I spend the morning with Ellie, Greg, and their two girls, picking them up from LAX and having an all-too-brief brunch with them during which I try to sit still and act like a normal person despite my skin tingling with electricity and my mind buzzing with to-do lists and worst case scenarios.
After eating, I leave my sister and her family with Asha for a whistle-stop tour of L.A. and head back to Chow, checking my watch every twenty seconds, lamenting the fact that I only have five hours until opening at seven-thirty. The kitchen staff are already there, laughing and joking their nerves away, a camaraderie built up over the past few weeks of hard training I gave them. Five chefs, three waiters. Ideally, we had wanted seven chefs, a dish washer, and four waiters, but a combination of high standards, trepidation about initial business, and a lack of time to interview meant that we had to make do for now. With Tony and I doubling up on all tasks, we figured we could get by.
When I arrive at Chow just before three pm, Tony’s already zipping between his roles as organizer, table setter, and cook. I blast through the front toward the kitchen and immediately start helping the overwhelmed chefs.
I hear the click of a gas lighter repeat too many times behind me and turn to find Helen frowning at the stove.
“What’s the matter?” I say, without stopping my washing of salad greens.
“This stove…it’s not coming on.”
I finish rinsing and dry my hands quickly as I move toward it, inspecting under the cap and trying it myself.
“The guy told me this happens sometimes,” I say, frustrated as I look at the piping behind it, “and that it would clear itself up soon.”
I slam the cap back and try again, feeling a release of endorphins as it fires up.
“Thanks, chef,” Helen says as I check the clock and see that we’re only two and a half hours away now.
I get back to the veggie rinsing, so on edge now that it sounds like there are a hundred people chattering in my head, willing the minute hand on the clock to move a little slower. In the rush to prepare stations, check sauces, and ready ingredients, the time disappears…
“Uh…Willow?”
I turn to look in the direction of the trembling voice.
“Yes, Shane?”
“Are you sure we have enough squid?” he says, as he glances in the ice box uncertainly.
“Of course. We had a delivery just this morning.”
I hear Jack’s rhythmic knife-chopping stop suddenly, and look up again to find Shane and Jack looking nervously at each other.
“Uh…no. We didn’t,” Shane says.
“Yes we did,” I say, trying to stop the feeling of my heart plunging into my gut. “It would have come before nine-thirty.”
“I was here at eight,” Jack says. “And we haven’t gotten any deliveries today.”
I stare at them for a few seconds, mouth going dry, babbling voices in my head getting louder, then drop the salad and push past them on a desperate march toward the storage area at the back.
Nothing.
I yank open the industrial freezer, slimly hoping there was a mistake in storage, but find only the meager supplies left over from training last week.
“Fuck!” I yell. A primal scream that serves only to keep me from combusting with my own anger. I grab the door frame for support and breathe deep, not even the coldness of the refrigerated air able to cool off the lava of my furious blood.
I scramble to pull my phone from my pocket and call the distributor, about ready to tear him limb from limb over the connection, cursing out his entire lineage with every ringtone that he doesn’t answer, until it clicks over to his voicemail and I unleash a tirade of war-mongering proportions, gripping the phone as tight as if it were his neck.
The noise in my head is almost unbearable now, a background whine that sets my nerves jangling, my muscles taut. I march back through the kitchen to Tony, who’s hurriedly directing the waiters as he rearranges napkins and place settings.
“Tony!” I say, while I’m still crossing the room. “We have a problem.”
“You’re telling me,” he says, rising as I get near.
“The fucking seafood delivery is— Wait. What are you talking about?”
Tony’s face is a picture of rare concern.
“Well…remember when I said we didn’t have to worry about overbooking, because it’s not like every single person would show up for their reservation anyway?”
Suddenly it hits me. The voices in my head aren’t actually in my head. The thrum and chatter of a crowd…is coming from outside my restaurant. I can see a few people milling about through the glass, but now I move purposefully to the door.
“I honestly didn’t expect this kind of turnout, Willow!” Tony says apologetically as he follows me.
I slam through the entrance doors and step out onto the sidewalk, the scene stretching out before me like a punch in the gut.
“Holy shit…”
The crowd is thick, and stretches off down the entire block. It’s the sort of crowd that would have been an effort to handle even on a good night at Knife, more like a political protest than a line for a restaurant.
“What the hell, Tony?” I say, hands on my head as I struggle to find where the line ends. “Did you offer people free meals or something?”
“Of course not,” he says, shrugging diffidently. “I guess I just underestimated how good I am at promotion.”
I peel my eyes from the scene to direct my frustration at my business partner.
“It’s not going to be good promotion when we have to turn away two thirds of these people, and the other third has to wait over an hour for their food. We can only seat eighty people, for God’s sake!”
“A hundred,” Tony corrects me. “At a push…”
“We’ve got five cooks, and I must be looking at about two hundred and fifty customers.” I check my watch. “And it’s ten-to-seven. Shit. This is not good, Tony.”
I look at him for a moment, with a glint of hope that he might come up with an answer. Some batshit crazy idea for how this could work, the kind of thing he’s always been good at, the kind of thing that got us to this point in the first place.
But it doesn’t come. And for some weird reason I remember what Cole told me that day at the beach, about trusting only yourself. A slight sadness coloring my frustration as I realize how much I miss him, even in the midst of all of this.
“Open the doors,” I say, suddenly purposeful. “Start letting people in.”
“What?” Tony gapes, following me back inside the restaurant. “But we still have time—”
“No we don’t,” I cut him off. “If we’re gonna get through this many people we need to start turning them over quickly. You!” I point at the waiters. “Push people toward anything that isn’t the seafood. Recommend the paprika chicken, or the kimchi steak.”
The waiters nod and stiffen. I pull my phone out and start looking for seafood distributors, dialing the first one as I push past the doors into the kitchen.
“Showtime!” I call out to the chefs as I tuck the phone between ear and shoulder to start readying the counter. “Orders coming in thick and fast and very soon! Show me what you’ve learned. Chow is open for business.”