I

            One Saturday afternoon in late Spring, when Jux was finished clearing up the mess of pans that had accumulated at the dishpit during his prep work, he inevitably found himself counting aloud as he attached freshly-rinsed knives to the magnetic rack that was once again mounted on the wall, now below the stereo and even more directly above the fryer, which seemed like a terrible, terrible idea.

            “Seven,” he said as a wide chef’s knife clicked fast against the magnet. Then he placed a serrated bread knife. “Eight. Eight knives.”

            Chef Junior entered from the bar, calling “corner” after already rounding the corner and emerging from the short hall. “We’ll be popping the Flippie’s now, boy!” he sang. He eyed the assortment of standard-spec plastic storage containers on the prep table as he washed his hands at the rinse station.

            “Yeah,” Jux said, “so we got the lasagna and gnocchi over here, two pans of phyllo pockets, lava cake already pieced out. New bin of ceviche is in the cooler…” He began looking around.

            “Why do you have three finger cots on?” Junior asked.

            Jux looked down at his right hand, which, indeed, had latex-free cots on three fingers: middle, ring, and pinky. “Oh, nothing,” he stammered. “Just a glitch.”

            Junior grinned. “A glitch?” he asked. “What do you think this is, the matrix? Did you cut yourself three times this morning?”

            “I…” Jux began, wiping his face with a palm. “I had a couple of minor incidents.”

            Junior shook his head. “You really got to be more careful.”

           “Anyway,” Jux continued, again looking around, like he was confused about where he was, “there was something else, too.”

            “Crostinis?” Chef Junior asked as he dried his hands on a bundle of paper towels from the open-faced dispenser on the wall above the rinse station.

            Jux closed his eyes briefly with a sigh and then hurried around the central island to the oven to remove two full sheets of thin, bias-cut and lightly-seasoned slices of baguette that were toasted to a rich, dark brown on sheets of parchment paper. “Goddamnit,” he swore, staring down at the trays he gripped with towels before him.

            “What is happening?” Chef Junior asked as he approached.

            Jux grumbled and emptied the sheets into the garbage at the hot side. “I fucked up the crostinis again,” he spat, nesting the trays and walking over to put them on an empty corner of the stainless steel prep counter. “That was a double batch, too. Motherfucker. This same thing already happened twice today. I was trying to build up the reserves, but every time I fucked it up.”

            Chef Junior shook his head and took his spot at the saute station. “We have to make it nice, Professor,” he said, “or we really will be popping the Flippies around here.”

            “What does that even mean?” Jux asked irritably as he pulled two long sheets of parchment paper from the cardboard box on the ice machine.

            “I’ve told you this like ten times, bro,” Chef Junior said. “It’s from Sweaty Servers 2.”

            “Agh,” Jux cried as he slapped the parchment paper onto the trays. “I didn’t even finish the first one.”

            “I think you need to get on it,” Chef Junior said as he adjusted a few of the knobs on the front of the range. “The second one’s even better.”

            Jux grunted and walked toward the hall to the bar.

            “You want to know why we’ll be like Flippie’s?” the chef called.

            “Why?” Jux asked tiredly.

            “Because Tati’s got this place a website now,” Chef Junior said.

            Jux stared at him. “The last thing this place needs is a website,” he said. “We shouldn’t be trying to draw too much attention to what’s going on around here.”

            “Hey,” Chef Junior said as he unwrapped steel containers to build his line, “that kind of hurts my feelings.”

            “It’s not you,” Jux assured him. “You know that. It’s all the weird shit. It’s fucking Tati. He wants to use this place like a personal kitchen, which it isn’t, and whenever something isn’t right he just ignores it or blames it on us, like what he kept doing to Almo. And the weird shit… don’t even get me started on that.”

            Chef Junior was shaking his head. “Sad times,” he said. “He actually wants to talk to you right now.”

            “Me?” Jux asked, glancing anxiously at the corner hall.

            “Remember when you proofread the menu?” Chef Junior asked.

            “Very clearly,” Jux said. “He rejected most of my edits.”

            “It’s going to be the same with the website,” Chef Junior said. “‘Artesian’ instead of ‘artisan,’ ‘premise’ instead of ‘premises.’” He sniffed at a ninth pan of diced onions and added it to the line. “He won’t let you make it nice.”

            Jux touched his forehead. “Oh, God,” he said. “He wants me to look at the website.”

            Chef Junior nodded.

            “I have to make crostinis,” Jux whined.

            “I’ll make the crostinis,” Chef Junior said. “I don’t care if you talk to Tati about the website or not, but I will say that if you can get all your prep stowed and the cold line ready before Abuse and Duke get here, I’ll let them know that Tati sent you home early.”

            Jux’s eyes widened. “If you don’t think you need me to expo the rush.”

