I

            Jux arrived at the restaurant when the sky in the east was a deep but lightening blue and found that Concepción was already in the kitchen, poking under the island with a broom. They exchanged good mornings and she looked at him with wide, ominous eyes.

            “What is it?” Jux asked, already horrified and not even clocked in yet.

            “Cucarachas,” Concepción whispered.

            Jux gripped his forehead with a sigh and looked around bases of the furnishings. “Oh,” he said, “just that.” After an uneasy glance at the knife rack resting on the surface of the stainless steel prep table, he went to the bar and clocked in. The front of the house was dark but for the dull light of predawn outside and past the expansive lot of the cultural center. From a deep corner just out of sight from his position at the bar, he heard someone humming softly.

            “Good morning,” Jux called toward the darkness.

            A glass shattered onto the floor.

            “Willikers!” came the voice of Teatree, who then hopped into view and peered over at Jux. “Willikers,” he said again, his face beaded with sweat and his eyes somewhat dilated.

            “Didn’t mean to startle you,” Jux said, eying him. “Did you sleep last night?”

            “Shhh,” Teatree said. “They don’t need to know.”

            “It’s pretty obvious,” Jux said. “You look like you’re rolling your balls off.”

            Teatree stared at him. “Candy,” he began, holding out an empty palm and then turning it slowly, “flipping.”

            Jux chuckled. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked. “Isn’t Mother’s Day supposed to be consistently the busiest service of the year?”

            “Yeah,” Teatree said, nodding. “Yeah, it’s busy. It is so busy.” He looked confusedly down at the shards of glass on the floor. “One year we had five hundred people.”

            “And so you decided to stay up all night on ecstasy and acid to make sure that you’d be fully steeled for the task,” Jux suggested.

            “I do it every Mother’s Day,” Teatree said. “My mom and I have a tradition.”

            Jux squinted at him. “You do ecstasy and acid with your mother?”

            Teatree kind of chuckled. “She’s fucking cool, buddy.”

            After a moment, Jux inclined his head. “So be it,” he said. “Who am I to judge. You’ve got way more experience at this industry life than me.”

            “I want to go to the secret kitchen,” Teatree suddenly confessed. “Right now. Can you let me in?”

            Jux coughed and pressed a hand against his chest, eyes bulging. He then breathed deeply for a moment and managed to ask, “You want us to move the oven so that you can crawl around in the ducts?”

            Teatree looked across the brightening dining room and out at the light rail stop in the middle of the avenue. “Maybe that’s not a good idea,” he admitted.

            “No,” Jux said, confirming with a nod, “not a good idea.”

            Teatree was shaking his head. “Wow,” he said, looking back at Jux like a sprite. “That is a really bad idea. Can you imagine?”

            “I’m going to let you clean up this glass now,” Jux informed him.

            “And I,” Teatree said, “might ask you to let me into the secret kitchen some other time.”

            “No secret kitchen,” Jux called over his shoulder as he left the bar.

            In the back of the house, Jux found that Vicki had arrived and was presently gripping a cantaloupe against her chest before several other cantaloupes, musk melons, and small watermelons that sat on the cold side board before her. “At our barbecues,” she was saying, “we put the watermelon in one bowl and the cantaloupes and honeydew in the other because my niece is like sensitive to watermelons or something and she can’t eat them. She gets all dizzy.” She looked at Jux. “Good morning.”

            “Good morning,” he responded.        

Concepción was now at the ranges, warming a pot of water and looking down into the darkness between the oven and the cooler.

            “There’s always one scurrying around somewhere when I open,” Jux said.

            “Six,” Concepción said.

            Jux looked down at where the mats rested against the base poles of the island. “At the line?”

            Concepción looked to where he was looking and, after a nod, indicated the hot side station. “And there, too.”

            “Up in here?” Jux asked, peering at the variously-sized steel hotels pans arranged on the racks. “I guess that’s why we put them in plastic overnight.”

            “One reason,” Concepción confirmed.

            The upper left corner of the whiteboard was clear, but the word “MAC” was scrawled in large block letters at an upward angle right across the middle.

            Jux dug through the cooler, finding no mac.

            “All I’m saying,” Vicki continued, “is that in my house we keep the watermelons separate from the other melons. And the strawberries can go in with the melons.”

            “We mix,” Concepción said.

            Jux exhaled slowly and shut the tall cooler and then turned to search the low cooler at hot side. There, among ninths of diced peppers and onions and mushrooms and mutilated garlic, he found two full, deep stainless steel thirds conspicuously labeled “MAC.” He took them out, one at a time because of their weight, and placed them on the hot side line.

            “So do I cut these like real big chunks or do you want smiley slices?” Vicki asked, palming the cantaloupe in both hands as if she were about to try a free throw.

            Concepción went to the cold side board and took up a chef’s knife from the round steel bucket on the lower left shelf of the island. “Like this,” she said, rolling another cantaloupe into position and hacking off the ends and then plunging through its center with the chef’s knife.

            Jux was still studying the containers of mac and cheese. One had been served from, but the scoop had been small, suggesting either the fulfillment of a rare special-request side portion or the preparation of a little extra staff meal. The other container of mac had the undisturbed surface of a refuse spillage pond, full and brainy.

            “And why would I need to make more macaroni and cheese?” Jux pondered aloud.

            Concepción quartered and seeded the fleshy melon with the blade and then set one piece square on its side and began cutting off the rind.

            “What I’m saying is I don’t think we should be working off of that list at all,” Jux tried to explain. “Like, ever.”

            “Use your mind,” Concepción offered.

            “Yes,” Jux exclaimed. “I mean, mac and cheese isn’t even on the brunch menu, and there’s already all of this. That list can’t be trusted.”

            Concepción nodded with a smile.

            “And, really,” Jux continued, “there really isn’t even a list at all. I mean, it says ‘mac’ all big on the board over there, but it isn’t exactly a ‘prep list’ because it doesn’t say prep, you know? It could just be somebody’s note to self. Could be that some dude calling himself ‘Mac’ snuck into the kitchen and left his mark. Some shit like that.”

            Concepción finished the large dice, wiped the knife’s sides one by one across a folded service towel damp with sanitizer solution, and slid the knife back down into the bucket on the low shelf.

            “That small?” Vicki asked, staring down at the chunks of bright, rich cantaloupe. “I’d think you’d want them bigger, but what do I know, my family is known for having big mouths. Maybe that’s what it is.” She let out a rapid succession of quick shrieks that mellowed into guffawing.

            Jux was sliding the two stainless deep thirds of mac back into the hot side cooler and Concepción was pouring the simmering water into the basin of the soup station when Chef Junior strode into the kitchen from the back storage room with his neat black chef jacket buttoned snugly over his bigness and his baggy black trousers fluttering as he walked in his thick black clogs. “Hello hello,” he sang. “Are you ready to fucking obliterate this Mother’s Day or what? What’s going on? Did we get the potatoes started? Where’s Tati? Did he get here yet?” He held up for brief display and then set down on the prep table a tan tote that was bulging such that the letters of the basketball team’s name in the logo were distended and illegible. Might have been the Warriors. For a moment, they all, including Chef Junior, looked at the tote on the counter by the supine knife rack. There was silence.

            “Did the distributer call?” Junior suddenly asked with a finger toward the bar exit. “Did they leave a message?”

            Nobody knew.

            “There’s an answering machine out there for a reason,” Junior chided. “Who’s out front?”

            “Teatree,” Jux said. “I honestly don’t know what he knows.”

            Junior screwed a suspicious look at Jux and then left the kitchen.

            “He’s all jacked up,” Vicki noted as she plucked up chunks of melon one-by-one to place them in the big mixing bowl. “I seen it before. You know my brother bit a gila monster they were keeping at the library?”

            Jux was standing right in front of the whiteboard, upon which was clearly scrawled “MAC,” when Chef Junior emerged from the bar corner.

            “I have to go to the depot,” Junior announced. “Less than an hour, trust me. If you haven’t started cutting the potatoes yet, start.”

            “It didn’t make him sick or nothing,” Vicki continued as she scratched at the rind of a cantaloupe with the edge of the knife, “but he’s banned from the library now.”

            “Did you see the whiteboard?” Jux asked the chef.

            Junior stared at him for a moment. “Do what it says,” he finally commanded. “I don’t want to look over there right now, so just do what it says and get the potatoes started.”

            Jux glanced over at Concepción, who was already filling a large mixing bowl with russets from the cardboard crate on the lower shelf of the prep station. Junior nodded at him and then walked around Concepción toward the back exit through the storage room.

            “What’s in this bag?” Jux asked.

            Junior didn’t stop. “Hot plate,” his voice receded. “We probably won’t need it.”

            Once he’d gone, Concepción brought the potatoes around to the sink and looked with interest at Jux, who picked open the tote on the counter to reveal a shiny black induction burner. “What would we need this for?”

            Concepción shrugged.

            Teatree suddenly emerged from the bar and quickly and wordlessly walked through the kitchen with a long, heavy-duty black can liner that looked completely empty dangling from his grip. Jux watched him pass and then exit to the dock.

            “Jux,” Concepción said from the island. “Can you do these?”

            Jux nodded and went and washed his hands and then collected the mixing bowl of meaty russet potatoes and took them over to set the bowl over the dysfunctional cold side sink so that he could retrieve a tall china cap from its hang next to the chinois on the wall at the left side of the dishpit. Instead of having the catastrophically leaky faucet at the cold line replaced, Tati had simply instructed the plumber to cut it off. During service, the dry sink might be used to store variously-sized additional hotel pans or collect refuse, but it was also still possible to use the dish sink’s drain for rinsing with the right strategy. So he settled the china cap in the dry sink and filled it with the potatoes and then set the mixing bowl on the dish station. He then reached up to grip the nozzle of the sprayer hanging from a spring-lined tube over the dishpit and looked at Vicki, who was contemplating an uncut honeydew melon on the board. “Gotta rinse the potatoes,” he warned her.

