This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,13
rehearsed.
Instead I blurt out, “I got coffee,” and shove the cup holder into her hands. Except she’s holding a legal pad and a water bottle and I manage to crowd her just enough that she can’t easily put the things down, leading to some excruciating seconds of awkward juggling that I eventually resolve by admitting defeat and setting the drinks back down on the booth where I was sitting when she came in.
“Thanks,” says Jocelyn when the cups are back on stable ground again. “You didn’t have to do that. Aren’t I supposed to be the one providing fringe benefits?”
I feel myself blushing. It’s early enough in the day that it’s still relatively cool, so I don’t feel any actual beads of sweat on my temple, but I can feel the heat building at my hairline. Right on cue, I hear my mother’s voice reminding me to just breathe, William, and say something.
I don’t give myself a whole five seconds to inhale, but I get to a count of three before I give a shaky smile. “I didn’t have time to make coffee at home and the place was on my way in. You really don’t want to see me trying to solve problems when I’m undercaffeinated. My sister tells me it’s like watching a slow-motion replay of someone missing a dunk.”
Jos grins, and I get down to business so I don’t have to come up with more small talk. “So how do you guys do things around here? Do you have an electronic ordering system?”
Jos rolls her eyes. “I wish.” She waves a paper order pad. “We have two cases of these in our basement, and I’ll bet you real money that my dad would say we can’t waste the rest, and we shouldn’t transition to digital until we use them all up.”
A warm slice of recognition melts away the last of my residual anxiety. “My grandmother hoards stuff like that. She still drives a 1997 Peugeot that she shipped over from Nigeria. ‘It is still working; why would I replace it?’” I mimic the standard retort she uses every time my mother offers to buy her a new car.
“As you can see, we’re a bit of a fixer-upper,” Jos says. “I have a plan, though.”
JOCELYN
After a while I realize that Will’s preppy getup and the overpriced drinks make him more adorkable than intimidating. It’s more of a “tries too hard” than “thinks he’s better than anyone else” vibe.
Also, he seems to get the restaurant and isn’t afraid to tell me what it needs.
“There’s a lot to work with here,” Will declares. “I mean, the potential of the online stuff is unlimited, and free. There are also easy changes we can make here in the storefront.”
“Our website really needs help, though.” Right now ours is only a landing site with our phone number and a photo of our menu that’s at least two years out of date.
“I can upgrade it. Do you want me to make you an online shopping portal?”
I gape at him. “You know how to do that?”
“Uh, yeah.” He looks sheepish, so I assume I’m looking at him like he’s just barfed up a pile of gold, which he kind of did, when you think about how much money he could potentially be saving us. “It’s not like I’m a computer genius or anything like that. But my mother made me go to programming camp a couple of years ago, and that was one of the things they taught us.”
I shake my head, unable to believe my luck. One improvement down, approximately 574 to go. “Now, what do you think we should do about Yelp?”
WILL
At around ten o’clock, we get our first preorder for lunch pickup at noon, and Jocelyn brings me back to do a tour of the kitchen when she relays the order.
When I walk through the kitchen door, I understand for the first time why Mr. Evans was pushing me to go behind the scenes for my stories. Five seconds of standing there taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the kitchen gives me more fodder than a dozen e-mails, more detail than I’d be able to pick up with hours of online research. I’m struck first by the wall of sound. There’s the baseline hum of the refrigerator units, the on-and-off susurration of the dishwasher, the woodpecker sound of chopping. One of the cooks, a burly, pug-nosed Asian man who Jocelyn introduces as Jin-Jin, is cracking eggs into a giant vat