Dori’s first thought as the three burly football fans moved to block her way was, Oh, shit, not again.  She’d been beaten up by men larger and more numerous than herself before, and was considerably less than eager to repeat the experience.  It was too cold to run back to the car, or to stand around outside hoping they’d get bored, however, so she merely altered her course and walked toward the back of the restaurant.  She could go in through the back door.  If she was lucky, one of the delivery drivers might be back there as well.

“Where you going?” one of the footballers called out tauntingly.  “You don’t want to be late for work, do you?”

Dori said nothing.  The best way to deal with bullies was to play turtle, she knew from experience.  Skunks and porcupines had a good plan too, but she was short on quills or scent glands at the moment.

The back of her neck tingled in anticipation of a grab or a push all the way around the building, but none came.  She could hear the men’s laughter echoing off of the wall at the back of the parking lot, and isolated syllables of whatever they talked about next.

The fire door at the back of the store was supposed to be unlocked from the outside, to facilitate the drivers’ getting in after deliveries, but it wasn’t.  Dori pounded on it, and in a few moments Daniel opened the door, looking confused and concerned.  His expression softened when he saw her.  “Oh, it’s you, Dori.  Did you find Bree’s house?”

“No problem,” she replied.  “The back door’s supposed to be unlocked, by the way.  I’m surprised Willy didn’t bitch about it.”

“He isn’t here.  He called in, said there was a family emergency.”

“That explains that, then.”  That was cool.  Willy wasn’t Dori’s favorite coworker; he managed to piss off two or three customers a week, either by virtue of body odor or outright hostility.  The nice thing about Willy was that he was about twice as fast as any of the other drivers.  “Who else is supposed to drive?”  She thought about it for five seconds and answered her own question.  “Bill and Carrie, right?”

“Oh, Carrie called in also; her daughter has a recital tonight. She said she could come in after nine-thirty, if I needed her, and I said I’d give her a call.  Will we be okay with only one driver?”

“It’s a Wednesday, so probably,” Dori said.  “You might call Smile and see if he can come in, just in case.”  Dori edged past Daniel–he seemed too big for the cramped confines of Pandora’s kitchen and prep area–so she could punch in.  The restaurant was awfully quiet.  “Um, dude, is anybody else not here?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Daniel said, as if he’d just remembered the right answer to a Final Jeopardy question.  “Michelle hasn’t come in.  I called her house, but there was no answer.”

Dori’s heart sank.  “So what you’re saying is that it’s just you and me here until Bill gets here?”

“Looks that way,” Daniel said with an eager grin.  “What a way to learn the ropes, eh?”

The dining room was empty, at least.  “There were some guys in the parking lot sort of hassling me,” she said.  “That’s why I came in the back door.  Three of them, in U of M shirts.  If they come in, I think you ought to serve them instead of me, okay?”

“What did they do?” Daniel asked, puffing up with more righteous indignation than was necessary.  That was one nice thing about the born-again Christian mob, they tended to be chivalrous as hell.  “If there’s going to be a problem with people harassing my employees, we’ll just have to–”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dori said, suppressing what felt like her first smile of the day.  “Just let me know if they come in.”

“If they come in, I don’t think we’ll serve them at all.  We have better things to do than to provide service to drunken boors who don’t respect women.”

The smile broke free.  “You’re so cool,” Dori said.

They got lucky; it was a typical Wednesday.  Bill showed up on time, and by eight-thirty he had taken exactly one delivery all evening.  Dewayne, the cook, was new, and both slow and clumsy, but there wasn’t much business so he spent most of the evening listening to WJLB, loudly.  The kitchen area was filled with the sounds of R&B, and of Dewayne singing along.  The U of M guys had hung around the parking lot for a while (Dori saw them through the windows) and then disappeared when a pair of state cops dropped by for dinner.  Dori was extra-nice to the cops, who were extra-nice right back.  One of her favorite things about waitressing was chatting with the customers, making them smile, making them glad they’d come to Pandora’s.  Many of the other waitresses (oops, and one waiter, although Mickey was so stereotypically gay it almost didn’t matter) were obviously just doing this on their way to some other thing.  Dori didn’t have any other thing.  She liked serving food.  It was almost as if she had a big kitchen and was serving food to some huge extended family she’d never had.  She and Smile had talked about the future a few times, and career-wise she didn’t know if she wanted to do anything else.  It was minimum wage, but it was satisfying, too.  Dori had had idle thoughts about maybe owning her own restaurant some time, but she also had the feeling being in charge would be more hassle than fun.

