“You’re looking at it, baby,” Winfield says. “It feels like Satan’s taint outside. Nobody’s coming to get afternoon pancakes today. It’s just us and Jerry.”
“Oh God. Okay.” August peels herself off her stool and rounds the counter to clock in. “I need to talk to Jerry anyway.”
In the kitchen, Jerry’s hefting a bucket of hashbrown shavings out of the fridge and toward the prep station. He gives her a quick nod.
“Hey, Jerry, you got a minute?”
He grunts. “What’s up, buttercup?”
“So, it’s looking like we might end up with double the people we planned for the fundraiser,” she says. “We should probably talk pancake logistics again.”
“Shit,” he swears, “that’s gonna be at least thirty gallons of batter.”
“I know. But we don’t have to make a pancake for every guest—I mean, there have gotta be people who are gluten-free, or low carb, or whatever—”
“So, let’s say twenty gallons of batter, then. That’s still a lot, and I don’t even know how we’d transport that many pancakes.”
“Billy said he has a spare grill in storage. He was gonna sell it, but if he could bring it to the venue, you and some of the line cooks could cook them there.”
He thinks on it. “Sounds like a pain in the ass.”
“But it could work. We can use the catering van to get the batter there.”
“Yeah, okay, it could work.”
Winfield’s head pops up in the window. “Hey, can I get some bacon?”
Jerry glances at him. “For you or for a table?”
“No tables, I’m just hun—”
At that exact moment, the creaky pipe along the wall by the dishwasher finally does what it’s been threatening since long before August started working there: it bursts.
Water explodes all over the floor of the kitchen, soaking through the canvas of August’s sneakers and down to her socks, gushing into the tubs of biscuits under the prep table. She lunges forward and tries to wrap her hands around the split of the pipe, but all it does is redirect most of the water onto her—her shirt, her face, her hair—
“Uh,” August says, kicking a tub of biscuits out of harm’s way with one soggy foot. It tips and biscuits spill all over the tiles, floating away like little biscuit boats. “Can I get some help here?”
“I told Billy it was just a matter of time on that piece of shit,” Jerry grumbles, sloshing through the water. “I gotta turn off the fuckin’ main and—fuck!”
With a colossal crash, Jerry’s feet fly out from under him, and down he goes, bringing a ten-gallon tub of pancake batter with him.
“Jesus titty-fucking Christ,” Winfield says when he throws the door open on the scene—Jerry on his back in a growing lake of pancake batter, August soaked head to toe, hands around the spewing pipe and soggy biscuits swimming around her ankles. He takes one step into the kitchen and slips, tumbling into a stack of dishes, which shatter spectacularly.
“Where the hell is the water main, Jerry?” August asks.
“It’s not in here,” Jerry says, struggling to his feet. “Stupid old fucking building. It’s in the back office.”
The back office—
“Wait,” August says, rushing to follow Jerry. He’s already halfway down the hall. “Jerry, don’t, I can—”
Jerry wrenches the door open and disappears into the office before August can skid into the doorway.
He straightens up in the corner, the main switched off at last, and August watches him finally see the maps and photos and notes pinned on the walls. He turns slowly, taking it all in.
“The fuck is this? We got a squatter?”
“It’s—” August doesn’t know how the hell to explain. “I was—”
“You did this?” Jerry asks. He leans toward the clipping August pulled out of her mom’s file and added to the wall. “How come you got a picture of Jane?”
August’s stomach flips.
“You said you didn’t remember her,” she says faintly.
Jerry looks at her for a second, before the unmistakable jingle of the front door sounds.
“Well,” Jerry says. He turns away, headed for the kitchen. “Somebody’s gotta feed the poor bastard.”
Winfield crunches off through shards of coffee mugs to take the customer, and Jerry salvages the kitchen enough to make a plate of food. He calls Billy to let him know they’re going to have to close until a plumber can come, and even from across the room August can hear Billy swearing about the costs of lost business and new pipes. Another few weeks off the Pancake Billy’s prognosis.
Winfield serves their one customer a shortstack with orange juice and sends them on their