            Vicki stepped back.

            “It’s fine,” Jux assured her. “It won’t splash you. We’ve been doing this for weeks now.”

            He aimed the nozzle high in the air and squeezed its ring lever, spewing a meter-long arc of fine, hard streams of water across and down at the potatoes.

            Teatree walked back through the kitchen, stopping to watch the cascade in a daze for a moment.

            “Hey, Teatree,” Jux said over the streams rinsing the potatoes, “if you—”

            “Nope,” Teatree interrupted, placing his hands over his ears and continuing to the bar corner. “Can’t talk right now.”

            “Keep an eye out for Tati, will you?” Jux called after him anyway. “I want to know as soon as he pulls up.”

            “Roger that,” came Teatree’s response as he disappeared into the front of the house.

            “Goddamned maniac,” Jux muttered with a shake of the head. He then noticed that the spray was mostly going down into the trash can at the side of the line, so he released the trigger and hung the nozzle back on the hook over the middle sink. As he turned, he saw the clock on the wall. “What the fuck?” he cried. “Six oh five? How did that happen? We haven’t even done anything yet.”

            He looked over at Vicki, who shrugged. “Speak for yourself, son,” she said. “I’m cutting the fruit.”

            Jux didn’t respond, primarily because he was watching with horror as Concepción lifted up a corner of the rubber mat and tugged the range unit away from the wall. After scooting it out a few centimeters, she walked off into the back room.

            “What is it, Concepción?” he asked, staring at the metal ventilation grate at the base of the wall.

            Concepción returned with a long broom and handled porter and slipped around the oven. “Two more,” she said, studying the floor as she leaned the porter against the side of the cooler and then gripped the broomstick tightly with both hands.

            Teatree suddenly walked back into the kitchen, looking down as he passed quickly with fingers plugging his ears.

            “You know what I hate about honeydew?” Vicki asked loudly. “I think it looks like the head of some kind of nasty alien or something.”

            Jux stared at her for a moment and then took up the mixing bowl and gave it a quick rinse and then a dip in the sani and rested it on the drying rack. He then retrieved a large dry mixing bowl from the high wire shelf and went about transferring the damp potatoes into it from the china cap, glancing occasionally back at Concepción, who was still hunting with a broom along the wall by the ventilation grate. When the cap was empty, he sprayed it down, plunged it into the sani sink, and hung it to dry before taking the bowl of potatoes and a large white cutting board over to the prep table. He slid the burner in the tote against the wall and went back over to the dishpit and pulled a soggy yellow towel out of the warm sanitizer solution in the red bucket and gave it a thorough wringing. He spread the wet towel on the shining surface of the prep table, smoothed it out, and then mounted the cutting board before reaching over and collecting a chef’s knife from the rack resting on the adjacent stainless sectional next to the dormant fryer. He felt at the contours of its handle and then placed it with a magnetic click back onto the rack and took up a different chef’s knife. This was the one that had a rough depression near the base of the handle from a time when it had found its way onto a hot burner. This one was always sharp.

            As soon as his blade touched the first of the potatoes, four people simultaneously appeared. From the storage room at the back, came Packie, beaming under his coiffed pompadour, and Teatree, still looking straight down. As they approached Jux positioned at work along the throughway, they met Arturo and Tati, who had just emerged from the bar entrance.

            “And your uncle can do it for free?” Tati was asking.

            “My cousin, bro,” Arturo corrected.

            Tati stopped and looked at him. “I’m sorry,” he said with fully sincere eye-contact.

            “All good,” Arturo assured him. “But, yeah, he can do it for free. Just, like, think about giving him a call when you need contracted work.”

            “Yes, yes,” Tati grumbled. He then beheld Jux, who was waiting patiently with the chef’s knife in one hand and an uncut potato in the other for everyone to continue on their way. Tati smirked. “Are you excited?”

            Jux eyeballed him. “Yeah,” he lied.

            Tati’s eyes gleamed and then followed Teatree, who snaked between them and retreated to the bar. Then Tati looked across the kitchen, nodding at Vicki and then staring at the torn-up hot side. “What’s going on over there, Concepción?”

            Concepción jabbed the broom down and then did it again and then rubbed the bristles vigorously against the wall. “Cucarachas,” she said gravely.

            Tati shifted his weight as he stared at her. Then he looked at Vicki. “What did she say. Was that cockroaches?”

            “Cockroaches,” Concepción confirmed, sweeping at the floor and moving back away from the ventilation grate.

            Tati’s eyes were wide. He directed a befuddled gaze at Packie.

“We just had the place sprayed,” Packie said disbelievingly.

            Concepción swept a little mound of charred bits along with the mutilated carcasses of three small cockroaches into the covered dustpan and maneuvered around to the front of the ranges so that she could press against it, sliding it back into place and the rubber mat flopping back down neat and everything and then hauling the broom and porter toward the back room. “Las alemanas,” she said before heading out to the dumpsters.

            Tati looked again at Vicki. “What was that?” he asked.

            Vicki squinted at him and then held up a hand with the thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart. “Oh, they’re those little ones that live in the walls,” she explained. “They’re the worst kind.”

            “Live in the walls,” Tati said, staring at her. “Are we talking about elves?”

            Packie directed a shitfaced grin at Jux. “Elves in the walls,” he said. “Love it.” Then he collected a stack of small square plates from atop the island and left to the bar.

            Jux was looking at Tati. “Cockroaches,” he told him. “German cockroaches. Las alemanas. In the walls.”

            Concepción reentered the kitchen with a flat of white eggs.

            “We’ve been hunting them all morning,” Jux said.

            “They come in with the packaging,” Tati said, rolling his eyes. “You have to make sure to scuff around the edges of everything you bring in, or else you might get a brood.”

            “That’s the asian cockroaches,” Jux said. “German cockroaches live in the walls. Anyone with a food handler’s card knows that.”

            “Oh,” Tati said, holding out his hands so that his fingers worked in the air before him at the kitchen in general. “I don’t touch the food.”

            “We know,” Jux said. Then, with a little nod, he added, “Thank you.”

            “Mother’s Day is a special day,” Tati announced generally. “We can’t allow it to be ruined by some freak infestation. They haven’t been into the food, have they?”

            “I mean,” Jux said, holding a palm out at the kitchen, “we don’t really know.”

            Tati stared at him. “But everything is wrapped appropriately, et cetera?”

            “Et cetera,” Jux said, pronouncing the Latin phrase with a hard “k.”

            “What?” Tati asked.

            “Et cetera,” Jux articulated. “The sea is pronounced like a cay.”

            Tati stared at Jux for a moment and then reached into a pocket for a microfiber cloth that he unfolded before his face and then gripped to his chest. “Where are my glasses?” Tati suddenly asked the ceiling.

            “Yes, everything is wrapped,” Jux told him. “Now, we cut the potatoes and the fruit, and I think Concepción’s got the eggs?” He ducked a bit to look through the island window at her at the hot side. She nodded. “She does,” Jux continued. “We’re about to have hollandaise on one side of those eggs and egg white omelets on the other. You got to let the magic happen.”

            Tati stared at him. “Tell me how.”

            “Leave us alone,” Jux advised. “Just leave us alone.”

            Tati inhaled deeply and conducted a punctual and superficial scan of the surfaces of the kitchen and then tucked the microfiber cloth back into the pocket of his casual trousers. “I can’t promise you that,” Tati told Jux. “This is my restaurant.”

            Suddenly Packie emerged from the bar corner, gallivanting past like a champion and muttering, “Bread plate.”

            Jux scowled at the back of Packie’s head for a moment and then looked back at Tati. “We know it’s your restaurant,” he said, still gripping the knife and gesticulating a bit with it as he spoke, “but you got to leave it alone while we’re working, all right? Just for once, really, think about how we’re back here firing the proteins and scrubbing the grime and it all has to happen back here real quick! Real quick! Some kind of other idea comes in here and the whole thing gets derailed, poisoned. Wrecked, fucked.”

            Tati stared at him.

            “One idea at a time,” Jux insisted.

            Tati reached up to his forehead and, finding no eyeglasses, flicked his fingers together. “Maybe that is very wise,” he said. “Do you instruct your community college students like this?”

            Jux cocked an eyebrow at him. “You never took up my offer to learn about discourse communities,” he said. “I have a whole unit on it that corresponds with a developing set of interludes related to the history of the English language, which is juicy with exploitation.”

            Tati stared at him. “Regardless of all that,” he said, “you should know that my interest here is directly related to how well this kitchen works.” He then stared at the wall above the fryer. “Are those German Cockroaches?”

            They all looked over at the wall, which was empty but for the two holes where the knife rack’s mounts had come loose.

            “Are you serious?” Jux asked.

            “I don’t have my glasses,” Tati explained.

            “Those are holes in the wall,” Jux told him, “from where the knife rack used to be.”

            Tati frowned at the knife rack on the countertop. “Why did you take it down?”

            “We didn’t take it down,” Jux said. “It fell. Just fell right off, throwing knives everywhere.”

            Tati inclined his head to peer at Jux as if he were doing it over his glasses. “But how could it do that?”

            Jux shrugged.

            “I’m telling you guys,” Arturo insisted, “it’s just some crazy pressure in here, maybe a blockage or something. And the way those vents are set, every time there’s a blast from the building it goes straight along the ceiling and down behind the paneling. That’s why stuff gets knocked off the top of the island.”

            “This was a knife rack that was bolted to the wall,” Jux said.

            “The wall paneling,” Arturo corrected. “Over time, pressure like this can even loosen nuts.”

            “Are you saying the air conditioning disassembled the mount?” Jux asked.

            “Some nuts will loosen on their own over time,” Arturo said. “Depends on how it was put together.”

            “Happens all the time in construction,” Tati concurred.

