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And Popcorn was born.
Work never started slow. From the moment Mac entered, there were meetings and questions about order shipments that didn’tcome in and holes in the menu to fill. It was hard work, mentally and physically, with long, chaotic hours. Burnout was so typical in kitchens he’d worked in in the past that there were secret bets on the line on all new hires. Popcorn had a reputation for being different, though. Because for any new hire, Mac listened for the stories. There was always a story that made him sure of who would work well on his team. The story of the grandmother who could stretch eggs a hundred different ways, so that even if it was all the family had to eat for a month, it still felt new. Or the story of a father who taught his kids to fish, but to release what they didn’t need for that night’s dinner around a campfire, which was sometimes their only way to cook because there wasn’t a home to go back to.
He was proud of his kitchen, and he liked everyone who worked there. He met them where they were and encouraged creativity. He’d earned his place in the hierarchy, and they all respected him. But as he walked in that day, he wondered how they would react to the news that he was going to have guests.
After putting out a few small fires as soon as he arrived, he went upstairs to his small, windowless office. He’d no sooner turned on his laptop than Christine knocked on the door and showed him the two menus he’d asked to be printed out for Charlotte and Zoey.
Mac was hardly surprised when Javier, his sous-chef, poked his head in seconds later. Javier had a sixth sense for gossip.
“What is going on?” Javier asked in his charming Spanish accent.
“I have guests tonight.” Mac handed the menus back to Christine. “That looks great, Christine. Thank you.”
Javier plucked the menus from Christine’s hands as she passed him in the doorway. “Twofemaleguests,” he said, reading their names on the menus.
“Give me those,” Christine said, snatching them back. She wasone of the few women here who didn’t give him any latitude. It annoyed Javier, like a magician whose card trick had been figured out. “I don’t know why Mac puts up with you.”
“My sparkling personality, of course,” Javier said as she left. He came in and sat on the edge of Mac’s desk. “So, what is the story with these guests?”
“No story,” Mac said, calling up his email.
“There is always a story, my friend. You taught me that.” Javier’s own story had been about his mother’s flan, which she’d only made on birthdays and Javier said tasted like unconditional love.
“One of them is a teenager. She just moved into the Dellawisp.”
“And the other one?” said Javier suggestively.
“She’s lived there a couple of years.” Mac paused. “She’s not a teenager.”
“Ah. So the picture, it becomes clearer to me.”
“Shouldn’t you be working?” Mac asked, even though Javier leaving would mean this would soon be all over the kitchen. But there was no use trying to stop it.
Javier left with a wink and said, “Benedict would approve.”
Mac rolled his eyes.Benedict would approvewas a chorus that erupted on the line after a particularly lascivious tale was shared. Benedict was the ghost that supposedly haunted the kitchen at Popcorn, and he had become their patron saint of bedroom antics.
The real Benedict, by all accounts, had been a young, painfully shy candymaker brought over from London by the Englishman during the island’s post-Reconstruction marshmallow boom. He’d been so talented that the Englishman took him in as his wife’s personal candymaker. Rumor had it that Benedict then fell in love with the Englishman’s beautiful, full-bodied wife, and she with his sweet treats. They disappeared from the island together and many believethey ended up on the southern coast of France based on the modest success of a marshmallow maker there around that time who had a large, beautiful wife and, eventually, eight large, beautiful children.
The myth of Benedict lived on at Popcorn, perpetuated mostly by randy young prep cooks and dishwashers, but also, curiously, by the occasional strange occurrence. Like the time one of the waitresses found a single rose in her locked locker and thought it was from a saucier she had a crush on. That started a conversation, and the two were married just last year in the hotel’s front garden. The saucier eventually admitted that he hadn’t left the rose, and no one ever came forward to claim responsibility. Then there were the footsteps that often appeared in spilled flour overnight. And, most curiously, the heart-shaped chocolates that randomly turned up around the restaurant, known as Benedict’s Calling Card.
After finally getting through his email, Mac used his desk as an anchor to get to his feet, dislodging some papers and knocking them to the floor. He bent to pick them up, and was about to put them back when he stilled.
There, on his desk where the papers had been, was a single piece of heart-shaped chocolate.
He was startled enough that his first thought wasBenedict?
Then he shook his head. He had no idea how Javier had managed to have chocolate on him at just the right time but, knowing him, he’d been waiting for just such an opportunity for a while.
Mac threw away the chocolate as he left for the kitchen.
There was a lot to get right this evening.
Ever since she’d arrived on the island, Zoey’s style could best be described as This Was The First Thing I Found. So she had togo through clothes she hadn’t even unpacked yet to find something she thought was appropriate to wear to Popcorn. She finally found the yellow dress she’d bought for her high school graduation ceremony last month. Her father and Tina hadn’t attended because of some fundraiser, but good old Kello from the bookstore had been there, and he’d said Zoey looked like sunshine in it. She’d never been very good at picking out clothes. Anyone who didn’t know her family had money probably assumed Zoey couldn’t afford fashionable things by the way she had dressed in high school. When she’d first started working at Kello’s bookstore, before she’d gotten her car, Kello had insisted on dropping her off at her house after they closed for the night because he’d worried about her taking the bus home after dark. He’d been surprised when he’d first seen her house. She’d been embarrassed about not seeming to live up to the standard of such a place, and she’d tried to explain about not yet having access to the trust from her mother. Kello had looked at her in the dim light of his old white VW Beetle and said something she would never forget: “If the people around you don’t love you just as you are,find new people.They’re out there.”
She paired the dress with her gladiator sandals and was out the door without Pigeon once getting in her way, fussing about where she might be going.
Something was up with that bird.
