I looked at Kasey, who put down the tray, gesturing for meto 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.
