and started pushing tables together, disrupting the existing precision arrangement, but after a moment even Nancy was dragging over a chair.
All around them, young men and women moved competently around, setting cameras in corners, opening curtains, carrying clipboards, and getting signatures. Amanda signed a release, as well as one for Gus and Frankie, leaning on the bar while watching someone set up a stepladder and begin wiring a camera onto a beam high above the dining room. Feeling as though Nancy’s nerves were igniting hers, Amanda slid quietly around the table and into a seat opposite her just as Gus and Frankie came in. She reached out a hopeful hand to her daughter, inviting her to share the seat, but the gesture was met with a look of fourteen-year-old scorn as Frankie carefully took a chair next to her grandmother. Fine. Amanda found Nancy a far more comforting presence than her own mother as well, although she had tried so hard not to end up there with Frankie. It was just that lately, Frankie only wanted to talk when Amanda had nothing more to give, and when Amanda reached out, which was often, Frankie suddenly wasn’t there as she had always been.
Gus, though, sat next to his mother and smiled, looking nearly at ease as he pulled over the bakery box. “Oh man,” he said softly. “Cup cookies from McLain’s. Okay, these people know food.” Amanda nudged him. Shhh.
Sabrina stood, gathering their attention even more intensely. “So, as I’m sure you know, I’m Sabrina Skelly, your gracious host, and also the producer of the show out here on the front lines. Everybody else gets the cushy jobs back at the office, but I get all the glory, so, you know, trade-offs.” She smiled at them all widely, and of course they smiled back. They loved her. “You’ll meet all the rest of the staff as we roll, but for now, let me set the scene for you and answer any questions. You probably all know the basic schedule. That is, if you’ve watched any Food Wars.” Here she paused, as if she expected exactly the collective burst of laughter she got. Who hadn’t watched Food Wars?
“Only every episode,” called Mary Laura, who had rigged up a way to watch downloads on the TV that played constantly above her bar. Amanda wished, not for the first time, that she had Mary Laura’s cool.
Sabrina smiled and went on. “Let me lay it out for you anyway. We’ve got people with cameras, and cameras that will stay in place. Those cameras will be running the whole time we’re here, so don’t think that if there’s nobody with a camera following you, you’re not on. We’re pretty much able to take you live anytime, and we’ll be putting little snippets up on social media, teasing the audience for the shows later.” She said it all quickly, casually, as though it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Tonight we’ll just film around the restaurant, informal, some background stuff. Tomorrow, Thursday, we’ll do more of that but in a more organized way, capture whole meals, maybe follow one or two of you around for the night. You might do lunches, but we don’t—we’re strictly a dinnertime thing, gives the crew some time off. Then Friday we’ll bring in our chef-judges for a visit and a meal, and first thing Saturday we’ll do an official judging of just the chicken—a chicken-off. Then a little more filming Saturday night if we need it, then we announce the winners Sunday morning, and you can all go back to your lives.”
Tomorrow? Friday? Amanda thought this was just a get-to-know-you visit, but apparently their appearance on Food Wars was a done deal. Sabrina must have noticed the surprise that rustled around the table.
“We’re already here,” she said, leaning in with a conspiratorial smile. “We’re filming, and we start by assuming that we’re going all the way with this. If things don’t go well, we pull the plug, but it’s rare that we can’t make something happen. We can do this, people.” She leaned back and beamed, her confidence lighting all their faces. “For right now, just get ready for a regular shift, and then a wild ride of a week.”
There was laughter and some nudging of elbows. They wanted, every last one of them, to make this happen. The more talk there had been before the Food Wars crew arrived, the more Amanda had realized that the show touched a