Zoe too.
Now he had a roster of employees doing whatever they wanted. Zoe skipped out on shifts. Jefferson and Que showed up late. His other part-timers came and went on even worse whims, quitting with no notice. No wonder newcomers like Rosalie thought it strange that Ady’s was deserted while the other businesses in town thrived.
His fingers enclosed on the uneven legs of another chair, but he froze in place. His attention was on the café’s front window, where through the pitted glass he could distinguish the outlines of two men. Not only were Jefferson and Que late, they hung around outside for an impromptu smoke break.
Shouldn’t he say something? Nick hovered by the dining table, chair in hand, debating.
The weight of Rosalie’s stare bogged him down. He glanced over and realized she was watching him watch the window. Though she was silent, he heard her judgments loud and clear. She thought he was spineless. He couldn’t argue that she was wrong.
“Excuse me,” he said. He broke away from the dining area and beelined for the door.
A haze of smoke enveloped him as he approached Jefferson and Que on the sidewalk outside. The cook and busboy greeted him without hesitation. They saw no error in their tardy, slacker behavior. If it had been a few days ago, Nick couldn’t lie and pretend like he would either.
Yet, here he was. Preoccupied with what his new waitress thought of him as a boss.
“You guys gonna get started on kitchen prep?”
Jefferson inhaled a drag of his cigarette, pale skin tinted pink from the wind. “We’ll get around to it.”
“Man, me and Zoe went out last night and she had me doing shots,” Que said. His red and bleary eyes revealed the extent of the damage done. So did the unshaven patches on his face. “Zoe make it in?”
“No, she didn’t show up.”
“I don’t blame her.”
Jefferson sneered at Que and flicked his cigarette onto the ground. Nick cut to the chase, squaring his chin and firming up his tone.
“Fellas, I’m gonna need you to get to work.”
“After our smoke break—”
“Now,” Nick said louder.
On their walk to the kitchen, he overheard Jefferson and Que grumble. They exchanged disgruntled complaints about him. He snagged only a word or two of the muttered conversation, but he picked up the words blowhard and asshole. He rejoined Rosalie, who was now rolling forks, spoons, and knives into napkins.
“They finally decide to show up for work?” she asked him.
She was teasing. His heart skipped its next beat. He cracked a smile.
“If I had anyone else play hooky, it’d be just me and you.”
“I don’t know. I think we could handle it.”
“That’s what you say now. Then when the crowd comes rolling in…” His arms flourished open, gesturing toward the empty dining room.
Rosalie merely shook her head in an incorrigible sort of way. Still like he was hopeless, but amusingly so. Nick decided it was an improvement.
It opened up the possibility that maybe he could improve in other ways. For months after Mom’s death, he had been swimming in a pool of grief. He temporarily came up for air for one thing only—Maxie. She was his oxygen. The breath in his life that kept him going. As a result, he fumbled managing the restaurant. He took shortcuts and half-assed things. The restaurant suffered for it. He grinned through the spreading failure and acted like everything was fine.
Everything was not fine.
If asked to pinpoint what was wrong, Nick couldn’t put his finger on it. He just knew he was down on his luck. That when alone, exhaustion crashed down on him and he sunk to his chair. His face dropped into his folded arms and his eyes closed. Sleep was life’s great fixer. It shut out the paralyzing fear that he was failing more and more each day.
The restaurant crumbled around him. They were running on fumes, on the cusp of falling behind on the mortgage. He told himself it was going to be okay. Somehow.
Maybe it could be different now.
Nick shot a furtive glance in Rosalie’s direction as she attentively wrapped the cutlery in napkins. Judging by how meticulous she was with each one, she prided herself in her work at the café. As owner, son of Ady himself, shouldn’t he?
That day saw four customers. All four of them regular. Nick supervised Rosalie’s waitressing, but it was difficult with business slow. He could no sooner tell if she could handle a packed house now than when their workday began. Then he strained his memory for the last time Ady’s had been full and he came up with a fuzzy time not long after Mom passed…
Nick eventually heard from Zoe. She called him yawning and explained about her night out at the bar in town. She and Que stayed until closing hours and she wound up oversleeping. Nick hung up the phone on her empty promises of returning tomorrow.
He and Rosalie were doing fine on their own. Jefferson’s cooking needed some work, but that was no surprise. The food had been suffering for months now. Mom’s recipes were no longer prepared passionately, cooked fresh for their diners. In order to make up for the declining business—and those monthly mortgage payments—he had had to sacrifice quality.
The more he thought about it, working alongside Rosalie as they cleaned up a table, the more he wondered if he should sit down and crunch some numbers. He could find a different workaround. Another way to save money so that he could reinvest in food quality like Mom always had.
His usual lackadaisical demeanor subsided. Determination replaced it, spiking like adrenaline in his veins. He was going to do something unlike him. He was going to stay an hour later to devise a plan. He headed for the back office to call Ellie, the babysitter, and let her know he would be late.
Rosalie called out to him. “Is it okay if I take my lunch break?”
“Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”
Nick shut the door to the office and dug his cell phone out of his pocket. Ellie answered on the second ring, sounding as skittish as he expected.
“Mr. Fontaine?”
“Hey, Ellie. Something came up last minute at work. I’m gonna be an hour late. Are you able to look after Maxie? It’ll be double pay for that last hour.”
“Oh, sure. I’ve got a paper to write anyway.”
“And why don’t you pick up something from Ms. Maple’s for Maxie and you? It’s on me. Get extra sprinkles and fudge or whatever you guys like.”
“Really? Wow, thanks! Maxie’s gonna love that. I’m leaving in a few minutes to pick her up.”
“Text me how it goes. I’ll have my phone on me. See you later, Ellie.”
Nick visited the kitchen to see how Jefferson and Que fared. Both were shooting the shit. Despite their fifteen-year age difference, they had found common ground in their crass sense of humor. Any other day, the guys would’ve kept yucking it up and guffawing when Nick entered. Today, after his earlier severity, they fell mute as soon as he walked into the kitchen.
His newfound determination gave him the nudge he needed to lecture them. “Fellas, I’m gonna need you to get to work. If nobody’s dining in then we can always find other things, right? How about you organize and relabel the pantry…”
For a second time, he overheard Jefferson and Que grousing. So long as they did what he asked, he didn’t give a damn. He plucked a full trash bag from its bin and hauled it to the backside exit. His intention was only to throw out the trash. After he would head back inside and see what else needed to be done.