            “Don’t you have papers to grade or something?” Chef Junior asked.

            Jux tossed a hand in the air. “Their final essays aren’t due for two weeks,” he said. He stared past the faceless paper towel dispenser toward the corner hall for a moment and then shook his head. “Fuck it. I’m going to get all this shit wrapped and labeled. Tati can megaphone his stubborn ignorance to the whole world for all I care.”

            Chef Junior nodded and unwrapped a sixth pan of jus and carefully settled it into one of the slots of the steam table under the call buttons between the hot and cold lines. “But he’s going to make a fool of himself,” he said. “Again. On the internet.”

            “Like when they cut off his microphone at that public hearing about property taxes,” Jux suggested.

            “Exactly,” Chef Junior said, “but this time, it’s all his fault.”

            “Fuck it,” Jux said, clamping down hard on the red lid of a plastic container of blanched strips of lasagna noodle.

            “I think you’re finally at the wall, bro,” Chef Junior said.

            Jux looked up from the container at the filmy polymer surface of the wall separating the prep table from one of the bathrooms. The small holes in the paneling from where the rack had previously fallen were still there, always in the periphery like creeping cockroaches. “I’ve been making food here for months,” he said. “Besides, nobody’s been dropping deuces in there today, primarily because Almo isn’t here anymore.”

            Chef Junior brushed a towel and empty sixth pan across the cutting board with a bristly forearm and took a defrosting baguette from the pile in the dormant salamander. “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “You’ve got to be committed to be in this business. It’s a shitshow sometimes every day of the week. I don’t know what teaching college is like, but I promise you that it is better than what you’re going to find here. Late night stress, month after month, broken shit in the kitchen, an owner who doesn’t listen to suggestions—”

            “A fucking haunting,” Jux said.

            Chef Junior sighed and shook his head. “No haunting, bro,” he said. “It’s just the restaurant life. Crazy shit happens all the time and, sometimes, it’s really dark. Like depressing. Like insane. People lose their shit. I told you about why I moved here from Cali, didn’t I?”

            Jux stared at the magnetic knife rack. “You did,” he said, eyes along the edges of the knives. “Some sad real estate developer who lost everything in the crash jumped off from his unfinished penthouse. You were going to be the resident chef. But that wasn’t a restaurant. That was… I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t a restaurant.”

            “The restaurant is everywhere,” Chef Junior said. He walked over toward Jux and leaned past to snatch a long, serrated bread knife from the strip. He held the knife out for a moment and then walked back to the sauté station at hot side and began slicing the baguettes to make crostinis. “If you don’t already see that, then this industry just isn’t your destiny, bro.”

            Jux scribbled “noki” on a label and fixed it to the side of the plastic container with a smile. “I’m learning a lot here.”

            “Yeah, I know,” Chef Junior said as he palmed several slivers of cold baguette up over the sharp rim and into the standard metal sixth pan. “And you’re welcome to stay with us on the weekends if you want.”

            “I think I might do that,” Jux said. The little dark area under the island, near the edges of the grease trap’s hatch, distracted him.

            Chef Junior continued slicing. “You got to listen to me, bro,” he said, pressing the pointy nibs of the blade down through the cold bread. “If someone like you stayed in this industry, you’d be counting the knives until you had a heart attack in the alley six months after your fiftieth birthday. I’ve seen that happen, too.”

            “I get it,” Jux said. He situated an 18-inch box of food-service wrap past another pan of his prep.

            “Count the knives,” Chef Junior suggested.

            Jux pressed a cover of plastic wrap over one of the containers. “I’m not going to count the knives.”

            “Count them,” Chef Junior demanded.

            Jux looked up over at the magnetic rack and counted silently. “Seven,” he finally said.

            “And here,” Chef Junior said with a final pass of the bread knife blade near the end of the loaf, “is number eight. No mystery, no ghosts. Just paying attention to the kitchen. Deciding to put up with that is a serious life choice. That isn’t what you want to do. There are almost always missing knives. You have to get out of here before you’re cursed, too. Go to the college, get tenure, and then hide until the end times are over.”

            Jux sealed the plastic around the container and looked over at the chef. “You’re probably right,” he said. “Can I come to your football game party with the nacho cheese fountain?”

            Chef Junior shook his head. “You don’t want to do that, bro.”

            Jux nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “Again, you’re right. I know, I know! Okay. I’ll put in my two weeks, but—”

            “Nobody may protest,” the voice of Abuse suddenly came from the storeroom. He entered, holding up his phone. “Sisters of Mercy for the next 45 minutes.”

            “All hail Abuse,” Chef Junior said.

            “Indeed,” Abuse said, winking at Jux and leaning over the fryer to attach his phone to the stereo. “All things lead to that.”

            “You can play that shit all you want,” Jux said. “If Tati wants me to look at the website, I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon up front at the computer. See you at dinner service.”

