Mara didn’t typically listen to electronic music. Today, though, some tones and textures and moods felt appropriate. Beeps and bloops circling her ears, the occasional clip of dialogue from some 70s kung fu movie offering probably-unhelpful encouragement. She was about halfway to Olly’s, on track to be twenty minutes early for her first shift, and she just now felt the anxiety slow. She had been too nervous to sit on the bus and the weather was nice, so synth textures were setting the pace for her walk.
Music. Her comfort before a shift, and if things broke right, afterwards, too. A friend from college, Deja, was back in town for the first time in six months with her shoegaze trio, Gradient Purple. Deja played guitar like she was tossing giant aluminum sheets down a waterfall. The bass player and keyboardist, M, played fills like they were a salmon, expertly swimming upstream from Deja’s tumbling chords. All of that ethereality was held together by Eric, the hard-hitting, flintknife drummer who played simple yet stakes-raising beats. God, Mara had missed them.
Of course, WaveRace97 was headlining, and Parth was going to join them on stage for a song, and Mara wanted to be there in case his humble ass forgot to tell people in the audience to check out Crystal Lake Counselors.
But first, a first shift.
The restaurant was almost completely empty when she arrived. An old man with newspapers and coffee in a booth. A woman in scrubs hurriedly finishing some sort of wrap. The lone server was a five-foot-two Latina with kind eyes and a genuine smile. She also wore her hair pulled back in a bun and had the sort of wiry-strong frame that came from a decade or two of whirring around a dining room carrying heavy trays.
“They told me about you. Is it Mara? My name is Amparo,” the server said. She was refilling ketchup bottles at the server station.
Mara’s non-slip shoes and loose black pants must’ve given her away. “Great to meet you,” she said. “Are you the one who will be training me?”
Amparo finished wiping down the last bottle and turned to Mara. “Nah, that’s Michael, but he is running late as always. I’ll show you the locker room in the basement. That’s where you can put your jacket and bag. Do you want some coffee or something?”
Mara opted for tea. She had been in basement locker rooms before, and this one had the same trappings as previous jobs: low ceilings and exposed pipes. Chipped paint. A few lockers. Nowhere to change except for a tiny, individual bathroom. A washer and dryer for linens. Mara was past being creeped out of these places—what is going to happen in a restaurant basement, really—but still didn’t plan to spend a lot of time down there. Wearing a work shirt on the bus wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
After she put her stuff down, she grabbed a menu to study. She’d been to Olly’s maybe twice before. Her impressions had been that it was a simple, no-frills diner that still cared about making good food. Classic dishes had signature flourishes. Mara remembered the breakfast burrito having fresh cilantro and scallion, which really brightened the buttery eggs and Oaxacan cheese. Melissa had ordered some sort of—wait, here it was on the menu—a vegetarian scramble with every diced veggie at the station, but also cheddar and mozzarella cheese.
It was little things like that—no trendy ingredients, just tweaks that both set the food apart and still tasted good. The menu wasn’t small, but it wasn’t outrageous. She imagined that being a cook here wasn’t easy, but also was as bullshit-free as restaurant life could be.
Martín came out of the kitchen. She remembered him from the interview, but now he was in Work Mode, looking a touch more harried. “Bad news, Amparo. Michael called out, so Mara’s with you,” he said. Then he turned to Mara. “Good to see you again, Mara, how are you today?”
“But I’m not the trainer!” Amparo said. “And I’m the only other one on the floor!”
Martín waved her off. “It’s Wednesday night. It’ll be dead. Plus, the best way to learn is trial by fire. Right, Mara?”
Mara wasn’t so sure. The best way for her to learn was usually by meticulously shadowing a trainer for four training shifts, absorbing their knowledge, and then having stress dreams for her first two weeks of official serving shifts.
“Yeah! I’m game if you are, Amparo.”
Amparo seemed to size Mara up and then said, “Alright, but I’m not paying for my shift meals for the whole week.”
Martín gave her prayer hands. “Deal! Thank you thank you!” He grabbed a red translucent water cup, the kind that always reminded Mara of the Pizza Hut she went to as a little leaguer, and filled it with steaming hot black coffee. “Alright ladies, or wait, zadies? Mara—is it a she/her vibe or—”
Amparo laughed at his embarrassment. “Get the fuck out of here, Martín! And make sure Luis sets the cups out to dry. No one wants sani residue in their water.”
“Okay, okay. And no steaks for shift meals!” Martin said as the kitchen doors swung closed behind him.
“Damn, I wanted the steak salad. Eh, Reggie will probably give me a half portion on a house salad if I put it in the notes. Hey, nothing personal,” Amparo turned to Mara. “I just don’t like training! Ha! It’s fine.”
Mara was feeling off-balance. She was not ready to be thrown into a shift. She had prepared to take so many notes, to observe everything, but not to talk to customers. She didn’t even know the menu. The electronic music she’d been listening to on the way over, the calming waves of synth and steady pulsing drums—she reached for it, but her senses were already being overloaded by the smell of cooking eggs or the sound of the drink machine or the ever-present call of “Behind!”
