Good Recovery
1133 Words
# CHAPTER EIGHT
Saturday was my fault entirely.
Not the reservation mix-up — well, yes, that too. But I mean the whole thing started because I had been distracted since I got there, which was unlike me, and I knew it was unlike me, and I kept doing it anyway.
It had been a long week.
The Deveraux section I had sent Friday was returned Saturday morning with a note that three of my translations were being queried by their legal team, which was the kind of thing that could mean nothing or could mean a lot of extra work, and I didn't know which yet. I had spent the afternoon trying not to think about it, which meant I spent the afternoon thinking about it, and by the time I got to Oswald's at six o'clock I was approximately sixty percent present and the rest of me was still sitting at my desk on Rue Selvaine arguing with a legal clause in my head.
Bad combination. Friday crowd. Full house.
I should have shaken it off faster. I know that.
The mix-up happened at eight.
A couple arrived — Mr. and Mrs. Aldren, eight o'clock reservation, two covers. Straightforward. I checked the book, found them, and took them to table nine.
Table nine already had people at it.
The Aldrens looked at the couple at table nine. The couple at table nine looked at the Aldrens. I looked at all four of them and understood, in the very clear way you understood things when it was too late to do anything except deal with them, that I had put the wrong couple at the wrong table twenty minutes ago.
"I am so sorry," I said. Immediately. "There's been a mix-up on my end. Mr. and Mrs. Aldren, if you'll give me just one moment—"
I went back to the console. Opened the book. Found the error — table nine should have been table sixteen, which was currently empty because the reservation for table sixteen hadn't arrived yet and now I had their table occupied by the wrong people.
Hendricks was at the far end of the room.
I looked up to find him and found something else instead.
Callan was standing at the pass.
He wasn't looking at the kitchen. He was looking at me. Not with the sweeping read he did of the whole room — this was specific. He had seen the Aldrens at table nine. He had seen me go back to the console. He was watching what I was going to do about it.
I turned back to the Aldrens.
"I have a table for you," I said. "It's actually one of my favourites in the room — better light, quieter corner. If you'll follow me."
I took them to table twelve. Not table sixteen — table twelve, which had come free ten minutes ago and which was, genuinely, a good table. I settled them in, signalled Sera with the specific look that meant *these people need attention immediately*, and Sera arrived within thirty seconds with menus and the easy warmth that made every table feel like the most important one.
Mrs. Aldren looked around the table. "This is lovely actually."
"I'm glad," I said. And meant it.
I went back to the console.
Moved the couple from table nine — who had no idea any of this had happened — to table sixteen on the system, which was where they had always been supposed to be. Closed the discrepancy. Looked at the book. Looked at the room.
Everything was where it was supposed to be.
I exhaled. Quietly. To myself.
"The Voss table."
The voice came from my left and slightly behind me and I turned and he was there — closer than he had ever been, which was to say approximately four feet away, which in a restaurant the size of Oswald's felt like considerably less. Up close he was— I filed that thought and kept my face where it was.
"Sorry?" I said.
"The Voss table." He nodded toward the far end of the dining room. "They've been waiting on their second course for fourteen minutes. Hendricks knows."
It took me half a second to understand that he was not talking about the reservation mix-up. He had moved on. He was telling me something about table — I looked — table seven.
"I'll flag it," I said.
He looked at me for a moment. The same even attention he gave everything. Then he said, "The Aldrens."
"Mix-up on my end," I said. "It's been corrected. They're happy with twelve."
A pause. Not long.
"Good recovery," he said.
It was two words. Flat. Not warm, not unkind, delivered in the same register as everything else he said. He turned and walked back toward the kitchen before I had decided what expression to have about it.
I turned back to the console.
Flagged the Voss table to Hendricks, who acknowledged it with a look that suggested he had already been dealing with it and did not require my input, which was fair.
I stood at the console for the rest of the evening and did my job and did not think about two words said in a flat tone by a man who had then walked away without waiting for a response.
Good recovery.
I did not think about it.
---
I told Bree on Sunday.
We were on the phone — she called on Sunday evenings sometimes, nothing scheduled, just the way it had developed — and I was eating leftover rice on the couch and she was doing something in her studio that involved occasional background sounds of things being moved.
"I made a mistake at work last night," I said.
"What kind?"
"Wrong table. Mixed up a reservation."
"How bad?"
"Recoverable. I recovered it."
"Okay," she said. The sound of something being shifted. "And?"
I paused. "And nothing."
"Zia."
"He saw it," I said. "And the recovery."
Silence from Bree's end. A different kind of silence from her usual ones.
"He," she said. Not a question.
"The owner. Callan Oswald."
"And he said something?"
"Two words."
"Which were?"
I ate a forkful of rice. "Good recovery."
Bree said nothing for a moment.
"That's it?" she said.
"That's it."
Another pause.
"You're telling me this like it's something," she said.
"I'm telling you because it happened," I said. "That's all."
"Okay," Bree said.
She didn't say anything else about it and neither did I and we talked about other things for another twenty minutes and then she said she had to go and I said goodnight and put the phone down.
I sat on the couch with the leftover rice.
*Good recovery.*
I put the television on.
---
*End of Chapter Eight*
- Writer
