Page 98 of Burning for Alexander
Papa
Can we pretend this entire exchange never happened?
Someone else tried to squeeze past me in the narrow aisle, so after texting Maddox and Adrian with a lie about why I couldn’t go on the date, I slipped my phone into my pocket and got back to shopping.
Five minutes later, Karim called me about a food delivery at work, and I sighed. Who was I kidding?
I didn’t have time to date. I was too busy at work to even do a Costco run, let alone aCostco run.
“Juni,I need you guys to pick up the pace,” I said, rushing into the kitchen two nights later to check on an order a customer was asking about for the third time.
“How do you expect me to cook with this thing here?” she cried, shooting an evil eye at the fire extinguisher mounted next to her elbow. “Move it to the other side.”
We’d had this conversation too many times to count. “I can’t move it to the other side because the other side has the eye rinse thing and the first aid kit,” I explained for the millionth time. “The pizza oven takes up most of our wall space, Juni. You know that.”
“Take your pasta and go,” she barked, nodding toward the order she’d just completed.
I slid the dishes onto a large tray and carried it out into the dining room, apologizing to the customers and throwing in a gratis dessert for their wait time.
Unfortunately for Juni but fortunately for my holiday bankaccount, the place got busier as the night wore on. We’d already been busy from two office holiday parties, and now it was a group of ice hockey kids and their parents coming to celebrate a win from the looks of things.
We managed to keep up with the flow once Tavo came down to pitch in. I appreciated the assist, and Karim even shot me a quickThank fuckas I showed him a few simple tasks he could do in the kitchen.
Too bad it wasn’t enough.
At ten past 8:00 p.m., the kitchen’s Class-K fire extinguisher lost its months-long battle with Juni Song.
I heard a crash, quickly followed by the sound of broken glass and a collective gasp from the kitchen staff and a grunt from one of the booths in the back.
A familiar grunt.
How Judd Kincaid was in my restaurant without me knowing was beyond me. But it was a zoo in there, and his back was to me in a tall booth. On the other side of the booth was an older woman I didn’t recognize. But I definitely recognized the air of authority in her and the firefighter-looking patch on her black sweater.
Fuck.
I raced into the kitchen to see a giant hole in the single window over the sink. Juni had gone right back to cooking, but I could see from the flush on her face and the slight satisfaction in her eyes—and the lack of fire extinguisher on the wall—that she’d finally taken aggressive action.
“You could have just taken it down and slid it under the table,” I cried. “Juni, what the hell?”
“I will pay for the window,” she said calmly.
“Damned straight you’re paying for the window,” I snapped. “And you’re paying the fine I’m going to get from the?—”
“What exactly is going on in here?” the woman from Judd’s table asked, standing just inside the door to the kitchen from the front of the house.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “It’s fine. Just one of those busy Friday nights during the holiday season.”
Unfortunately, that was when the inspection tag on the buckle that normally held the extinguisher to the wall fell off with a littleplinkonto the floor.
We all stared at it. And then the woman glanced up at the empty extinguisher mount.
She looked from me to the man who’d come up behind her. “Chief Kincaid, is there a problem here? It seems the restaurant which just came off a permit suspension is already back to regrettable standards.”
The chief was clearly annoyed. “Looks that way,” he said in his gruff voice. “But looks can be deceiving. There’s probably an explanation, right, Mr. Marian?”
Maybe it was my own personal hang-ups that caused me to shoot myself in the foot, but I refused to accept his kindness. “Nope. Just a simple decision to yeet the extinguisher during a busy shift.”
Kincaid’s eyes closed, and the woman sighed. “Judd, I trust you will write this up appropriately?”