            “The washers weren’t the right size, either,” Arturo added as he studied the pieces of the mount bound to the magnetic strip along with the knives. “Whoever put in on there didn’t know what they were doing.”

            “It was up there ten years,” Tati said.

            “It would have stayed up there forever if they’d installed it right,” Arturo said.

            “Another bit of Almo’s legacy, no doubt,” Tati mumbled.

            Concepción looked over from the range, where she was whisking small cubes of butter into a bath of egg yolks. “You did it.”

            “I’m sorry?” Tati asked.

            “You put that there,” Concepción said.

            “Me?” Tati asked.

            “You,” Concepción said. “And four years ago, not ten.”

            Tati stared at her. Then he directed his blank expression toward Vicki and Arturo and then to Jux. “I certainly don’t remember doing that,” he said. “It was probably Almo, which is why it fell. We have a lot to undo in here because of his string of failures.”

            Concepción was peering hatefully at the owner.

            Then Packie came back into the kitchen, brandishing the bulky, plastic-wrapped slicer apparatus before him like a treasure. “Bread plate,” he uttered again as he passed toward the bar corner.

            “Are you trying to piss me off?” Jux hollered at him.

            Packie looked back. “What?”

            “You keep saying ‘bread plate,’” Jux said. “Bread plate bread plate. You know how we feel about you and your bread plates back here.”

            “I didn’t say bread plate,” Packie protested innocently.

            “He didn’t say bread plate,” Tati agreed.

            “‘Love it,’” Packie said. “I said ‘love it.’”

            Jux set the knife onto the cutting board and held up both hands and closed his eyes. “Can we please just get to preparing for this service?” he asked. “I’m just barely started on the potatoes and all this chatter is just too distracting in addition to the, you know, ambient distress in here.” He glanced up at the wall clock and, after swallowing thickly, added, “Service starts at eight, correct?”

            Packie nodded martially. “That’s right,” he said. Then he raised the slicer unit a few centimeters to better display it. “We’re setting up cheese and charcuterie at the bar, so you won’t need to worry about any artesianal plates.”

            “Yeah, well, it’s ‘artisan,’ not ‘artesian’ or, god forbid, ‘artesianal,’” Jux said, “but we’ve been through all that before and apparently it has had no effect so, yeah, there’s that. But thanks for taking over the plates. That’s a good idea.”

            Packie beamed at him, his forehead shaking ever so slightly and causing the wave of his produced hair to wiggle.

            “Packie suggested it,” Tati said.

            “How are you going to do the bread?” Jux asked.

            “No free bread plates,” Tati said. “No one’s ringing in bread plates.”

            “No free bread plates,” Packie echoed. “Not ringing them in.”

            “That’s not what I’m saying,” Jux insisted. “I’m talking about for the artisan plates—cheese plates, meat plates. You’re going to do either warm bread or crustinis on every one of those, right? How are you going to keep the bread supplied? I can see grapes, strawberries, nuts, cornichons, whatever, but we all know the bread supply chain can get strained around here.”

            “We’re getting a local delivery,” Packie said, still beaming. “That was my idea, too.”

            “Does Junior know?” asked Jux.

            Tati suddenly looked around. “He isn’t here?”

            “He was here earlier,” Jux said, eying the uncut potatoes with trepidation. “He’ll be back soon.”

            “So just let him know that you guys don’t have to worry about cheese plates,” Packie suggested before leaving the kitchen.

            “Professor,” Tati said to Jux, “I think grading time is over. Relax. It’s Mother’s Day!” He held an arm up as if to give Jux a slap on the shoulder but instead raised his other arm to meet it in mid-air for a little play of hands that was punctuated by a double clap.

            Concepción was wide-eyed and frowning as the owner left the kitchen.

            “Piece of shit,” Arturo muttered. He flicked the back of a hand against Jux’s shoulder and cocked his head toward the women. “Come on, man,” he whispered, “let’s do this right.”

            Before Jux could respond, Arturo turned and wished at Concepción and Vicki, “Happy Mother’s Day!”

            Concepción nodded gratefully at him and then scowled back at her sauce.

            “I don’t have children,” Vicki said. “I wonder why. Any man gets close to me is going to learn I’m about to crush his stone.” She rolled the blade of her knife against the uncut shell of the melon as she cackled.

            “You haven’t been able to cut, either?” Jux asked her.

            Vicki shrugged. “I’m just scared I won’t do it right.”

            Jux motioned with his hands. “Just cut the goddamned fruit,” he suggested. “That might just be the first round of cutting we’ll need to do.”

            Vicki stared down at the cantaloupe.

            Concepción violently, but with clean precision, ran the whisk along the sides of the pan as the hollandaise filled a shallow sixth. She then took the pan and whisk over to the dish station and forced them with a thud into the hot, soapy water in the right sink. “I will cut,” she said, plunging her hands into the sani of the left sink and then stepping to the dispenser to gather paper towels.

            “What about the hot side line?” Jux asked. “Did you already set it up?”

            “Just hollandaise,” Concepción said. She crumpled the damp towels and tossed them into the tall can by the bar corner, nothing but net. “I will cut.”

            “Be my guest,” said Vicki.

            Concepción collected the knife from her and quickly broke down two watermelons.

            “All right,” Jux said. “Arturo, can you do the potatoes?”

            “Hell yeah,” Arturo said.

            As Arturo began dicing the potatoes, Jux plugged his iPod into the stereo above the fryer and set it to play Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. As it slowly started up, Junior appeared from the back room carrying two enormous paper bags bursting with wrapped loaves of bread.

            “So you do know about the bread situation already,” Jux said as he opened the lid of the cooler and began unwrapping some of the hot side containers and arranging them between the brackets.

            “This bread?” Junior asked as he set the packages on the prep table and stared down at Arturo dicing the potatoes.

            “Packie said we were getting local delivery,” Jux said, “but I didn’t think that meant you.”

            “What are you talking about?” Junior asked. He looked around the kitchen. “Is this all we’ve got on the potatoes?” He reached over and shut off the stereo.

            “Eh, you probably like Rush,” Jux mumbled.

            “What?” asked Junior. “What about the potatoes? You haven’t even finished cutting the fruit, yet.”

            “We’ve been distracted by the German cockroaches,” Jux said, “but I think we’re on track now. Especially since they’re doing the bread and plates out front.”

            “What?” asked Junior. “They’re not going to do that.”

            “Packie and Brian were just in here talking about it,” Jux said. “They even brought the goddamned slicer out there. Packie looks pretty excited that he’s going to get to carve the pig for all the moms.”

            Junior looked over at the bar corner and then at Arturo. “More potatoes, please,” he instructed and then scooted past and went out to the front of the house.

            “Guess I better do more potatoes, then,” Arturo said as he cut.

            Jux tore the plastic from the last of the stainless ninths and dropped it into the remaining open slot of the spread and then shut the cooler lid and went over and got the large mixing bowl from the drying rack and walked over and filled it with fat potatoes from the box.

            Junior reentered the kitchen. “They’re going to start seating in fifteen minutes,” he announced.

            Jux looked up at the clock. “It’s barely seven,” he said. “Service doesn’t start until eight.”

            “There are already like ten mothers waiting out front,” Junior said, “and they all want coffee and cheese. Packie’s setting up a rental espresso machine as we speak.”

            “Tati rented an espresso machine?” Jux cried as he dumped the potatoes into the china cap. “He made a good business decision? That’s wonderful. Good for him. We’re still not serving until eight, correct?”

            “I didn’t even have to argue with them,” Junior said. “They promised we wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

            Jux eyed him skeptically. “We’ll see about that,” he said. He aimed and gripped the nozzle and sent another arc of high-pressure streams across and down at the dolmen of raw potatoes.

            Teatree suddenly entered the kitchen and swiftly and wordlessly swiped a stack of small square plates from the top of the island.

            “Hey, get your own plates,” Jux warned, ceasing the spray. “Packie already took a bunch to the bar.” The nozzle dribbled.

            Teatree’s eyes darted back and forth across the floor as he retreated with the plates. “But we need more. I’m sorry,” he said, wincing and disappearing.

            Junior’s eyes were wide. “Weirdo,” he said, drawing out the vowels. Then he turned and addressed the kitchen generally. “Okay, I love you all very much, but it appears that we’re not all really working at the capacity we should be, considering that this is Mother’s Day and we’re just under an hour from an experience that will probably involve fifty tickets an hour for I’d say probably three straight hours followed by a peak hour or two where we’ll probably see a hundred. That all starts just fifty-some minutes from now. So tell me what’s going on. Why do we have two people working on potatoes?”

            Jux looked down at the potatoes dripping in the china cap. “You said more potatoes.”

            “But there’s other things we can be doing, too,” Junior said. “Tati insisted on flatbreads, so this needs to get turned into a pizza station, and yet we’re still cutting potatoes.”

            “We’re getting there, man,” Jux said. “Sometimes all this talking gets distracting.”

            “Well how about this, then?” Junior asked, taking up the china cap of potatoes and transferring them to the bowl on the counter by Arturo. “Arturo does the potatoes, and you do something else.” He then took the china cap over to the dishpit, gave it a rinse, dipped it in sani, and hung it on the rack.

            “I was just going to do that,” Jux said. “Then I was going to do something else. Settle down, man. I think this place is getting to all of us.”

            Concepción was gripping a wide chef’s knife.

            “I know you know this, Concepción,” Junior continued, “but I’m saying it for them. You and I have seen a Mother’s Day brunch. They haven’t. Let’s go over the menu one more time.” He crossed through the line and unpinned a sheet of paper from the corkboard and pressed it against the stainless steel panel on the side of the island so that he could review it along with Jux and Concepción. “Starters,” he read aloud. “Fresh Fruit Parfait. We’ll need to keep cutting fruit. Is the housemade granola ready to go?”

            Concepción nodded and leaned over to look at the ingredient rack in the cold side station. “Big chunks.”

