky with jam, a coffee stain exploding over the shoulder. Badges of courage. Or something.
“Maybe I will,” I told her. Then I took my sandwiches, left a twenty on the ticket, and started the long walk home.