II

            The warm late evening breeze hurtling down between the towers of the lofts and through the slats of the loading area shelter swept past their faces and engorged the cherries of their cigarettes before wafting past the dumpsters through the yawning gates into the parking lot. There had been no ticket for almost an hour and all that was left was waiting until it was time to wrap and label the containers and initiate the closing clean.

            “What?” Abuse asked, seated on a crate and looking up from the bright screen of his squat phone.

            Jux looked over at Duke for a moment and then back at Abuse. “I didn’t say anything.”

            Abuse peered up at him. “You’re about to, though,” he predicted.

            “That’s just the thing,” Jux said. He took a drag on the cigarette and then exhaled toward a cluster of dusty mobile heating units. “That is exactly why I need to move on. This whole thing is a real trap. Know what I mean?”

            Duke flicked his cigarette in a wide arc across the dock and the butt smashed with a spray of embers against the bricks near the gate and fell from the ricochet right into the already-smoldering ashcan. “Is this how you were talking to Chef earlier?” he asked. “Because he’s right. If you’re going to work in this industry, you need to be willing to work in this industry.”

            Abuse and Jux stared at him.

            “I mean it,” Duke continued. “Always look for the better place, but have the presence all the time. Move away from darkness when you can.” He was staring at the grimy concrete of the dock.

            Jux clutched his forehead and then shivered. “That’s not…” he began. After a moment, he took another quick drag and walked across the dock to drop it into the smoldering ashcan. “I’m talking about Tati,” he said. “Getting me to edit the site and everything. He knows it better than just about anyone else around here that the lecturer gig is what I should be focusing my time on. Now that I know I have sections through summer and full-time starting in August, there is almost literally no reason why I should be working here anymore.”

            “Cheers to that, then,” Duke said, holding up a foam cup of energy juice.

            “Yeah, but now I feel invested in the website,” Jux said.

            Abuse shook his head. “One and done,” he offered.

            Jux shrugged and walked back toward them and then on to the lit entry to the back room.

            “See?” Abuse called after him. “Going for your bag as we speak.”

            “That’s not where I’m going,” Jux protested.

            “You can’t take it here,” Abuse said, “which is totally cool, and I speak for the entire area.”

            “Naw,” Duke interjected. “He could take it. I’ve seen him work. It would kill him eventually, but he could take it for a long, long time. I mean, anything will kill you eventually, so might as well do it with a master’s degree.”

            Jux peered out from the door to the back room. “I’m not planning to kill anything with my master’s degree.”

            Duke held up his hands. “That’s your prerogative,” he declared.

            Jux inclined his head in assent.

            Duke started a low-volume beatboxing that sounded like muffled garage house.

            “So are you going to keep working here or not?” Abuse suddenly asked.

            Jux shook his head. “I don’t think I am, no.”

            Abuse nodded. “You do know that means you’ll miss this year’s Bastille Day circus.”

            “I think I’ll be fine,” Jux said. “I feel like I’ve lived the experience of Tati Bastille Days past through all of the incredible narratives I’ve been exposed to over these eight, uh, nine, maybe, uh, over these many long months.”

            Abuse sighed. “We are pretty damned good storytellers.”

            Duke pumped his head forward and back a couple of times, getting into the rhythm after shifting the sound in his body to emulate a simple, fast-paced breakbeat. “Lemme tell you story bout a man name Jed,” he rapped. “Straight fell down and fucked up his head. Messin with the grease an you end up dead. Learn from the tale of the now wikiwiki now—”

            Abuse thrust out a stopping palm.

            “What?” Duke asked, grinning.

            “That’s really just terrible,” Jux said. “I’m sorry.”

            Duke shook his head. “I know it’s not, like, Eminem-level,” he said, “but I’m still working on the lyrics, so…”

            “Please don’t ever do that again,” Abuse said. “It was bad enough when that whackjob cook, the one obsessed with that dollar-store kitchen timer in there, you remember, was—”

            “This is different, though,” Duke said in defense.

            “Not really, no,” Abuse said.

            Duke glanced down at the cement. “I guess I have yet to find my true inspiration.”

            With a chuckle, Jux turned back toward the storage room for a moment and then pivoted again to pronounce to them both, “Gastronomical.”

            After a moment, Duke cocked an eyebrow. “And what?”

            Jux focused on him. “So it is a word,” he suggested. “Gastronomical.”

            “Of course it’s a word,” Duke blurted with a disgusted glance at the greasy concrete.

            Abuse held out a cautionary hand. “That is not a word we often use around here,” he explained. “I have heard it before, but it’s not common.”

            “Some of the highland crafters are talking about opening gastropubs from here to Preston,” Duke said. “That’s where you should be looking if you want to stay relevant in this industry.”

