I turn on my heel so quickly my shoes don’t make a sound. A skill I’ve spent years honing. I do it knowing exactly what the decision is and disliking myself for making it. I have zero patience for cowards.
But that’s what I am right now.
But I know the difference between discipline and cowardice, and I am not in the habit of confusing the two. I force my body into motion. Step. Another step.
“—leave the card copy as we have it,” she says behind me, voice floating down the corridor. “If we’re confident, they will be.”
“Copy,” the other voice says, amused.
I keep walking. I don’t speed up. I don’t slow down. I pass the framed safety memo about cut-resistant gloves and the blue tape X on a pane of glass that needs to come off before it becomes a permanent ghost. I track the details because that’s what my brain knows how to do.
Anger warms the back of my neck. Not at her. At myself. The fact of noticing. The fact of recognizing. The fact that a part of me wants to find a reason to go back.
I curse myself without moving my mouth. The words are familiar; they’re well-worn from other days when I got in my own way. I keep my back straight, shoulderssteady, pace neither fast nor slow. I count six steps, then eight, then ten, and with each one I tell myself that the annoyance is preferable to the other thing.
Annoyance sharpens. The other thing does the opposite.
I reach the elevator. My finger presses the call button. I watch my reflection in the brushed steel next to the doors: tie at the line of my collarbone, jaw I shaved this morning. The man in the metal looks like someone who doesn’t get ambushed by a laugh. Put together. Professional.
The doors part. I step in. My jaw tightens as the car climbs, then releases because I tell it to, then tightens again because my body is still arguing with me.
By the time the doors open to the administrative floor, the warmth that spread inside me at a simple laugh has chilled into something more useful: irritation. I can work with irritation. It sharpens, it doesn’t soften.
I step out into the hall that leads to Caterina’s office.
Her door is half-closed when I get there. I knock once with my knuckle and push through.
She’s at the desk, pen in hand, two monitors lit. The construction clatter we used to live with is down to an occasional thud in the distance. The glass on her desktop has lost the shipping label but keeps the tiny air bubbles that tell me the plastic is still on it. Folders fan to her left so that they only look casual. They aren’t. Caterina doesn’t do casual systems.
“Morning,” she says without looking up, then glances and corrects herself. “Tío. Good. Close the door?”
I let it click shut behind me. She sets the pen across the top of a legal pad and leans back. Her suit is navy, her dark eyes sharp, shoulders tight, hair tucked behind one ear. It’s how she looks when she’s about to hand me something I can fix.
“What happened?” I ask because we don’t waste each other’s time.
She exhales through her nose in a way that would come off as frustration on anyone else. On her, it’s power management.
“Two things. First, good: the restaurant looks like a restaurant. FOH is ninety percent. Back of house is running tests this afternoon. They could cook for twelve tonight if they had to.”
“And the second thing,” I say.
“Bianca’s back early.” The words are even, but she watches my face like she always does when she delivers a simple sentence that is about to stop being simple.
“Early as in a few days, or early as in we should revise the calendar?”
“A week,” she says.
I sit, not because I need to, but because she’ll download faster if I look settled. The chair gives a quiet sigh and takesmy weight. “And?”
“And because she was officially on leave, the last round of filings went in with a proxy signature.”
I see the problem already, but I let her lay it out for me.
Caterina flips the top page on her legal pad so I can see the bullet she’s circled twice. “Because Bianca was out on leave, we filed the last tranche of restaurant paperwork with a proxy signature. The New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control flagged it. They won’t authorize the license with a proxy now that Bianca’s back.”
“Who’s the case manager?” I ask.
“Same woman we’ve had since December,” she says. “I have her number. I didn’t call. I wanted to hand it to you before I did more damage to it.”
