In front of us, Master Chief Kopka lets out a low chuckle.
We walk into a cozy little dining room. There are maybe a dozen tables in the room, all decked with the same kind of cream-colored tablecloths, and each adorned with little flower vases. Mom looks around with an expression that couldn’t be more bewildered if she had just stepped off the Gateway shuttle and onto the big spaceport on Luna.
“We’re not open until eight,” Chief Kopka says over his shoulder. “My waitress won’t be in until quarter ’til, but I have the kitchen fired up already.”
He leads us to a corner table that’s right by one of the streetside windows and pulls out a chair for Mom.
“You folks sit down, and I’ll bring you some menus. What would you like to drink?”
Mom takes her seat and looks up at the chief.
“Gosh, I have no idea. Coffee, maybe?”
“Good call. I got in some fresh beans the other day. One coffee, coming right up. What can I get you, Sergeant?”
“I’ll have one, too,” I say. “Don’t waste the top-shelf stuff on us, Master Chief.”
“You leave that up to me,” Chief Kopka says.
He walks off toward the kitchen, and Mom gives me a look that is equal parts bewilderment, excitement, and amusement.
“Does that happen to you a lot?”
“This is the first time. I’ve never gotten anything from anyone for wearing this outfit.”
The chief returns a few minutes later. He’s carrying a little serving tray with two coffee cups on it. Mom watches in wide-eyed wonder as he puts the cups down in front of us. He takes a small creamer off the tray and places it on the table in front of us.
“That’s some local cream, from actual Vermont cows. I have an arrangement with a dairy farm just down the road.”
He adds a little bowl of granulated sugar to what is already a hundred-dollar breakfast without any food in the mix, and puts down two leather-bound menus. Then he winks at Mom and points to her coffee cup.
“You go ahead and enjoy that coffee while you pick out something to eat. Disregard the headers that say ‘Lunch’ or ‘Dinner.’ I can make you anything you see on that menu. I’ll be back in a few to take your order.”
With that, he walks off, leaving Mom sitting in slack-jawed amazement.
The coffee is much better than the powdered stuff we get to drink in the fleet, and it bears very little resemblance to the atrocious instant-coffee-flavored soy powder they include in the BNA rations. Mom carefully assembles her cup by adding two spoonfuls of the sugar and a small splash of cream. She handles the creamer like the ChemWar guys would handle vials of nerve gas, as if one spilled drop would be a catastrophe. When her coffee has reached the right color and sweetness, she dips a finger into the milk container and sticks the fingertip into her mouth to taste the pure cream.
“Oh my God,” she says after a moment of closed-eyed bliss. “That stuff is so rich. You could stand a spoon up in it. This is incredible.”
“Easy with the dairy, Mom,” I warn her. “If you’re not used to it, too much will screw up your plumbing. And don’t ask me how I know this.”
“It would be worth it,” Mom says. She takes a sip of her coffee and lets out a sound of utter contentment.
I add some cream and sugar to my own coffee and take a sip. It’s so rich and flavorful that it makes the fleet coffee seem like bilge water.
“So what are you going to eat?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mom says. She opens the menu in front of her carefully and picks up the corner of the first page with her fingertips. “I’m sure everything is very good, and that whatever I order will be the best thing I’ve eaten in five years.”
Five minutes into our breakfast, Mom revises her opinion, and lets me know that Chief Kopka’s food is the best thing she’s ever eaten in her life. The menu has meal options and price tags that seem like a cruel prank to a welfare rat from the tenements. The dinner menu has steak and shellfish dishes listed, and the price tags next to them have four digits before the decimal point. Not wanting to take shameless advantage of the chief’s generosity by ordering a $1,500 cut of meat, we pick some moderately priced items from the brunch menu. I order the lumberjack hash browns, which are a glorious mess of real potato cubes mixed with bits of corned beef, and topped with a fried egg. Mom picks the eggs Benedict, which have a heart-shaped poached egg artfully stacked on a muffin, along with a thick slice of bacon, and a piece of avocado underneath. As far as I can tell, there’s not a single bit of soy in either meal.
When our plates are nearly clean, Chief Kopka comes out of the kitchen and walks over to our table. He is clutching a leather-bound book.
“May I join you for a few minutes?” he asks. “I have something I’d like to show you, Sergeant.”