The Chosen

I want to show you something.”

Vera followed him to the end of the line, past a pair of five-hundred-gallon lobster tanks and customized Nor-Lake walk-ins.

“What’s wrong?” Vera asked. “Aren’t you happy about all of this?”

“Sure. But there’s something…I don’t know. Something’s not right.”

“Like what?”

“Like that Hobart machine, for one,” Dan B. said. “That’s a fifteen-thousand-dollar rig, it’s something you use for a banquet house or a mess hall. You don’t need a machine that elaborate for a country restaurant. And the same goes for all of this stuff—sure, it’s all great stuff, but it’s overkill. Feldspar’s got to be out of his mind dropping this much cash for a restaurant in a questionable location.”

Why are men always so skeptical? Vera wondered. “Don’t complain. If we work our tails off, and get in some good advertising, we could fill this place every night.”

“Come on, Vera. That’s wishful thinking. You and I both know that the chances for any new restaurant, anywhere, are less than fifty-fifty.”

“That’s why Feldspar’s going full-tilt, to up the chances.”

“Maybe,” Dan B. conceded. “But take a look at this.”

He led her next to a stainless steel door at the back of the kitchen. He pulled it open. Vera stared in.

“Can you believe this?” Dan B. inquired.

Vera shrugged. Okay, maybe Feldspar was going a little crazy with the money. What she was looking at, past the door, was another kitchen, nearly identical to theirs.

“A second kitchen just for room service?” Dan B. questioned. “Feldspar thinks business is going to be so great that he needs a separate kitchen just for the hotel orders? It’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

Vera and Dan B. turned at the remark.

A young man stood immediately to their rear: tall, trim, wavy longish light-brown hair. Vera found him instantly attractive in a lackadaisical sort of way. He wore tight, faded jeans, a white kitchen tunic halfway unbuttoned, and old clunky line boots. He smiled, almost cockily, and extended his hand to Vera.

“You’re Ms. Abbot, right?”

“Vera,” she said.

“I’m Kyle, the room-service manager. And you’re…Don?”

“Dan B.,” Dan B. corrected, and shook hands. “The chef.”

“I heard what you were saying just now,” Kyle went on, “and I can understand where you’re coming from. I felt the same way when Mr. Feldspar first took me on. But I can tell you, Magwyth Enterprises has inns just like this all over the place, and not one of them has lost money yet. In fact they’ve all jumped into the black right off. So don’t worry about the location, or the fact that Mr. Feldspar’s spent so much money up front. The guy knows what he’s doing.”

“We didn’t mean to imply that he didn’t,” Vera hastened to say. First day on the job she didn’t need this guy running to Feldspar with negative implications. Immediately she viewed Kyle as her personal competition: room service would have an instant edge in gross receipts. Make friends with him fast, she warned herself. She’d been in the business too long to play hoity-toity.