            “Good,” Junior said. “We’ll need it.”

            Concepción walked over to the cold side, straining a towel from the red bucket and then jabbing it with her fingers up against the bottom of the service shelf. She wrenched her wrist and carefully transferred the towel away from the food and directed a crushed little cockroach to the can before tossing the towel a full five meters into the rag bin, nothing but net. “Thirteen,” she said. Then she washed her hands.

            “Thirteen what?” Junior asked.

            “German cockroaches,” Jux said.

            Junior was staring at the cold station. “All the way up in there?”

            “These are the things we deal with,” Jux said.

            Junior was about to speak, but he was interrupted by a shrill cry from the front followed by the rushed entrance of Packie on a quest for a broom and porter. “A woman dropped her pomegranate bellini while I was shaving the jamon serrano,” he explained.

            “Don’t you have a porter at the bar?” Junior asked.

            “We need another one,” Packie told him.

            “Bring it back when you’re done,” Junior instructed.

            “Don’t worry,” Packie said with a tick. He grinned terribly at everyone and was as quick as he’d come back out to the front.

            Junior shook his head. “If I didn’t know him better,” he said, “I’d say this was Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something.”

            Jux frowned at the chef. “How well do you know him?”

            “That he’s a dick,” Junior said.

            “That’s what you know?” Jux asked. “Couple months ago, I would have almost sworn he was a changed man. Serious devolution, though. Backsliding.”

            “Let’s just take a look at this menu,” Junior insisted. “Look here. Starters. Fresh Fruit Parfait. Ancient Grains with Goat Ballls. Is anyone making oatmeal around here?”

            Concepción scanned the prep board, blank but for the “MAC,” and then collected a stock pot from the shelf at the base of the dish counter.

            “So we got that going, now, just in time,” Junior said.

            A sudden buzzing sounded from the ticket printer at the hot side service window. Out popped a ticket.

            “What the fuck is this?” Jux whined.

            “Wait and see, wait and see,” Junior advised.

            Jux plucked the ticket through the island’s service window and studied it as he slipped around the end of the line to stick it up into the clip in first position at the left side of the clip strip. “Chicken and Waffles,” he announced, “and Eggs Benedict.”

            Packie suddenly swept into the room. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you what I was doing before I rang that one in. Everyone’s been told that the kitchen will start serving at eight.”

            “Then why are you already ringing them in?” Jux asked.

            “No, wait, this is good,” Junior said. “We’ll have extra time to see what to focus on, as long as everyone understands that nothing’s actually getting fired until eight.”

            “I thought it might help,” Packie said.

            The printer sounded again, quickly producing five short tickets and then, halfway through the sixth, jamming with a jarring crunch. They were all bread plates.

            Jux opened up the printer and tore at the paper to loosen the jam and then held up the string of tickets still connected by corners. He looked at Packie. “What are you trying to do?”

            Packie’s eyes widened. “I’m just standing right here,” he said. “I didn’t put those tickets in.”

            Jux wadded the tickets and tossed them at the can by the hot side, missing, and then collecting them from the mat to place them directly into the trash. “Six bread plates, my ass,” he swore. “Is it Max? Is Max out there?”

            “Everyone’s out there,” Packie said.

            “Tell them we’re in no mood for shenanigans,” Jux commanded. “This is Mother’s Day, not some kind of playground.” He rethreaded the printer tape and clicked the lid shut and the mechanism immediately made a loud thunking noise before proceeding to print out seven more tickets of bread plate orders. “Son of a bitch,” Jux cried as he read the tickets. “We’re going to need a new roll if this keeps up.”

            “I’ll find out who did it,” Packie said, nodding and leaving.

            “What a mook,” Jux said. “The improved version.” He trashed the tickets.

            “All right, let’s get busy,” Junior suggested, holding up the menu again. “Oatmeal with Goat Ballls.” He frowned.

            “What?” Jux asked.

            “Is that three ells?” Junior asked.

            Jux and Vicki squinted at the menu.

            “Yeah, three,” Vicki said.

            Junior gripped his forehead. “There are like four hundred copies of this out there,” he said, shaking his head. “‘Hey, mom, want goat ballls with your oatmeal?’ Jesus Christ. What an embarrassment.” He suddenly scanned the cold side prep rack, which was partially assembled and chilly with mounds of fresh ice. “Where are the goat balls? You guys did them, right?”

            Jux and Concepción exchanged looks.

            “No, we didn’t do goat balls,” Jux said testily. “Didn’t you guys do the goat balls last night?”

            Junior threw up his hands. “What is it with you and screwing up the prep all the sudden?” he cried. “Have you simply forgotten how to read a list and prepare the things on the list?”

            Jux was steaming. “You fucker,” he grumbled through his teeth as he ungracefully slipped past Junior and stepped to the whiteboard. “Do you see goat balls on this board? Do you?”

            “I personally put goat balls up there last night,” Junior said. “And ranch potatoes, and fennel pomegranate vinaigrette, and—”

            “Then why isn’t it all up there now?” Jux interrupted. “This is exactly what the board looked like this morning when we arrived. Including this big-ass ‘mac’ in the script of a four-year-old. And there are two fat thirds of mac already in there, and it’s not even on the menu this morning. So what the fuck is all this you’re saying about reading the prep list?” He slapped the whiteboard and stormed out through the storage room to the back dock, immediately pulling a pack of cigarettes out of a jeans pocket under his apron.

            Junior swooped out into the dock in pursuit. “Don’t you raise your fucking voice at me, motherfucker!” he hollered. “I’ve worked with a lot of whiny pricks over the years, and not one of them got away with it. If you can’t handle this kind of pressure, if you’re a little bitch, pack up your shit and leave. If you get stressed out because you fucked up or you get blamed for fucking up when you didn’t, then you keep your little temper under control and make it nice!”

            Jux trembled and unsuccessfully attempted to light his cigarette. He took a deep breath. “What about servers?” he asked.

            “They don’t count,” Junior snapped. “Yell at them if you want.”

            Jux nodded and tried again, and this time managed to get the end of his cigarette burning. He took a drag and blew out a billow of smoke. “You’re the one who’s fucking screaming, dude.”

            Junior laughed, his face bright red. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “What the fuck?”

            Concepción, Arturo, and Vicki had all watched the exchange from the back door, but now Tati emerged, passing through them. “What is all the yelling about?” Tati asked the chef.

            Jux exhaled another cloud of smoke. “Miscommunication.”

            Tati motioned at the restaurant. “There are mothers out there.”

            “Yeah,” Junior said, “we know. It just ran a little hot for a second.”

            “Are you behind?” Tati asked.

            “Maybe a little,” Junior said.

            “Then why are you smoking cigarettes out here?” Tati asked.

            Jux puffed. “Because I’ve been working since five ay em and I’m taking a break.”

            “We got it under control,” Junior assured the owner. “No more yelling until service starts.”

            Tati stared at him. “I don’t think we want it then, either.”

            Junior smiled.

            When Jux finished his cigarette a few minutes later and went inside, he found the kitchen bustling with activity. Arturo was tossing packed balls of goat cheese and bitter herbs in an egg bath at the prep table, which was loaded with plastic-wrapped steel containers filled with various pizza toppings sitting on ice in two hotel pans. Nearby, Vicki was sweeping up a mound of eggy salt from the floor into a dustpan. At the hot side, Concepción was spreading seasoned diced potatoes on two large sheet pans next to Junior, who was aerating a vat of egg mixture with a ladle while overseeing a batch of poaching eggs. Jux took it all in and then, as he washed his hands, asked, “Why is it that Mother’s Day is all about eggs? Is this some fucked-up fertility celebration or what?”

            Junior gathered a sturdy, glistening poached egg from the simmering lemony water and set it next to another on the small rack lining the side of the pan where they waited together in the steamy vapors. “It’s eggs because it’s brunch, not because it’s Mother’s Day. Brunch is about eggs, at the core, no matter what day it is.”

            “Yeah,” Jux said confusedly as he waved his dripping hand before the unresponsive towel dispenser, “but isn’t there like an egg hunt some people do? Wait, no, that’s Easter Bunny and shit.”

            “All right,” Junior called out. “Service in ten minutes and we already have sixteen tables queued up. Let’s keep the nonsense talk to a minimum until we’re running at peak capacity.”

            “Got it,” Jux said.

            “Let’s go over roles,” Junior said, delivering another juicy blob of poached egg to the rack. “Concepción’s maining the cold side with Arturo as a backup and I’m on the hot with you, Jux, but sometimes you’ll both be over at that pizza station, depending on how many orders we get. Vicki’s going to help with plating and she and Arturo are also responsible for the dishpit. It’s going to be pretty thin, pretty quick, and it’s going to be like that until backup arrives, so I think we’re all going to need to chip in at the dishes on occasion.”

            A ticket printed and Concepción tore it and stuck it up into the strip.

            “You want me to expo?” Jux asked.

            “Boof’s here,” Junior said.

            “Well, I’ll be,” Jux said grinningly. “I haint seen him in a piece. Billiam Buford Buckingham the Fourth. Where he at?”

            “Out front,” Junior said. “He’s going to be back here expoing the whole time, so you’ll get your chance to see him.”

            “Fucking Boof,” Jux said. “Gotta keep an eye on him, though, or we might get hornswoggled by the front.”

            “Horn what?” Junior asked.

            “Hornswoggled,” Jux said, indicating how obvious it was with a little shrug. “Like, getting ripped off or outplayed kind of thing.”

            Chef Junior was shaking his head with an appreciative grin. “You go put that in your book,” he suggested.

            “I’m just saying he’s cool and all, but he’s pretty tight with Brian and his elves out there,” Jux said as the tickets kept printing, the chain dangling down like tickets pumped out of an arcade game. “It’s happened before that he’s used his rapport with us to squeeze out a couple of bread plates, if you get my meaning.”

            Another ticket printed, and Concepción reached over and tore them all from the printer and moved them one by one up into the strip, which was filling.