She was fine with it, but it weirded Smile out that she was content to serve pizza to college students for the foreseeable future.  Smile had his heart set on becoming an EMT.  He had completed most of the classes, and was kind of dragging his feet through the last few, or at least she felt like he was.  His older brothers were both doctors, but Smile hadn’t been able to get into med school and had fixated on driving an ambulance instead.  Dori worried that his bad driving record was going to be a big hurdle for him.  She also worried that he was (maybe subconsciously) using the waiting-for-callbacks thing as an excuse not to try to get a better job.  He had a college degree and didn’t have to be delivering pizzas, but wasn’t inclined to get off his ass for anything except the EMT thing.  Not that she was in a position to criticize his career goals.  If she asked about it too much, they just got to yelling at each other.

As the evening wore on, she had the opportunity to teach Daniel the ropes as best she could, and thought again about how long she’d been working at Pandora’s.  She knew everything the managers did.  It was actually a surprise (but only because she’d never thought about it) that she could actually run the restaurant, if she had to.  She had a good idea of how much dough to prepare for the evening, and how many people she needed to have working, and where the best places to seat the few customers were.  And when it started snowing, she knew that it was a good idea to maybe call Smile in, because deliveries would go up.

It was at that point that Daniel decided he didn’t need Dori’s help any more, of course.  He sent Bill home at nine.  “The dinner hour is over,” he explained patiently when Dori protested.  “There won’t be much more to do tonight.”

“It’s just a bad idea to have no drivers,” she said.  “Even if they’re just sitting around, there’s stuff they can do.  Dishes, and stuff.”

“Fuck that,” Bill said, grinning.  “I’d rather go home and watch ER.”  Dori had never seen Bill wash dishes.  When he was asked to do it, he invariably found a delivery to take or something else to do.

“Watch the language, Bill.  That’s fine, you can go.”

Dori rolled her eyes.  Sure enough, there were four calls for deliveries in the next half-hour.  Dewayne and Daniel answered the phone, and both of them had to ask Dori if the addresses were in Pandora’s delivery area.  Naturally, all of them were.  She only had to look at the map once. 

“The dining room is empty,” Dori said.  “I guess I can take them.”  The tips wouldn’t be as good, but it was more than she was going to make standing around an empty restaurant.  She had a new car to pay for, after all. 

“That’ll be great,” Daniel gushed.  He was so damn chipper it was beginning to make her unaccountably nervous.

Fifteen minutes later the first two pizzas were done, and Dori carried them out to her car.  She’d be back just in time to get the second two.

Or maybe she wouldn’t.  Her car moved sluggishly, as though it was caught on something.  It was hard to turn the wheel as she pulled out of the parking spot.  When she got out to make sure she hadn’t run over a dog or something, Dori saw that all four of her tires were flat.  So that was how the football guys had decided to occupy themselves.  “Well, shitfuck,” she said.  She marched back inside and dropped the pizza carry bags on the counter.  The loud smack got Daniel’s attention; he was puzzling over some detail of the cooking guide with Dewayne.  “You have to take it,” she said when Daniel started to ask if something was wrong.  “Someone slashed my tires.”

“Are you kidding?”

Dori gave him a heavy-lidded look of weariness that was sufficient answer.

“That’s terrible.  Does that sort of thing happen often around here?”

“First time for me,” she replied.  “You should take all four of these,” she added, since the second two deliveries were coming up. 

“All right, I can handle this,” Daniel said.  He took the order tags, went over to the map, and started scribbling directions.  Five minutes later, he was gone.  After he left, Dori tried to call Smile, to see if he could come fix her tires or give her a ride home, but there was no answer.  She left him a message.

“Someone cut your tires?” Dewayne asked.  Dori just nodded.  “Man, people are assholes.”

She nodded again.  Something about talking with coworkers was unfulfilling.  Then again, it wasn’t like she was hopping to call anyone else, either.  Dori suddenly wished for someone to kvetch about her crappy evening with.  She’d probably tell Smile about it later, and he’d listen, but it would be a kind of obligatory listening.  There was something more she wanted.

Dori considered for the first time that Brian might have been right; maybe she and Smile were better off as friends.

Forty-five minutes later, Daniel still wasn’t back.  Dori hoped he would have the presence of mind to call if he got lost.  There were a few more calls for deliveries in the meantime; she diplomatically explained that they had no drivers and it might take a while.  The dining room stayed thankfully empty except for one couple, who were friendly and low-maintenance.  Dori was so tired she just told them what was going on–that her manager was lost somewhere in Ypsilanti and there were no other drivers and the cook was incompetent due to inexperience–and they seemed amused rather than irritated, which was a good thing.

“It seems like tonight could be a lot worse,” she told Dewayne.  “But it’s not.  Should I be worried about that?”

“Not as long as you help me wash some dishes,” he said.

