Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tyler pushed open the Beach Shack door and knew instantly he’d missed something.
The tables were all wrong—Bernie’s corner booth sitting in the middle of the room like a lost island, Mrs. Walker’s window spot occupied by the condiment station, chairs arranged in patterns that made no practical sense.
The coffee station had migrated three feet to the left, creating a navigation puzzle for anyone wanting cream and sugar.
Bernie looked up from his displaced booth with a grin that suggested he’d been waiting for this moment. “Tyler! You missed the show.”
“What show?”
“The Florence Method,” Stella said from behind the register, restocking coffee cups. “Anna introduced authentic Italian café methodology to the Beach Shack dining experience.”
Tyler blinked. “That sounds ominous.”
“Design philosophy,” Joey supplied, emerging from the kitchen with a tray of clean glasses. “Apparently we’ve been doing restaurant seating wrong for fifty years.”
“Let me paint you a picture,” Stella said. “Anna decided our furniture arrangement lacked ‘intentional flow,’ so she relocated everything. Bernie’s booth toured the dining room. The condiment station went sight-seeing by the windows.”
“She had a whole system,” Bernie added, pulling out his phone to show Tyler a photo. “Documented it for posterity. Something about circulation patterns and aesthetic harmony.”
Tyler looked at the image—furniture scattered across the dining room like pieces on a board game, with what appeared to be hand-drawn arrows indicating customer flow. It looked like a puzzle designed by someone who’d never actually tried to solve it.
“There was a speech about Giuseppe’s café,” Joey chimed in, passing by with drinks. “Near some bridge in Florence. Apparently, they serve a thousand customers a day with the grace of ballet.”
“Mrs. Walker spent twenty minutes looking for her table,” Stella continued. “It had been moved to the center of the room for better light circulation.”
“I offered to send up a flare,” Bernie added from his booth island. “But she’s tougher than she looks. Eventually just sat down and glared at the condiment station.”
“And the condiments,” Stella said, “were relocated. Salt and pepper got separated. Sugar ended up by the window for color balance. Very pretty, completely dysfunctional.”
Tyler groaned. He could picture it perfectly—the chaos, the confusion, Anna’s absolute conviction that her system was best. He could also picture Stella and Joey scrambling to translate between Anna’s vision and actual restaurant functionality, Margo quietly managing the crisis while cooking, customers growing increasingly confused.
“How long is this going to go on?”
Stella shrugged. “Margo hasn’t said anything. It’s still happening,” Stella said. “We convinced Anna that moving the register would confuse the collecting money part, but everything else is still Anna-optimized.”
“So people still can’t find anything?”
“Mrs. Walker asked if we’d been robbed,” Stella confirmed. “Bernie had to guide three different customers to find ketchup.”
“Sounds like you handled it well.”
“We’re getting good at Anna translation,” Stella said. “This one just required more customer guidance than usual. And some emergency napkin-folding to keep Joey from having a circulation-related breakdown.”
“I don’t have breakdowns,” Joey protested. “I have stress responses.”
“You folded 200 napkins in fifteen minutes while muttering about traffic patterns,” Stella pointed out. “That’s not focus. That’s panic origami.”
“It’s meditative precision.”
“I texted you,” Stella added casually, continuing to organize coffee cups. “But didn’t hear back.”
Tyler felt a small jolt. He’d seen the text—Stella asking if he was coming in, mentioning that Anna was “implementing improvements”—but he’d been focused on photographing the vendor setup process and decided it could wait. He’d had no idea that the changes were so huge.
“Oh, yeah. Had to finish documenting the vendor setup.”
Tyler felt good about his explanation—it was true, and professional, and important. Festival documentation was part of his responsibility to the arts community.
“Ah.” Stella nodded, her voice neutral. “That worked out well. Seems to work out a lot for you.”
Tyler paused, something in her tone catching his attention. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing, just...” Stella shrugged, continuing to organize supplies. “Funny timing. Your Festival work getting urgent right when Anna’s implementing her artistic improvements.”
“That’s coincidence,” Tyler said, shifting his camera bag. The strap felt suddenly heavy. “Professional photography can’t wait for convenient timing.”
“Of course.” Stella said. “Just something I noticed.”
“The Festival documentation is important,” he said again. “For the arts community.”
“Absolutely,” Stella agreed, but something in the way she said it made Tyler feel like she was agreeing with something different than what he’d said.
“And Anna’s projects usually work themselves out. She gets enthusiastic, tries something new, realizes the practical limitations, adjusts accordingly. It’s her process.”
“They do work themselves out,” Stella said. “We’re pretty efficient at chaos management by now.”
Tyler looked around the restaurant again, taking in the full scope of Anna’s ongoing Florence Method.
A customer was standing by Bernie’s relocated booth, clearly confused about the seating situation.
Another family clustered by the displaced condiment station, trying to figure out the new supply geography.
The whole place looked like someone had picked it up and shaken it.
“Shouldn’t someone... fix this?” Tyler asked.
“Anna’s convinced it just needs time for people to adapt,” Stella said. “She thinks the problem is that customers aren’t open to change, not that her system has flaws.”
“What about Margo?”
“Margo’s been watching everything very carefully,” Stella said, and something in her tone suggested there was more to that story. “But she hasn’t stepped in to fix it.”
“So, it’ll just... stay like this?”
“Until someone deals with it,” Stella said. “Meg will probably handle it when she gets back from her client meeting. She’s good at translating Anna’s improvements back into functional restaurant space.”
Tyler felt a small twinge of something—guilt? Relief? He wasn’t sure. “Anna should fix her own experiment.”
“Anna should,” Stella agreed. “But Anna thinks it’s working perfectly.”
“Well,” he said, adjusting his camera strap, which had somehow gotten twisted, “sounds like everyone handled it perfectly without me. And Meg’ll be here soon.
“We always do,” Stella said, and there was something in the way she said it—not resentful, not bitter, just matter-of-fact—that made Tyler feel slightly off-balance.
She returned to her coffee cup organization. Bernie had gone back to his tablet, occasionally chuckling at something. Joey was wiping down displaced tables the same way he always had. Margo’s voice drifted from the kitchen, talking to a supplier about tomorrow’s delivery.
Everything was normal. Everything was handled—or would be soon. Everyone had adapted to the crisis competently and moved on.