“No produce yet,” Bev hollered from the line. “Those guys are idiots.”

“Yea, and good morning to you too.” Linda set her purse on the desk by the back door of the narrow kitchen. “Have they called?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s time to get a new purveyor. Okay, make a list of what we need to make it through lunch and I’ll send Ginny to the store when she gets in.”

“There’s no way Ginny will be here in time to get to the store.

Linda opened the small window above the desk. A chilly spring breeze pushed through and mingled with humid curry scented air. The luncheon special for the day was yellow dahl, veggie curry, with saffron brown rice, and of course raita. Bev had just gotten The Vegetarian Epicure for her birthday and now it seemed that all of her specials were of the Indian variety. Linda guessed there were worse things to run as specials, the customers seemed to like it well enough, and really their bread and butter was in soups and sandwiches, so what did it really matter? There’s no end to the amount the amount of sandwiches office folks can consume.

“This is Linda from Village Greens,” Linda tapped her fuck-you finger on the desk in irritation. “Yes, I understand your predicament.” Tap, tap, tap. “It’s going to be 85 today and my customers want salad.” Tap, tap. “Why is it always my restaurant that gets shoved to the back of the line? I need that delivery no later than 10:30. You know, Sysco’s been sniffing around here and none of them seems to have a problem working with women.” Tap, tap, tap. “Thank you. I’ll expect him them.”

Linda pulled her hair into a ponytail, then washed her hands.

On the prepline, Linda made tuna salad, egg salad, and the ever-popular chicken salad. Pull the chicken, dice the chicken, mince the onion, slice black olives, mayo, salt, pepper. Despite the beautiful day or perhaps because of it, the restaurant was relatively empty. Maybe people were behind their desks working industriously in preparation for a long lunch in the park. It was one of the first real days of summer. A sudden change in season always impacted business. First day of snow—soups sell out, can’t keep up on coffee, and people linger all afternoon. Now the first day of summer can go either way—folks can either play hooky and come in for an early lunch, or they can phone in orders to go. And with the way the phone was ringing, Linda guessed the latter. Either way, the day would require a ridiculous amount of salad.