Page 46 of Ghost’s Awakening

"You made all this?" He leaned over a frittata tray heading for the pass and breathed in, and his eyes closed for a second. "What is that? That smells like a restaurant. A good one. That smells like somewhere with a wine list."

"Frittata. Peppers, basil, parmesan." I slid the tray out of his range on principle. "My mother made it every Sunday. It feeds a full house."

"Your mother invented this?"

"Italy invented it. My mother perfected it."

"I'm going to eat the whole tray."

"You're going to eat a slice like a person. Grab a plate."

"You're bossy in a kitchen." Pure delight, filing it away. "Noted. Who else knows this about you?"

"Irish supervised."

"Under protest!" From the coffee urns, twenty feet away, without turning around. "A coup with good frittata! Both things can be true!"

Ghost stole a strip of bacon off the pile faster than the spatula could answer, sidestepped my swat with a fighter's footwork, and grinned at me while he chewed it, and I turned back to the griddle before my face told fifty people something I hadn't decided how to tell them.

Breakfast ran in shifts and the frittata trays kept coming back empty. Tank came through, built a plate that tested the plate, and returned three more times. On the last trip he stopped in front of me. Looked at the scraped-out tray. Looked at me.

"You cook like you kick."

He walked back to his table, and I stood there with a spatula in my hand deciding that was the best review anybody had given me in nine years on a line.

Lunch was the rest of what I owed.

The eggplants came out of the walk-in mid-morning, a full crate nobody had touched, and I sliced them thin, salted them, and laid them out in rows to sweat their bitterness while the breakfast cleanup clattered on behind me. Pasta alla Norma for fifty bikers. My mother would have called it a sin or a miracle. She never allowed anything in between.

Mateo drifted in around eleven and parked himself at the end of the prep counter, hands in his pockets, watching me work while pretending hard that he wasn't. I slid a cutting board down the steel to him, then a knife.

"Basil. Leaves off the stems. Keep them whole."

He looked at the board. Then at me. I could see him doing the math on it, whatever the math was, and then his hands came out of his pockets and he picked up the knife, and for twenty minutes we worked side by side without one word between us. Easiest conversation we'd had yet.

The eggplant hit the oil in batches and came out dark and crisp at the edges. The tomatoes went down with garlic in a pan wide enough to bathe in, basil torn in at the end, and the walk-in gave up one last miracle, an actual block of salted ricotta, which I grated over the trays like it might be confiscated. The smell off that pan went back fifteen years. Nine of them on a paid line. Six of them on a stool in a small kitchen, watching my mother's hands do exactly this. I cooked it her way, and the smell walked next to me the whole hour, and it didn't drag me under. That was new. I could live with new.

Rosa came through while I built the first trays. She topped up my coffee without asking, looked me over from head to boots, and gave me one word. "Better." Then her chin lifted toward the pan. "What's that?"

"Pasta. Sicilian." I turned the sauce over once. "My mother's."

Her face moved, quick, something crossing it and gone. Her hand landed on my forearm, one hard second, and then she was off down the row with the pot, and my ears stayed hot for a while after.

The room told me when lunch landed. Fifty-some people, and the noise dropped by half with nobody asking it to. Forks against plates, and not much else. Irish took one bite, put his fork down, and stared at the pasta while he rethought his loyalties.

"Fine!" Both hands went up. "It's a coup! I surrender the kitchen! But I want the eggplant thing, Caleb, I'm serious, teach me the eggplant thing or I will make your life hell!"

"You'll make my life hell anyway."

"Obviously! But this way there's pasta!"

"Oye, cook!" Trenza's voice cut across the tables, fork raised, plate already half-cleared. "What's it called?"

"Pasta alla Norma!"

"Who's Norma?" Her eyes narrowed like the name owed her money. "She family?"

"An opera, I think." I shrugged with the spoon still in my hand. "My mother never explained. She said some questions ruin the food."