"Six more orders," Maya calls.
"We're out of chicken," I say.
"What?"
"I prepped for thirty. We've served forty." I check the walk-in. "I have pork chops. Can you tell people?—"
"On it." Maya's already spinning a story, probably something about small-batch sourcing and seasonal flexibility.
"I'm out of turnips." Ivy cocks a brow.
"Use the tomatoes you brought. Raw. Slice them thick, salt them, drizzle oil. Make it a feature."
"That's not a side dish."
"It is tonight."
She mutters something about reckless improvisation but she's already moving, slicing tomatoes with quick, confident cuts.
The pork chops hit the pan. Different cook time. Different approach. I adjust on the fly, adding herbs, deglazing with white wine I find under the prep station.
"Is that cooking wine?" Ivy asks, peering over my shoulder at the bottle I've just grabbed from the dusty shelf beneath the prep station.
"It's wine," I say, already tipping a generous splash into the pan where it sizzles and steams around the pork chops. "For cooking."
"There's a difference." Her tone is patient but pointed, the same voice she probably uses when explaining crop rotation to stubborn farmers.
"Not when you're desperate." I swirl the pan, watching the wine reduce and pull up all the caramelized bits from the bottom. The smell that rises is sharp and bright, cuttingthrough the heavy air of the kitchen. "And right now? I'm very desperate."
The fiddler launches into something that might be a sea shanty. Definitely not appropriate for a quiet dinner service.
"I'll talk to him," Ivy says.
"You don't have to?—"
But she's already gone, wiping her hands on a borrowed apron. I watch through the window as she approaches the fiddler with calm authority. He nods. Adjusts. The music shifts to something gentler. Better.
She returns to the kitchen. "Systems. They work."
"That wasn't a system. That was diplomacy."
"Same thing."
I laugh despite everything. Despite the chaos and broken oven and endless orders. "You're picking up bad habits from me."
"Terrifying thought."
We fall back into rhythm. Pork chops, vegetables, tomatoes that somehow look elegant despite being a last-minute addition. The plates go out. Come back empty. Go out again.
"People are loving it," Maya says during a brief lull. "Table seven asked for your card. Table two wants to book their anniversary dinner."
"We don't do reservations," I say, flipping through the mental catalog of everything I haven't managed to organize yet.
"Well, we do now," Maya counters, already pulling out her phone to start a list. "Starting tomorrow. I'm not dealing with this kind of chaos twice in one week without some kind of advanced warning system."
Before I can argue or agree, because honestly she has a point, one of the temp staff loses their grip on a freshly washed tray stacked high with our mismatched dinner plates. The crash is absolutely spectacular, ceramic exploding across the tile floorin a percussion that momentarily drowns out even the fiddler's enthusiastic sawing. Every single person in the kitchen freezes mid-motion, hands hovering over pans and cutting boards, eyes wide.
Then Ivy starts laughing.