            “I think I do,” Junior said as he skimmed frothy protein flecked with pepper from the surface of the simmering water. “But we aren’t doing bread plates. Or cheese plates. Or meat plates. They can carve to their hearts’ desire.”

            “I’m just saying,” Jux continued. “He’s a shifty one.”

            Junior turned and reached across to press one of the numbered buttons on the call panel fixed to the upper housing of the hot side station.

            “Who are you calling?” Jux asked.

            “Boof,” Junior said.

            Two more tickets printed.

            “We’re starting to get a lot of tickets,” Junior said. “Besides, don’t you want to see him?”

            Jux held up a hand. “Whatever, man,” he said. Then he went around the island to the hot side. “Tell me about what we’re doing over here.”

            Junior pointed at the corner of the hot side station. “Sometimes you’re here helping me plate and sometimes you’re plating straight from the fryer. There’s the chicken, the frites, and the goat balls, so try to keep it clean so we don’t end up with a mix of tidbits.”

            “Loud and clear,” Jux said.

            “Help Concy with some of those salads first,” Junior instructed.

            Jux nodded and found his way to the cold side.

            Then Boof entered, his large, oily, bespectacled head bobbing. “You rang?” he asked with a grin.

            “When are you starting back here?” Junior asked. “We’re five minutes in.”

            “Right now, if you’d like,” Boof said.

            Junior nodded. “Also, Jux was talking about you.”

            “No,” Boof said, beaming at Jux. “Was he really?”

            “Stay in your place, bitch,” Jux told him.

            Boof stifled a laugh. “Ever so subtle,” he said. “If you must know, I am prepared to spar with you all morning, provided that it yields a swift and accurate service.”

            “Your eloquence has no place here,” Jux said. “These are the rugged battlements.”

            Boof adjusted his wide spectacles. “I still can’t imagine how you could have legitimately earned a Master’s degree in English literature without knowing that a trebuchet is different from a catapult.”

            “Is this about the Battle of Hastings again?” Jux whined. “I told you a hundred times that that shit doesn’t interest me. I’m into Joyce, Faulkner, Vonnegut, Morrison—none of that English crap. Well, except Blake…”

            “It was the Battle of Agincourt,” Boof corrected.

            Jux turned up his nose as he sprinkled thin shavings of roasted fennel across a few salads. “About to be the battle of your mother’s ass if you don’t get the fuck out.”

            “This is where I work,” Boof said. “You know that.”

            Jux jiggled some fingers in the air.

            “And don’t forget that you thought that ‘phi’ rhymed with ‘pi,’” Boof added.

            “That was a separate conversation,” Jux said.

            Boof nodded. “There have been many instances of your demonstration of ignorance.”

            Jux held up a middle finger, from which a bit of fennel dangled, momentarily stuck to the material of the food service glove. “Pi is a completely different mathematical constant.”

            Boof chuckled. “Stick to overwritten modernist cold-sores, geezer.”

            The little fleck of fennel fell onto a salad as he lowered his finger. “That’s what I said,” he muttered down at the line, “when I was rejecting your mother’s pathetic advances.”

            “Oh shit!” Raul cried as he spread some spek on a flatbread.

            “What did I say about nonsense talk?” Junior reminded them.

            Then the tickets really started coming. It was two minutes to eight. They blossomed up out of the printer, and because Boof had directed the upward flow of the tickets away from the line, they formed a wagon wheel before collapsing onto his outstretched palms. When there was a brief pause, Boof collected them with the wipe of a forearm and then began tearing them apart and assembling them in reverse from the opposite side of the island along the strip, which was now almost full.

            “Six more Eggs Benedict,” Junior called out. “Let’s go! I sure hope you bitches are ready for this, because I am.”

            The next one-hundred or so minutes passed in a fury of last-second deliveries and precarious platings. There was the occasional mishap, such as when a poached egg shifted off of a wide slotted spoon and fell to a thwack into one of the circular holes of the rubber mat, but a pile of salt quickly neutralized the spill and they worked on. At one point, a hot pizza was shuffled onto a service plate just as another pizza, raw doughy and ready to fire, was flopped onto the same paddle held up by Arturo. Only three pizzas were lost during the craziness, so, overall, it was good. They even managed for much of that time to keep the active tickets down to what could fit on the clip strips, despite the fact that Vicki was back in the storage room most of the time live-socialmediaing her experiences at a professional Mother’s Day brunch.

            By ten, however, a steady surge in tickets coincided with the discovery that one of the shallow third pans of breakfast potatoes hadn’t been tossed with sauteed onions and peppers, and that had to be fixed. The printer buzzed incessantly, belching out tickets in an enormous chain that Boof was struggling to keep untangled.

            “Who do potatoes,” Junior said as he slid two square white bowls full of thick, piping grain meal onto their respective little square plates in the hot side window.

            Boof swept a collection of sections of the chain of tickets away from his face like a cobweb. “Me?” he asked. “I mean, I can, but there are all these.” He sorted through the chain, grabbing up new lengths from the printer as it continued pumping.

            “Why do you want him to do the potatoes?” Jux asked Junior. “I can do the potatoes.”

            “Who do the potatoes,” Junior said again. “Who?”

            “What?” Jux asked.

            “Who?” Junior repeated. He grunted at the printer, which was still printing away, and then reached over and pressed several times in rapid succession the 1 button on the call panel, next to which was written “Packie.” Then he looked over at Concepción, who was stomping the toe of one of her black service shoes against the floor mat at the base of one of the island’s feet. Beyond her, Arturo was hauling tall stacks of returned plates and plunging them into the soapy right sink.

            “Are you saying ‘you’ or ‘who?’” Jux asked the chef.

            Tickets were still coming.

            Then Packie entered the kitchen with an officious but benevolent raise of the chin.

            “Get Brian back here,” Junior called. “We need to hold off on seating for at least 45 minutes.”

            Packie nodded assent and left.

            More tickets skittered out of the printer.

            Junior looked at Jux. “What?”

            “Are you saying ‘you’ or ‘who?’” Jux asked.

            “Yoohoo?” Junior echoed. “Fuck Yoohoo. Just do the potatoes.”

            Jux held up his hands. “All right,” he said. “Jesus.”

            “Lend a hand, anyone?” Boof called softly. His forearms and shoulders were swathed in lengths of tickets and he gripped a thick folded section of them out in his fist.

            “What do you think this is, the prize counter?” Jux cried. “You look like a ten-year-old with his skee-ball winnings.”

            The printer stopped.

            “Unnecessary chatter as usual, I see,” Duke said as he suddenly appeared from the back room. His chef’s trousers were neat and black with white pinstripes, and two sharpies and the head of an instant-read thermometer stuck out from the snug shoulder pockets of his white service jacket. He exchanged nods with Junior. “Hey, boss,” he said as he began helping Boof sort through the curtains of tickets.

            Concepción stomped at another area on the floor around the cold side.

            Then Tati emerged from the bar, his unbespectacled face red and glistening. “Yes?”

            Junior looked up across the kitchen. “We need to stop seating,” he said, “for at least 45 minutes. An hour would be better.”

            Tati blinked several times. “It’s Mother’s Day.”

            “Yeah, which is why we have to put a hold on the seating for a bit so we can catch up,” Junior explained.

            “It’s the fucking weeds, man,” Arturo said as he slid several little plates into the dishwasher rack.

            “Forty-five minutes?” Tati asked.

            “An hour,” Junior offered. “I told Packie 45 minutes, but let’s do an hour,” Junior said, pressing the 1 button on the call console several times again. “There’s like two-hundred and fifty tickets here we haven’t even really looked at.”

            Tati pressed a hand against his chest and scrunched his face for a moment before exhaling and nodding. “I’ll tell them to stop.”

            “They already did,” Junior said, holding a palm out at the quiet printer.

            “Hm,” Tati said.

            Packie arrived like a precocious sentry. “What is it?” he asked.

            “Tati’s agreeing to a hold seating for an hour,” Junior said.

            Packie looked at Tati for a moment and then around the kitchen. “Is something wrong?”

            “They’re behind,” Tati said.

            Packie’s eyes widened. “Some of the early tables still haven’t got their food yet,” he noted.

            Junior motioned at the line windows, which were full of plated food ready to be delivered. “Looks like we’re not the only ones behind,” he said, taking two stacks of sorted tickets from Duke.

            “This is Mother’s Day,” Tati insisted.

            “That’s right,” Junior said as he glanced at the stacks and then held one out to Concepción. “That’s why we need to slow it down.”

            Tati stared at him. “Mothers need food.”

            Concepción glared at Tati as she held out her hand to accept the fat wad of cold side tickets from Junior, who began thumbing through his own collection.

            “Apparently pizza is what they want,” Junior said, shaking his head. “Pizza and Eggs Benedict.”      

            “Are these for E11?” Packie asked, walking past the pizza station and staring down at the bowls of hot grains.

            “Shit,” Jux suddenly exclaimed. “Shit shit shit shit shit.” He squeezed between Boof and Duke, ducking under an arcing jump rope of tickets, to lift the fryer rack, which contained four overfried goat balls. “Shit shit shit shit,” he continued, “shit shit shit shit shit shit shit,” as he tested one with a pair of steel tongs. Its surface, like the others, was hard and dark brown.

            Junior was studying the tickets lining the window. “These are for Teatree,” he said. He pressed the 15 button on the panel, twice. “Where is he?” he muttered.

            Concepción, somehow now again brandishing a broom, suddenly pushed the cooler a few centimeters out of place and shoved her body between it and the oven to scoot it away a bit, both actions causing the grimy black rubber floor mats to ripple.   

            “What is happening over there?” Tati asked.

            “German cockroaches, I’d imagine,” Jux said as he tonged the balls of overfried goat cheese into quickly-settling plops in the viscous grain meal in the bowls. He then reached over the island between hot plates to gather a pinch of fresh chopped parsley from a ninth pan in the hot side ingredient rack. He flicked the bits of green, spreading it between the two bowls.

