Chapter 3 - Eleven Seconds
The back office of The Copper Spoon smelled of damp cardboard, bleach, and old grease.
Marcus didn't even sit behind the desk. He stood by the open door, his arms crossed over his chest, his brass keys dangling from his belt loop like a threat.
"Take it off," he repeated.
Elena stood in the middle of the narrow room. Her hands moved automatically to the tie behind her back. Her apron was still warm from the heat of the kitchen pass, heavy with the weight of four pens, an order pad, and twelve dollars in dollar bills she had earned since five o'clock.
"Three weeks," she said, her voice remarkable for how steady it remained, even as her hands trembled around the cloth. "I worked three weeks of double shifts when Sarah had the flu. I covered your Sunday morning opens."
"And you broke house policy three times in one night," Marcus said coldly. "Insubordination in front of guests. Unapproved comps from the kitchen. Giving away table space during peak hours. I can have your final check mailed to you by next Friday."
"My brother is fifteen," Elena said, looking him dead in the eye. "Our electricity bill is due on Tuesday."
"Not my problem, Ruiz," Marcus replied, not a single muscle in his face moving. "If you care so much about strangers, go find another job where they pay you to hold hands. You don't work for me anymore."
Elena didn't plead. She had learned long ago, in rooms much colder than this one, that pleading with men like Marcus only gave them something to enjoy.
She folded the green apron slowly, smoothing out the wrinkles against her thighs. She placed it on the laminate desk next to the computer terminal. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the house pens and the guest check pad, and set them down in a neat row beside the cloth.
"Eleven seconds," she said quietly.
Marcus frowned. "What?"
"That's how long it took you to fire me," she said. "Eleven seconds to ruin three months of rent."
She picked up her jacket from the hook behind the door, pulled it over her shoulders, and walked past him into the narrow hallway.
Outside in the dining room, the noise had returned to its normal, deafening roar. Glasses clinked. Laughter rose from table four. Ruben was still sliding plates onto the pass under the heat lamps. Nobody knew what had just happened in the back room. Nobody cared.
Elena walked past the host stand without looking at Sarah. She pushed open the heavy front door and stepped out into the damp, cold night air.
The rain had stopped, leaving the pavement glistening like wet slate under the streetlights.
Fifty feet down the sidewalk, standing under the dark awning of a closed shoe repair shop, was a small, dark silhouette.
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The old woman was sitting on a concrete ledge, her knees drawn together, her worn leather purse resting on her lap. She wasn't moving. She was just staring at the streetlights, her thin coat wrapped tightly around her shoulders against the biting wind.
Elena pulled her collar up against her neck and began walking down the street toward her.
