he were going to be hit, and Ivan glared at him. “Dude, what are you doing? I’ve never fucking hit you! Just go get some cherries.”
“I looked. We’re out.”
“Send Julian out for cherries,” Elena barked, slamming together an order for seven. “Substitute the roasted red pepper jam and move on.”
“We’re running low.”
“It’ll work until the cherries are finished.”
As the hours ground on, however, the cooks and the servers and the support staff lost the push of adrenaline and started to wear down. The dish situation grew worse and worse, with servers slamming into the kitchen every ten seconds to call for flatware or glasses or dishes. The cooks ran out of platters at one point and three orders were late going out because of it. Elena pulled Peter and Tansy off the line and asked for Alan to pull a busser to help, too. But that only lasted a little while. They couldn’t afford to be without line cooks either.
On a bad shift, disaster accrued drop by drop, like holes in a levee that widened a crack bit by bit by bit until, all at once, the wall gave way and water came rushing through. That night, the lack of dishwashers dripped into lack of dishes dripped into server annoyance and delays on the line; delays on the line made the chefs irritable and start to rush things that shouldn’t be rushed, leading to a plate that was unservable, which led to more delay, which led to customers walking out.
Under the force of the tension of the day, Elena’s body was tight to begin with, and as the evening wore on, her right hip started screaming, the pain beginning to creep upward, through her spine and ribs to her neck and shoulders, downward to her knee and ankle. She popped six Advils and drank a ton of water.
The servers gritted their teeth and tried to make the front of the house work. They pitched in with dishes and brought Portia virgin piña coladas and cherry Cokes and told her she was doing a great job. Julian pitched in, too, mainly by just being present, talking to customers, signing autographs, trying to smooth the waters. He bought drinks and greeted people and made his rounds. He brought a tray full of beers and sodas back at one point; another time, ice cream from around the corner.
The crew just worked unceasingly, calling out orders, filling plates, arranging food. They ran out of stuffed zucchini blossoms, and then the corn fritters. They made do with other things.
By nine, they were all exhausted. “What’s it like out there?” Elena asked a server. “Winding down any?”
He shook his head. “Still stacked up to the ceiling.”
“Anybody that you recognized as a reviewer?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Lot of celebrities, though. And CEO types with their very young wives. They’re all just charmed by Mr. Liswood.”
“Good.” Elena took a breath and whirled around to plate another order.
Tansy and Ivan started tussling and Elena said, “Tansy, go smoke. Ivan, you next. Make it fast.”
Finally, at eleven-thirty, the last of the customers had been served, coddled, and escorted out. Wearily, the kitchen crew mopped up the mess, cleared the counters. A deep silence lay beneath music and the swishing dishwasher and the banging of pots, a silence of exhaustion and review, as they replayed in their minds the running out of dishes and food, the nightmarish backup on the line, the frustration of the servers and the angry complaints of the customers. Through her own exhaustion, Elena saw the gray faces of her staff, and went about filling platters with leftover roasted onion tart and taquitos and the last strips of roasted, shredded beef with Tansy’s good handmade tortillas. On another tray, she arranged churros and sopapillas and baklava.
“Come on, gang,” she said, only then realizing she was hoarse enough she could barely get the words out, “let’s take a break. You’ve earned it.”
“We have a lot to do still,” Peter said, gesturing toward the mountain of dishes, the unswept floor.
She nodded. “We have to finish, but first a break.”
Ivan shouldered a platter, and Elena carried one, too, despite the thudding tense pain in her back. She was limping enough that even she noticed it, and was too tired to care. “Come on, Portia,” she called to the girl, still buried in ungodly piles of dishes and silver and pans and utensils.
Gratefully, Portia came out from behind the machine. “I am so tired,” she said.
Elena hugged her with one