            Junior stared at him. “Why’d you put parsley on it?”

            Jux motioned at the bowls. “For color.”

            “For color?” Junior cried. “What are you, my grandma? You don’t just toss things on other things to make them look nice before you serve them, you have to put something that tastes good onto them.”

            “This sounds like kitchen business,” Tati said, leaving. Packie followed.

            “I just,” Jux stammered. “I just, you know, I—” He trailed off as he watched with the others Concepción, who was now pressing herself back along the wall behind both the oven and the range, jabbing down with the broom near the low ventilation grate.

            “What is going on?” Junior cried. “This is not the time for a cockroach hunt.”

            Concepción shot him a peevish glance and then slid out from between the furnishings and then edged them back in place with her body.

            “Vicki,” called Junior. “We need you out here now.”

            A couple of seconds later, Vicki sauntered out from the back room, tapping a few last times at her phone before sticking into a back pocket of her jeans. “What can I do?”

            “Run the dishes,” Junior said. “Arturo, you’ve got twenty-six pizzas to make.”

            Arturo nodded and tossed a rag into a red sani bucket and went over to wash his hands.

            “Jux, you’re firing pizzas and backing up both sides,” Junior continued. “Duke, you’re hot with me.”

            Duke eyed him like a predator. “I fill spaces that need filled, so if that’s your thing…”

            “Professional,” Junior insisted.

“We’re going to need more dough,” Arturo called from the speed rack. “There’s only like thirty on here,” he said, eying the half-globes of portioned pizza dough rising on two full sheet pans.

            “I’ll do it,” Jux offered.

            “Make it nice,” Junior cautioned. He cracked three eggs into the simmering frothy water, guiding each runny mass into a ball with a quick turn of the ladle. “Don’t forget you’re the one firing them, like, immediately.”

            Jux squatted at the prep table next to Arturo and opened the plastic lid of the flour bucket. As soon as he did so, he jerked back and stood up.

            Arturo slapped a dough ball on the counter and pressed it out into an oval. “What the fuck?”

            “There are roaches in the flour,” Jux said. “Fucking germans.”

            Concepción barreled a piercing gaze at him.

            “How many?” Junior asked.

            “Three?” Jux said. “At least three. One just burrowed back down.”

            Chef Junior thumbed slices of toast onto the several large square plates lined up before him on the hot side board. “Well, get them out of there.”

            Jux plugged the lid back onto the container and hefted it up and crossed to the back.

            “What are you doing?” Junior asked.

            “I’m not sifting roaches out of the pizza flour,” Jux said. “There are like four sacks of bouncer up front, so I’m just going to get one of those.” Then he left out through the back room to the dock and emptied the flour into the dumpster, creating billows of white haze over the moldering sacks of rubbish. When he returned to the kitchen, Crystal, Lyle, Max, and Juniper were all crammed along with Arturo and Boof in the walkway.

            “These are for A9,” Lyle was saying.

            “No, those are for A15,” Boof corrected, tickets fanned out like the hand of an unfortunate Uno player. “Those,” he continued, pointing at the two plates Max was holding, “are for A9.”

            Max looked down at the mess of eggs on the plates. “They’re the same, aren’t they?” he asked. “It’s just eggs and stuff.”

            “Are you stoned?” Boof asked.

            “Of course he’s stoned,” Jux said, sidling between them all with the empty bin. He had to duck under raised plates a couple of times.

            Junior peered through the island’s hot side window. “Those,” he pointed to one of the plates in Max’s hands, on which a pile of runny eggs were smothering, “are Huevos Rancheros. See the tortillas? Those,” he continued, pointing to the other plate, on which a pile of runny eggs were smothering things, “are Eggs Benedict. They look nothing like each other.”

            “I just meant the same as what he’s got,” Max whined with a motion at Lyle.

            “That’s not what you said,” Jux noted as he finally passed through the gauntlet and went over and gave the container a once-over at the dishpit.

             Boof helped them exchange plates. “Please,” he said generally, “you guys have got to stop coming in here and picking up plates without going through me.”

            “Billington Buford Bufjordski in the big boy pants now,” Jux said.

            “That’s the kind of chatter we don’t need,” Duke said from across the kitchen.

            “Jesus,” Jux muttered with rolled eyes. He left the dripping tub on the drying rack and went to the front, muttering, “Where’s the fun gone?”

            The cacophonous din of more than a hundred simultaneously talking voices and clattering diningware jolted him with mild vertigo as he passed the bar and went through the server station, excusing himself as he ducked by past someone in server garb on his way to the tall cupboards in the gloomy dormant retail nook, which, despite the abundant sunlight flowing into the dining area, was dim and cool. As he reached out to grip the cabinet handles, he glanced back over toward the server station sink, where the back of the unknown server was now positioned before the defunct coffee station.

            “Don’t they have a rental espresso service going on out there?” Jux asked.

            The figure slowly stepped away toward the bar, view blocked by the edge of the cabinets. Jux leaned to see more, but whoever it was had apparently already made it out through the bar. He kept frowning for a moment and then opened both doors of the cabinet before actually turning his attention to their contents, and, by the time he did, a plastic-wrapped knife that had somehow been left in there was already toppling from the high shelf where it had been apparently resting against the inside of the door panel. The blade struck his apron at the belly and then fell with a quick bounce across the floor.

            Jux was still gripping the handles of the cupboard, but he was staring down at where the dusty plastic-wrapped blade had slid to a catch in the gap at the base of the freezer. “They remember,” he whispered hoarsely.

            There were several hefty paper sacks of flour in the base compartment of the cabinet, but only one was high-gluten. So he picked this one up and rested it against his chest and quietly shut the doors before turning back toward the server station, where the mysterious, unidentifiable server was again at the counter near the broken coffee maker.

            “Coming through,” Jux announced. He cradled the base of the sack against surface of the apron across his chest and waited.

            The back and shoulders moved slightly, indicating a movement of the unseen hands on the other side of the body.

            “Just,” Jux cautioned, “don’t move. This sack blocks my vision.”

            The figure then swiftly stepped aside, disappearing again beyond the sight threshold of the cabinets and again not being there once Jux had made appropriate progress forward through the server station.

            By the time Jux got back to the kitchen, not only had apparently nobody left, but Juniper, Packie, Guy, and even Kieran were in there, too, all packed into the junction between the rinsing station, dishpit, and cold side of the island. Along the line, things were again disrupted because the oven and range had been pulled from the wall. What was different this time was that the ventilation grate was detached and leaning against the wall behind the cooler while Duke guided Teatree out of the duct.

            Guy plucked an unruptured goal ball from one of the plates he was clearing and held it close to his face for a moment before popping it into his mouth. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” he said. “Everything comes from the ground, anyway.”

            Kieran reached out at slapped the side of Guy’s head. “Don’t say stupid things,” he commanded. “They’re not talking about cockroaches. There’s a man in there.”

            Guy watched the kitchen with renewed interest past the shoulders and between the heads of the others.

            Jux, flour sack on freight, was standing next to Guy by the bar exit. “Did you just scavenge a fried ball of goat cheese from an abandoned plate?”

            Guy dumped a stringy mound of mixed greens into the tall can. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “I don’t see why it matters.”

            Kieran grinned at him. “Thanks for the report.”

            Guy smacked a gathering of collected flatware against the last of his plates, casting some thick orange-brown goo into the trash can before settling the cleared plate on a stack and gently dropping the flatware into the filmy soaking bin on the counter among the stacks with a plunk. Then he left the kitchen.

            Teatree was dazed as Duke helped him out of the vent and got him up and walked him across the line toward the dishpit. “It was a whole other kitchen,” Teatree was saying as he intermittently paused to cough. “Like blue and gray. Dark, really dark, but blue and gray. ‘Earl grey’ is with an ‘e’ because it’s English, right? Or British?”

            Concepción was securing the grate to the wall.

            “That doesn’t matter now,” Jux said as Duke shouldered Teatree past and the crowd pressed out to make space for them to pause for a moment before the rinsing station. “Why are you in the ducts?”

            Teatree closed his eyes for a moment and then pulled himself away from Duke and stood on his own. Then he briskly rubbed his eyes with fingers of both hands and blinked up at the fluorescence, saying, “It’s so bright in here.”

            “Get him out,” Junior commanded.

            Kieran held up a few fingers and scrunched his nose. “Give him a minute to tell his story.”

            Teatree glanced about. “There are elves around,” he said with appreciation.

            The kitchen was quiet for a moment only otherwise occupied by the ambient echolalia of the front and the various hums of the industrial appliances.

            “Get him out,” Junior repeated, this time with eyes flaring.

            The pizza and prep stations were obstructed by the crowd, so Jux nudged the bottom of the sack against a short stack of small squares to make space on the dishpit counter. He glared at Teatree. “Why are you in the ducts, man?”

            Teatree closed his eyes again and held up a hand as in testament to the words of a charismatic preacher. “I will not take the food of another,” he oathed.

            “But why are you in the ducts?” Jux asked.

            “I followed an elf,” Teatree said. He indicated a short length between curved thumb and forefinger. “A little one. They’re all little.”

            “Huldufolk,” Jux exclaimed, darting his eyes about. “There was an old knife that fell at me from the cupboard earlier. They might be trying to game us. I have to go back to the cooler.”

            “Make the pizza dough first,” Junior said as he settled proteins onto dressed plates.

            “That’s what I was thinking,” Jux said, pointing over at the moist flour container on the rack past Vicki, who was straightening out a sloppy rag and folding it over and over before, finally, wringing it out a little bit before folding it again and tossing it into a sani bucket. Jux stroked his grisly short beard.

