“Didn’t do it, did you?” Opal said when Sullivan returned to the kitchen for a final check.
Sullivan shook her head.
“Let me know if you want me to.” Opal was everyone’s loving coach, but like a good coach, she could do what had to be done.
“I have to do it. It’s my job.”
The walk home through the Bois would have made her feel better, except that walk was a funeral procession. There was the fir tree shaped like a tuning fork. There was the stand of holly planted by some past gardener. All gone in a year.
She sighed when she saw the lights on in the kitchen at home. She didn’t feel like making polite conversation. She considered sneaking in the back door, but she’d scare the shit out of Kia when Kia realized someone was in the house.
“I’m home,” Sullivan called out as she entered.
Kia stood at the stove in one of Sullivan’s aprons, her hair swooped up in a purple scarf, defying gravity with its height. Two eggs sizzled on the stovetop griddle, their yolks shimmering wet like she’d cracked them the moment Sullivan put her key in the lock. Kia turned to face her, arms at her sides, centered perfectly in front of the stove like a Wes Anderson film.
“I made you a breakfast sandwich.” Kia nervously twirled the spatula she was holding.
The smell of frying onions reminded Sullivan that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
Kia flipped the eggs, buttered some English muffins that had been grilling alongside them, delivered the eggs to the muffins, closed the sandwiches, and produced two nests of caramel-colored hash browns. All with one movement like fast culinary tai chi.
“You never ate when we were in school. You’d make all this great food and leave it for everyone else. And then you’d get a breakfast sandwich at Ravi’s Deli.” Kia must have sensed Sullivan’s dour mood. Kia’s words came out in a rush as fast as Blake’s apologies.
Kia pushed a plate across the kitchen island. The over easy eggs looked hopeful gazing up at Sullivan.
“That’s sweet, but I’ve had a long day. I’m just going to grab a protein bar.”
Sullivan got a box of cricket-flour protein bars out of the cupboard. Kia snatched the box away.
“I can’t let you eat these.”
“Insects are sustainable.”
“Crickets are fine.” Kia waved the box. “Deep-fry them, and they’re Cheetos of the land. But I tasted these, Sullivan, I can’t let you eat them. They taste like sad dirt.”
“I had a sad dirt kind of day.”
“Want to talk about it?” Kia pushed the plate an inch closer to Sullivan.
Sullivan gave in. The cricket bars did taste like sad dirt.
“I have to fire someone.” Sullivan sat down and took a bite of the sandwich.
The yolk broke against the buttered muffin. The crunch of hash browns nodded to the russet in one direction and the potato chip in the other. The pendant light over the kitchen island cast a warm circle around them.
“What happened?”
“My intern prep cook. He’s on his phone all the time, posting on hisdog’ssocial media. He’s had a tough life—he needs that job—but it’s a small staff. We have to be able to count on each other.”
This was the part where Kia told her about the importance of mentoring young chefs or not following a corporate model or how Kia would give a kid like that a food truck to run.
“Sometimes you have to fire people, and when you do, you’re going to be kind. You always are.” Kia looked sincere. “You didn’t leave me lying in the mud. You saved my ass so many times in school.”
Sullivan took another bite. The sandwich tasted exactly like the ones she’d bought at Ravi’s Deli back in New York. For a moment, she was walking out of the practice kitchen into the darkness of February or bright threads of daylight in June. Sunlight filtering through the flyers on the window of the deli. Stillgrinning about some comment she and Kia had riffed on all night.
“What would you do?” Sullivan asked.
“I never work with anyone long enough to have to fire them, but I think I’d take his phone, tell him to delete the dog’s profile, and, if that didn’t work, fire his ass.”