            “Wise man,” Abuse said. He looked again at Jux. “Why are we talking about that word?”

            Jux sighed. After a glance at Duke, he looked at Abuse. “Tati doesn’t believe that it’s a word,” he said. He looked again at Duke. “He insisted that I use ‘astronomical’ instead.”

            “Like galaxies and shit?” Duke asked, scratching his chin.

            Jux’s eyes widened. “And more,” he promised.

            “I mean,” Duke began, looking up through the beams of the dock at the dark purply sky, “it’s a pretty interesting concept, all points here and there across the universe, I get it, maybe, maybe, but, what, are we supposed to be thinking of some kind of space theme from now on?”

            “That’s not what this is,” Abuse said.

            “It’s for the splash at the top of the home page,” Jux said. “I wrote that Tati’s offered guests to come along on a gastronomical adventure.”

            “Gastronomical adventure?” Duke cried. “This place? The menu here is half 1990 New York Faux-French and half upscale Filiberto’s. I guess you could call it a gastrointestinal adventure, but… Listen, you want a gastronomical adventure, you go to a place like Caffe Loa. That’s more true to the phrase.”

            “I think if he writes it like it is,” Abuse pondered, “it wouldn’t make the site very appealing to potential customers.” He paused and tilted his head as he looked at the concrete. “That said,” he added to Jux, “you might be overstating it.”

            “Especially if you put ‘astronomical adventure,’” Duke noted.

            “I’m leaving,” Jux announced. “My work here is done.” He turned back into the storage room and disappeared.

            “That’s what I say, asshole,” Abuse called after him.

            “Do you smell this?” Jux called back. His arm was over his face as he reemerged, tugging a tall garbage bin across the threshold to the dock. “There’s like four batches of burned crostinis in here. Did I do this? I didn’t do this.”

            “Let me see that,” Duke said, crossing to peer inside the can. “Jesus.”

            “None of us were making crostinis,” Abuse said suspiciously. He looked around the dock.

            “Smoke and burned crostinis and I don’t know what is going on,” Jux said, “except that now I’m thinking I need to make sure the sentence was proper. That I changed the article so that it would read ‘an astronomical’ when it would have originally said ‘a gastronomical.’ I honestly can’t tell you if I believe he knows what either of those things actually means, but I’m now only thinking about it anyway.”

            Abuse gripped two sides of the trash bin and jerked it out of Jux’s control. “Escape,” he told him. “Leave the website as it is. Bring no more harm upon yourself by participating—”

            The beams of a car pulling into a spot before the dock shifted through the gap between the gates like searchlights. After a moment, the sound of the engine quit and the lights went out. Slight footsteps were heard and then there was silence.

            “Two-top,” Abuse said to Duke. “At most.”

            “Reverse happy hour only and no flatbreads,” Duke said with a nod. “I’ll let Kieran know.”

            “Don’t mention the flatbreads,” Abuse suggested. “That will only give them ideas. If they order flatbreads, we just say ‘no flatbreads.’”

            Duke nodded again and passed between Abuse and Jux toward the back door.

            “See, that kind of thing is what I’m going to miss,” Jux said, retrieving his black sling bag from where it was hanging against the wall from a hook along with a couple of aprons.

            Abuse scowled at him. “Go now,” he commanded. “Do the things, but do not do them here. This is not a place for you.”

            Duke paused to watch this apparently final interaction.

            Jux opened his bag and began rooting around. “First, though,” he said, removing a thin black notebook and a pen, “I’m going to give you a list of names. Don’t show it to anyone, especially Tati, but I need you to tell each of the people on this list to email me about how they want their staff profile to sound. And use this email, because as we all know the email I put on the employee contact info sheet is bullshit.” He paused and looked them in the eyes. “Bigstinkysausage@notmail.com.”

            “There’s a contact sheet?” Duke asked.

            “It doesn’t matter,” Abuse informed him.

            Jux began scrawling down the list of names. “You’re both on here,” he said, “so be sure to email me. But remember: only the people on this list should know that I am asking for input on some of the staff descriptions. These are people who I think deserve that opportunity. The others should not know.”

            “You’re still working on the website, then,” Abuse clarified.

            “I have the credentials,” Jux said. “After a limited number of planned edits and additions, and as long as Tati doesn’t change his password in the meantime, I’ll be done with it. Rest assured, I won’t be back here until next Friday to pick up my last paycheck.”

            “I’ll see that it’s done,” Abuse promised.

            “Thanks,” Jux said. “Oh, and make sure everyone you do talk to about it understands that they’re just providing suggestions. I reserve the final editorial decision.”

            “Except for Tati,” Duke suggested.

            “Tati’s probably never going to read the website again,” Jux said. “I honestly don’t think hardly anybody’s going to read it. If it blows up, Tati is going to have it changed, I’m sure, so what we have here is a little creative window.”

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