“Alright, so to start, I’ll take whatever tables come in, and you study the menu. Once it starts picking up, I’ll have you shadow me and run food. And if we get a rush—”
Mara’s anxiety must have shown on her face.
“—well, we’ll figure that out when it happens. It’ll be fine. Trust me. This is not Trencherman or Girl & The Goat or anything. Dinner is mostly comfort food and burgers.”
Mara had never been to Olly’s for dinner. Looking at the menu, it really was just comfort food and burgers, but it seemed like someone who really loved food had crafted these items. There were three burgers named after cities—a touch that seemed to elevate the menu, but also connect it to diner tradition. An impressive mix of salads. Then the greatest hits of diner comfort food: fried chicken, pot roast, potato soup. They even had a lasagna that seemed legit.
The first wave of patrons had the air of regulars. Nearly all elderly. From the neighborhood. Only half of them even waited for Amparo to acknowledge them before shuffling to their preferred booth.
“Alright, there’s the Burkes—he is grumpy as hell, but he owned a bunch of taverns back in the day, so he tips $20 every time even though they only ever share a tuna melt with a fruit cup. That there is Bobby—he won’t shut the fuck up, so you just have to walk away. And yeah, these over here are the near-dead who haunt us every shift.” Amparo gestured.
“Do you need help?” Mara asked.
“Nah, you just keep studying. And maybe Martín here can help you practice.”
Martín was refilling his cup. “Sure, it’s not like I’m running a restaurant here.”
“You’re not running a restaurant, your employees are. You’re just the manager.”
“Damn, prima. Words sting. Now go take some orders.”
Martín joined Mara at the folding table where the servers rolled silverware. He grabbed a menu and began to order.
Mara had expected to be dismissed by eight. That was what Martín and her had discussed. It was becoming more evident that an eight p.m. exit wouldn’t be happening, with Michael calling out. Sorry, Deja. Sorry, other Gradient Purple homies.
There’d been about an hour of shadowing Amparo, who was not only a great teacher, but also a fixture at 90s punk shows. Getting pregnant “too damn young”—her words—ended her days in the scene, but the two bonded over records they liked.
Eventually, Olly’s got so busy that Mara was full-time food running. It was a good way to learn the menu, though, seeing every dish and having to check for every modification. All told, by the end of the night? She’d taken five tables of her own, and seen every item on the menu except pot roast. Not a big summertime hit, even with the old-timers, Amparo had said.
Martín helped them close. Mara appreciated a manager who was willing to put some chairs up on tables and sweep, so she didn’t mind doing her part. But she knew couldn’t make it to Alewives in time for Gradient Purple. Could probably still catch WaveRace, though. Featuring Parth.
“You did really great tonight, Mara,” Martín told her while she was rolling silverware. “So glad you joined the team. How did you feel about things?”
Martín had offered to grab some beers from the packaged goods—just for your first shift, mija, not something we do all the time—but Mara declined. Amparo said Corona made her stomach hurt. So they were drinking Shirley Temples while they rolled the last of the silver.
“I feel like I killed it.”
Amparo laughed. “You really did. And I cannot believe that Greg and Chaz were your first table. They are the best.”
“Look, I’m really sorry we couldn’t get you the show in time,” Martín said. “We really like to help each other out, but Michael really put us in a tough spot.”
“It’s really no biggie,” Mara said, and meant it. Amparo already felt like a friend and Martín already felt like Gentle Work Dad. “Besides, if I hurry up and finish all this I can make it to most of WaveRace97.”
Martín grabbed the remaining cutlery and added it to his small pile.
“We saw those guys at Edgewater Music Fest last year,” he said. “My 11-year-old went loco for them. I’ll do the rest. You get out of here.”
It was the kind of kindness Mara knew Martín wouldn’t expect to be paid back, but she made note of it. People helped each other here. “Thank you,” she said, trying to muster as much sincere gratitude as her exhausted body and overstimulated mind could manage.
Mara got lucky: caught a bus right out front of the diner, and was in the crush of the crowd 10 minutes later. Lights lit her eyes as the synth player from WaveRace rattled her ribcage with a saw. She smelled like frying oil and her heel had a blister, but the bus ride and kindness of Martín and Amparo had energized her.
It was hard to think that a murder had led her to a better job.
She stood still in the crowd for a second, a briefly isolated buoy in a sea of dancers. She had stopped investigating the Lilypad murder, not that she could actually do anything anyway, but it felt somehow wrong to let an entire murder victim slide out of her mind because she had one good work day. If that person—he had a name, John Miller was his name—if John Miller had still been alive, Mara would be shuffling dead-eyed through a shift at Lilypad right now, bringing regular pancakes to Lakeview residents who would nonetheless claim to be celiac suffers, pouring bottomless mimosas for DePaul students on Sundays.
There was nothing to do about that, though. A murder had happened, the universe had written that into its history. One ripple effect was that this job at Olly’s seemed like it was going to be great. She liked the people she worked with and the job itself felt honest. Punk rock in a way that she appreciated. And the $140 in cash in her pocket wasn’t so bad either.