Page 20 of The Signature Dish of the Underworld

“It would seem so.” Rae offered him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. The feeling of winning wasn’t what she had expected, Garth’s overheard confession from nights ago still sitting heavily on her conscience.

“They given you your prize tokens yet?”

Rae nodded.

“They’ve already spoken to Geras too, by the looks of things! I mean I practically saw him skip out the building when I went by my walk earlier. I swear that old boss of yours looked like a frog, he was leaping so high!” Simon kept talking.

Rae couldn’t imagine Geras as anything but hunched over, but sure enough, an hour later when the door groaned open, he was practically skipping on long legs that seemed to have grown several inches overnight.

“You’re not going to believe it! That investor signed with me! ME!” Geras blurted out to no one in particular, as he headed to where Rae was pouring the cold coffee out of Ibrik to replace with a fresh batch.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Arae! Thanks to my ingenious bet on you, and that marketing with the interview in the ν?α, the Olympic investor signed with me this morning!”

“As in, to franchise the place?”

“What?” Geras looked around at Simon, then the few other occupied tables, then back at Rae. “No! He bought me out! I’m free!! Can you believe it? With enough tokens to last me … well, I don’t know how long!”

“But, Geras, remember our original agreement? You said if I ever won, you would letmebuy you out of this place and take it over,” Rae stressed, that heavy feeling on her chest suddenly coming back to settle like a doom cloud.

“Oh, poosh. Even with those winnings, you wouldn’t have been able to offer me as much as this fellow. Besides, now you can keep those winnings for yourself and still work here. I told them you would stay on.”

“You did?”

“Well, where else are you going to go? This place made you famous! You have a name for yourself. Now, people will actuallywantto come and see you. Buck up!” Geras boomed as heartily as he could, offering Rae a clap on her shoulder that had her bones shaking.

She was surprised at the strength of him.

“This is everything you’ve dreamed of.”

“Yeah,” Rae agreed softly.

Geras let out another whoop of delight, as he moved back around the counter. “I’ve got to get my things. Time to go off exploring, before my dreaded ex-wife comes and tries to score some of these investor tokens off me. If she comes looking, you tell her I no longer own this place and you have no idea where I’ve gone. You hear me?”

“Geras, I have no idea where you’re going or exactly what is going on right now.”

Geras chuckled. “Atta Arae.”

The door tinkled when he left.

“So?”

Rae looked at Simon, sitting under the domed window, at the table he sat at every morning at eleven. As he had been every day for the past five decades. “So?”

“What now?” he asked.

Rae sighed, flipping an unruly teatowel over her shoulder. “Now, we crack on with the lunchtime rush.”

***

Rae’s stomach growled the minute the last customer left the bistro.

Geras had decided to leave right before theheightof the lunch rush, which meant she’d had another day where she’d been behind the tidal wave of customers. With Geras gone, and no sign of the Olympian investor yet, there was once again no one to help her.

Not that Geras had been much help anyway, she supposed.

Now … now she was so tired she could barely stand. Her feet ached and she felt faint as she went about cleaning the place down. The bistro helped as much as it could, knowing how exhausted she was, but Rae found herself missing the sentience of Garth’s cleaning equipment. In fact, she found herself resentful to even be in this position.

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