            All the way to noon they hammered through orders, barely catching up despite the hour pause in seating, and as the hour neared it seemed only to get worse, everyone toiling away and making no dent in the orders while variously distracted by elusive cockroaches and harried servers, the tickets continuing to print, the random whiffs of burning plastic, the occasional backups of the dishpit drain and ensuing mini-floods, the random crashing of a ramekin from atop the central island, the discovery of old knives in unexpected places. At times it was so thick that plates were being sent out with ruptured yolks, stale potatoes, and cool oatmeal, and even once a plate was sent back because the center of one of the chicken tenders was still cold and raw. Soon, the clear visual distinction between the plating of eggs benedict, egg white omelets, and huevos rancheros dissipated such that half of the orders being sent out all just looked like eggs and stuff smothered all over a plate. At one point, one of the servers told them that the customers were starting to talk about the sloppy plating and the subpar food.

            “It’s because we don’t care anymore,” Junior snapped at one of them. “Happy fucking Mother’s Day.”

            She was a thin teenage girl, and relatively new to the restaurant. She glanced sadly about the kitchen, took out a couple of plates, and was never seen again.

            Boof slapped a ticket on the window next to a couple of plates. “That’s your bar three.”

            Teatree, sweating nearby, took a look at the ticket and then slowly reached out to take one of the plates, which was covered in a swamp of glistening yolk and light yellow hollandaise. He picked it up with both hands, staring down at the folds of seared sliced ham emerging from the yellow pond like the gills of an awakened leviathan, and then immediately put it back down. Then he picked it up again and, again, set it back down.

            “Just fucking take it,” Jux barked, each hand gripping plates with chicken and waffles ready to slide into the berth that Teatree’s plates would vacate.

            “That one, too,” Boof clarified with a point at the plate next to it, which was kind of a yolky cove replete with little rocks of country potatoes.

            Teatree was staring at the plates. “What are they?”

            Duke peered back from where he was hunched over the range managing the eggs. “Is someone replating these after I pass them over?” he cried.

            Nobody had been replating them.

            “That’s eggs benedict,” Junior said with a nod at the pond, “and that is…” He trailed off. “I don’t know what that is,” he admitted with a shrug. “Send it out.”

            “What the fuck, man?” Duke asked. “You know I’m not going to put shit on a plate like that, no matter how fucked up this situation is. I got self-respect.”

            “Just take it,” Junior told Teatree. “They want eggs, they get eggs. You slow the seating down again and maybe this will all shape back up.”

             “If you ask me,” Duke said as he attended expertly to the simmering pot of poached eggs, “it’s taking you front-of-the-house motherfuckers too long to get back here and the artwork is breaking down in the meantime. We’re not pouring cement here; this is a delicate cuisine.”

            Teatree was still staring at the plates. “I can’t take those,” he said quietly.

Jux handed the two orders of chicken and waffles to Boof and turned to begin scraping hunks of seared waffle goo from the iron when he noticed that the hot plate had been set up with a small pot of water on the prep table near the fryer. “I don’t think this hot plate is working,” he called out.

            “He doesn’t want to take them,” Boof told the chef.

            Junior didn’t look up. “We heard,” he muttered. He fingered wads of chopped shallots and garlic into a pan shimmering with oil.

            “I mean, it’s on and everything,” Jux continued. He sprayed the black squares of the waffle iron with lubricant and ladled in another dose. “Why do we need this water boiling over here?”

            Junior slapped a fat baseball of seared beef tenderloin onto a bed of sauteed asparagus and reached out to place it in the window, but there was no room. He stared angrily at Teatree, who averted his eyes, no longer now even looking at the eggy plates. “Clear the plates,” he commanded. “We’ll refire them, but get them the fuck out of the window.”

            Teatree, still not looking up, reached out reluctantly to take the plates but paused before grasping them.

            “Take them away!” Junior hollered.

            Teatree quickly gripped them and walked over to the tall can by the dishpit counter and slid the lagoons into the trash by way of a great tectonic upending.

            Boof set the chicken and waffles orders into the window and rearranged some of the other plates to make a space for the chef’s tenderloin.

“You got those frites?” Junior asked Jux.

            “Right here,” Jux said as he collected a wide steel mixing bowl from the table in which a few batches of frites were slowly softening as they cooled. He plucked out a selection of thin potato fries and nestled them onto the plate next to the juicy brown lump of steak.

            “That pan’s not going to work,” the chef told him. “You need a magnetic pan.”

            Jux looked back over at the pot for a moment and then looked at Junior. “I didn’t set that up.”

            “But that’s why it’s not working,” Junior insisted. “It’s not the right kind of pan.”

            “Ok, that’s fine, but,” Jux continued, looking at the pot again and at its still, room-temperature water for a moment before quickly shifting back to the fryer to pull out the rack and let four long, crusty brown fried hot chicken tenders drip their excess oil back into the vat. He assembled the tenders on plates with wedges of waffle and transferred the plates to the window just as the chef delivered two more plates himself.

            “Frites,” Junior said.

            Jux nodded. “Maple,” he said with a nod at the plates of chicken and waffles.

            As servers cycled into the kitchen to collect their plates and rush them back out to the front, Jux built haystacks of fries and Junior served up two small ramekins of warm maple syrup while Boof looked down at the hot plate setup.

“This is hard-anodized,” Boof said. He looked at Jux. “That’s aluminum. It won’t work on an induction burner. You need a ferromagnetic base. Everyone knows that.”

            “That’s what I was telling him,” Junior said.

            “But I don’t even know who set this up,” Jux protested. “Why is someone trying to boil water up in my space? How long has this thing just been sitting here?”

            Arturo looked over from the pizza station. “I didn’t put that there,” he said defensively. “I thought you did.”

            Duke was practically juggling poached eggs over two large pans on the range. “I got all the boiling water I need over here,” he informed them.

            Concepción was hacking away at melons again on the cold side and Vicki was rearranging cleaned plates in the dishwasher.

            Junior held up his hands.

            “I’m going to turn it off, then,” Jux said, reaching over and accidentally catching the front flap of his apron on the corner of the fryer. The hot oil sloshed in the basin, but he was quick to free himself and complete the reach to turn off the hot plate and push it along with the pot it bore back against the wall next to the supine knife rack. For good measure, he unplugged the hot plate at the wall, too.

            Packie entered at that moment, crossing swiftly through the walkway as far as Arturo, who was kneading out ovoid flatbreads on the thickly-floured surface of the pizza station. “Are those for E15 and G247?” Packie asked with a glance at the hot side window.

            “They are,” Boof said, “and you can take them.”

            Packie sidled past Arturo to collect the plates. Just as he had collected all four plates in his two grips and held them up to pass Arturo again, Max huffed into the kitchen and tossed a black bill folder to the floor.

            “Motherfuckers!” he shouted.

            Packie had paused to watch, and, in that moment, his grip on one of the plates had faltered enough for one of the chicken tenders to topple off the plate from its perch on a waffle wedge. Fortunately, the piece landed on the other plate in the grip of that hand and Jux was able to lean over and replace it.

            “I’ll try to settle it in there good next time,” Jux assured him.

            Packie winked.

            Jux frowned and looked over at Max, who was bending over to pick up the bill folder. “What the fuck is that all about?” Jux asked him.

            Max shrugged and tucked the folder into his apron pocket. “Not like you’d care,” he whimpered.

            “Here we go,” Boof said, rolling his eyes.

            “You just shut the fuck up,” Jux said, pointing a finger at him.

            Boof chuckled. “I’m only aware of the inevitable,” he said. “We need three more chicken and waffles.”

            Jux grunted and ladled some waffle batter into the iron and closed the lid and then treated a few strips of raw chicken marinated in tabasco buttermilk to a proper flouring before setting them into the rack and plunging it sizzling into the oil. At the cold side, Vicki heaped dressed spring mix on a row of square dinner plates and began slathering it all with rich green basil oil. Concepción was etching a thirteen-pointed star into the rind of a small watermelon with the point of a chef’s knife. At the hot side, Arturo collected two pizzas from the oven with one swift shuffle of the paddle and ported them over to the pizza station to cut and plate. Junior was working four pans on the left side of the range, one with slices of sizzling ham, one with two searing cuts of beef tenderloin, one with a thickly bubbling bloodred gastrique, and the last with crumbled fennel sausage, shallots, and garlic. Duke, for his part, was navigating a flotilla of small pans containing eggs in a variety of forms, the pans clustered around the mothership of the poaching pot and its rack containing several juicy poached eggs.

            “I got all the eggs,” Duke said.

            “Right here,” Junior assured him with a nod as he tonged slices of ham one by one onto the wedges of toast.

            Duke scooped up one of the poached eggs with a slotted spoon and pivoted his torso like an assembly line robot and deposited with care the egg onto one of the ham-nestled toasts. He repeated this action and then Junior reached over and drizzled the whole thing with hollandaise sauce.

            “A12 wants new ham sandwiches,” Max suddenly called out.

            There was a brief halt in movement as the kitchen crew processed the information. Concepción, Junior, and Duke all looked up at the tickets hanging over the line and Boof shuffled through those he’d recently collected from the printer.

            “How many?” Junior asked.

            “Two,” Max said. “They said that the ham was—”

            “We got it,” Junior told him. “Five minutes.”

            “Go now,” Jux said as he peered worriedly down into the calming fryer.

            “I’ll go on your mom’s face,” Max promised reluctantly.

            “This is not the time, Max,” Boof warned. “Besides, we all know you’ll never ‘go’ on anyone’s face without them killing or suing you.”

            Max flipped him off.

            “I’ve got sandwiches for E51 and C90 almost ready,” Junior called out. “Max can have those for A12.” He turned to Duke and continued at a lower volume. “We’re going to need to fire more hamaroni.”

            “On it,” Duke said as he used a spatula to guide a fresh batch of hollandaise into a ninth pan on the steam table.

            “Jux!” Junior called.

            Jux looked up from the fryer as if he’d been caught doing something untoward.

