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From the dish pit, Marco says, “I’d keep him for the ass.”

I grin despite myself and turn back to the station. This place is old and loud and smells like garlic even when nobody is cooking. The hood vents rattle when it rains. Half the regulars still call the restaurant by the name it had before Carmine bought it from his uncle, and the other half think Carmine is his uncle.

But when I’m here, I know where everything goes.

I hear the printer spit before I see it. One last ticket.

“No,” Destiny says from somewhere near the pass. “Hell no. Kitchen’s closed.”

Carmine tears off the ticket, reads it, and looks at me.

“Don’t,” I say.

“One small cheese.”

“Closed.”

“For Mrs. Bell.”

Mrs. Bell lives two blocks over and has been eating here longer than I’ve been alive. She tips in exact change and Christmas cookies hard enough to chip a tooth.

I sigh. “Damn it.”

Carmine smiles. “That’s my Pizza Dude.”

“I hate that name.”

“Then don’t answer to it.”

I make the pizza.

The oven takes it fast.

I watch the cheese bubble, then settle. I turn it twice and pull it when the bottom has the right snap. Cut it into six because she complains that eight slices is “baby food.”

Carmine carries it out himself.

I clean the station again.

By the time everything is wrapped, labeled, wiped, swept, and shut down, my lower back has started talking from too many hours on rubber mats.

“Old man,” Marco says.

“I’m twenty-eight.”

“Kitchen twenty-eight is regular forty.”

He flicks water at me.

I grab my cap from the shelf and shove it on backward, then remember my hair is buzzed too short for it to matter. Habit. Most things are.

I head to the back, grab my keys from the hook, and step into the alley behind the restaurant.

The night hits warm and damp. Louisville summer isn’t here yet, but it’s thinking about it.

My car is parked under the security light by the back fence. It’s old enough to look cheap and new enough that the payment still pisses me off. I slide into the driver’s seat and sit there for a second without starting it.

My phone is in the cup holder.