            “What’s the problem?” the chef asked.

            “The fryer isn’t as hot for some reason,” Jux muttered in frustration.

            Junior stared at him for a moment and then squinted past toward the fryer. “Is it plugged in?”

            “I don’t know,” Jux cried.

            Chef Junior threw two brioche rolls at Jux’s head, which Jux somehow managed to catch.

            “Slice those, will ya?” Junior asked.

            Jux looked down at the station. Spatter from the fryer was everywhere at the right side of the table and all over the side of the ice machine. The central plating area was greasy, too, swirled as it was with smears and crusts of batter.

            There was his board, which he’d begun using to halve the tenders following the discovery that he might not have been frying the chicken long enough. It was thick plastic, and the avenues of its scars were filled with some thin grease, so he collected a sanitary rag from the bucket and gave the board a good wipe while still clutching the rolls tenderly against his chest. After returning the service towel to the red bucket on the lower shelf, he leaned over to get a bread knife from the rack lying on the surface of the table. It was at that moment that he could see, clearly, that the fryer was unplugged, but the induction hot plate was plugged in. He froze, staring at the outlet while everyone else in the kitchen continued their flurry of activity, excepting, of course, Teatree, who, in the fringes of Jux’s peripheral vision, appeared to be pressing himself back against the wall between the dishpit can and the whiteboard as if trying to meld into nonexistence. Jux exhaled cautiously and reached for the long, serrated knife. As he drew it near to him, he was overcome with dread for a moment and that feeling was relieved only when he reached back out and, still gripping the knife in his palm, quickly unplugged the induction burner and mounted the oily plug of the fryer.

            “Need that brioche,” Junior called from the action on the hot side.

            Jux grunted. “Got it, got it,” he said, his hands shaking as he lowered the buns onto the cutting board with a little topple and then placed them next to each other and lightly cupped a palm over the one on the right and lowered the blade to slice through horizontally. “I don’t even know what’s going on,” he muttered as he began sawing through the bun with harsh, angled strokes until there was the warm rending of his flesh and he cried out and flung his bloody, bread-flaked palm into the air. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he cried, showcasing the wound about randomly and waving the blade in the air. “Do you see this?”

            “Oh my god you totally cut your hand off,” Boof said with a grin over a sheaf of tickets and under his large, thick glasses.

            “What do I do?” Jux asked.

            Junior hung his tongs on the oven handle and reached over to grab two more little brioche buns from a bag partly-toppled into the hotside trash can. “Clean it, plug it, and get back in,” the chef said. “I’ll cut the buns.”

            Jux held his palm near his face, studying the cut. “It’s not too bad, really,” he said as his eyes followed a channel of blood seeping down the lines of his palm and streaking out around his forearm.

            “First aid kit,” Concepción said. She carved the final ray of the star pattern and then sliced the section of rind with the sigil right off into the trash.

             Jux, holding his arms up before him, one with bloody palm and the other with the long, toothy knife, approached Arturo at the station nearby. Arturo was folding plastic wrap over some of the ninths of pizza toppings.

            “They’re everywhere,” Arturo said, scanning the walls. “I just saw one crawl between the panels.”

            “I’m bleeding,” Jux said.

            Arturo looked at Jux’s hands, at the blade. He nodded him past.

            Jux pressed up against the nozzle rod of the faucet and a stream of cold water cascaded over his palm and forearm, guiding the blood down into the wash basin.

            “You know what I’m going to do?” Arturo said to Jux. “I’m going to tear that fucking wall off and bleach the whole thing.”

            Jux winced as the pressure he used from his hand to release the water began to feel at the gash in his palm. “Right now?” he asked. “You’re going to do that right now?”

            Arturo unfolded a slim wedge of the multitool he had holstered at his belt and worked its edge against the strip of connecting plastic binding the sections of the walling.

            “Don’t do it,” Jux warned. He glanced down at the reddish water flooding the sink.

            “I’m going to do it,” Arturo confirmed. “I just want to see.” He popped the wall section from its mount and then slid the tool vertically downward to expand the rift until he could pry away a section and illuminate a patch of musty masonry at the borders of which things were moving as Arturo pulled it open and then reached a hand around the back of the wall paneling and manipulated a wingnut until the central section of the panel was loose and he could pull it quickly and, as he did, something like several hundred glistening little cockroaches were exposed to the light of the kitchen. They scurried into crowds around the edges of the yawning panel for shelter in the darkness, but many poured out along the wall to test their destinies against the sets of prepared feet staggered between the little shaded places of the kitchen’s floor.

            “Put it back put it back,” Jux insisted, finding himself somehow now managing a sloppy wad of tickets.

            “What the fuck is that?” Chef Junior screamed through the space of the island’s window. His face was wavy in the vapors from the hot food. “Are you taking the wall off, Arturo?”

            “Naw, man,” Arturo said, holding the paneling back against the wall and maneuvering the tool back up but with a different attitude, sealing the wall as it went. “It’s already coming undone, and I just looked.”

            Jux was bleeding into the sink, but he’d stopped calling the water and anyway it was just a little drip. Weren’t there tickets, though…

II

            A bit later, when things had leveled off and mothers and grandmothers alike were waddling out the door almost bursting with goat balls, bellinis, and bacon, Jux was off the clock and seated at the bar to unwind, picking at the makeshift bandage of paper towels plastic-wrapped around his hand before a bloody mary that was elegantly garnished with nothing but a slim, brown-tipped shaft of celery. Abuse had just come out from the kitchen to collect him for a smoke break and Kieran was fussing around behind the bar with a broom when Max stormed up from the restroom hallway.

            “Hey guys, guess what!” he cried insanely. “It’s Mother’s Day! You know what that means! Time to smear shit all over the walls!”

            Kieran squinted hatefully at him and glanced about at nearby patrons. Fortunately, everyone was fully engaged in their flatbreads and egg meals and nobody seemed to have heard what Max was going on about.

            “What’s your problem?” Kieran asked.

            Max grinned triumphantly. “It’s my hour to clean up the toilets,” he said. “You what’s in one of the bathrooms right now? Shit on the wall. A thick smear of black shit. Happy Mother’s Day!”

            Glasses clinked from a table nearby and the celebratory exclamation echoed.

            “That’s nasty,” Jux said.

            Max frowned at him and then looked at Kieran. “I need the broom.”

            “I’m cleaning the bar,” Kieran said.

            “But I need the broom,” Max insisted.

            “Why do you need a broom to clean shit off the wall?” Abuse asked.

            Max wavered a bit, clearly fatigued. “It’s on the floor, too.”

            “Dude,” Jux said, “you’re just going to smear it around even more, and then there will be shit on the broom.”

            Max pulled at his curly red hair and stomped off into the kitchen.

            “That,” Kieran said as he swept down with the tall, thin broom at various bits of glass and refuse that had accumulated on the thick-holed rubber mats of the bar, “is what Mother’s Day will always do for you. It is not unlike a natural plague that descends on a population too stupid and self-involved to properly prepare for its coming.” He bounced his eyebrows and looked briefly urgent to them and then scooted a small collection of glass claws and putrid blobs of organic matter into the filter housing of the bar sink’s drain along with various other moldering tidbits. “Do you believe it now?” he suddenly asked, looking back up at them.

            Jux and Abuse exchanged looks.

            “Believe what?” Jux asked the bartender.

            Kieran’s eyes widened. “About the haunting,” he said with a cyclonic finger in the air. He gazed horribly at them for a moment and then drew in a deep breath and added, “About the orphans and street Indians who burned up in the fire.”

            “You and your ‘Street Indians,’ again,” Jux said.

            “That’s probably what they were,” Kieran said obviously. “White orphans and street Indians. Just look at the history.”

            Jux stared at the sommelier. “They were taking indigenous children away from their families,” he said. “This place is fucked. Everything about this whole city is fucked.”

            “No need for further discussion, then,” Abuse announced.

            “This is going to get us nowhere,” Kieran agreed.

            “All right,” Jux sighed. He looked at Kieran, who was grinning receptively. “What do you actually know?”

            Kieran shrugged.

            “Are you actually trying to say that this place is haunted by the ghosts of orphans and homeless Native Americans?” Jux asked. “I just want to know. I will tell you right now that I won’t believe it no matter what you say, but I am really, really curious.”

            Kieran eyed Jux. “Do you know more about feeling than I do?”

            Abuse nodded. “Kieran is a credentialed sommelier,” he noted.

            “Maybe, maybe not,” Jux said to the bartender. “When you talk about unfortunate babies, that alone seems like quite enough. An orphanage—what a place. But it’s not just that; it’s also somehow repurposed or co-purposed as a homeless shelter. And then, apparently, we have the disproportionate rates of homelessness among the indigenous community. This is according to what you say. Am I right?”

            The sommelier stared at him. “Sure.”

            Jux moved his bandaged hand palm-down in a kind of series of circles. “And this is all right here, happening right here, in the past,” he offered.

            Kieran shrugged and looked at Abuse, who was looking at his phone.

            “All right,” Jux said, staring through the tall windows at the warming light of afternoon on the patio and street and light rail corridor. “I’m just trying to figure this out is all. Why don’t you stay here and continue conducting your research while I get the fuck out?”

            “It’s your research, dude,” Abuse said, still staring down at the little screen of his phone. “You ever see them do ‘Astro Zombies’ live?”

            Jux stared at him.

            “Misfits,” Abuse clarified. He fiddled the air. “We’ve been listening to them—”

            “I know about the Misfits,” Jux stammered.

            “Of course you do,” Abuse said, obviously.

            Jux smiled forcefully at Kieran and then left the bar.

            As Jux was on his way out through the storage room, he saw Concepción there sitting on a large cardboard box and drinking from a straw plunged into a white styrofoam cup. They exchanged nods and weary smiles.

            “Happy Mother’s Day, Concepción,” Jux told her.

            “Happy Mother’s Day,” she repeated.

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