“There aren’t that many,” Dori said.  She didn’t mind washing dishes, but that was because she didn’t usually have to.

“I ain’t got no medium pans.”

“Oh, okay.  I need to watch the door, though.  Go start, and I’ll come back and help.”

Dewayne gave her a look like he didn’t think she’d really be back to help him, then went around the corner to the dishwashing nook.  Dori made a quick circuit through the restaurant, making sure there were no more tables to be bussed even though she knew full well there weren’t, then picked up the half-full bus tray from under the front counter.  By the time she got back there, the dishwasher had finished one of its ninety-second cycles and Dewayne was pulling steaming pans out of it, reaching up to stack them on the shelf above the sink.

Dori came around the corner with the tray, squeezed by Dewayne, and said, “Usually we leave them in the rack till they’re dry–” and then there was a rolling crash, like an explosion, and pans were flying everywhere, and scalding water was jetting out of a big hole in the wall where the top half of the sink had been.

Flailing against the water, Dori ran into Dewayne who was doing the same.  Both of them slipped on the greasy floor, knocking fallen pizza pans noisily about.  For several seconds they floundered like goldfish on a tabletop, trying and failing to get up, disoriented and soaked to the skin.  Dori became aware that someone was screaming, “Shit!  Shit!  Shit!” over and over again in a high voice but couldn’t tell if it was herself or Dewayne.

It was Dewayne.  Her voice was the one yelling, “Shit Jesus Christ fuck God!” and it was probably a good thing Daniel wasn’t there to hear it.  Her brain was catching up to what had happened; the shelf holding the pizza pans had fallen off of the wall somehow, and when it fell it had broken the faucet clean off of the sink.  “We have to shut the water off!” she yelled at Dewayne, grabbing his shoulders.  Why was the water coming out of the wall so damn hot?  And would it have been any better if it was cold?

Leaning on him, she tried to get up again, but slipped in the water on the floor, which was an inch high and rising.  Dewayne managed to get up, and pulled Dori to her feet.  He grabbed one of the big plastic buckets they mixed the dough in and stuck it in front of the water spray.  This sent water jetting back toward the wall, but at least it wasn’t spraying all over them any more.

“Can we stick something in it?” he asked.

“No, there’s a knob under the sink to turn it off at the wall,” she said, kneeling in the water on the floor.  Shit, were they going to flood the whole restaurant.  “Just keep it off of me!”  Dori imagined she was on a U-Boat, ready to plug a potentially fatal leak and save the lives of her shipmates.  Hot water cascaded down on her from Dewayne’s bucket, but she got her hands on the knob and turned, turned, turned.  The water didn’t seem to be slackening.  Which way was off, anyway?  She tried the other direction, and that had some effect on the geyser above her head.

“Hurry up!” Dewayne yelled.  “It’s getting a little wet up here!”

“Duh,” Dori said, and gave the knob a final twist.  The water stopped.  The powerful rushing was replaced by the sound of water dripping from things it ought not to be dripping from, like the ceiling.  They were ankle-deep in water, soaked to the skin, and the drain in the floor looked like it was clogged.

“Well, damn,” Dewayne said.

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, the damn shelf came out of the wall!  How are we going to clean up tonight?” he asked. 

“Yeah, guess the dishwasher’s not going to work so well.  I hope the bathroom water still works.”

“What about tonight?”

“Gabriel’s in tomorrow,” she said.  “He’ll do it.”  Dori was beginning to regret that she’d quit smoking a year ago.  She glanced over his shoulder.  “Don’t let that pizza drop,” she said, nodding toward the oven. 

“What?”

“The pizza’s almost done, and the guard that keeps them from falling onto the cutting table is loose.  And when they fall, they always land upside down.”

The phone rang as Dewayne went to catch the pie.  Dori picked up on the second ring.  “Good evening, Pandora’s Pizza and Third Ring of Hell, how can I help you?”

“Yes, may I speak to a manager please?”

“Sorry, he’s out doing a delivery.  We’re short-staffed tonight.  Can I help you?”  It was kind of fun, not having to ask anyone else what she should do.  Dori wondered if she ought to ask about being a manager some time.  Then she thought of ten different reasons why that would suck, starting with the stupid weekly seven-in-the-morning meetings that only managers had to go to.

“Actually, I was hoping to locate Miss Thomasson.  I believe she’s one of the night waitresses.”

“This is Dori,” she said.  Was the voice familiar?  Only vaguely.

“Oh!  Hello, Miss Thomasson.  This is Benjamin Barrett.  We met briefly the other night–I served with your grandfather.”

“Dude!”  Excitement burst into her voice.  “I wanted to talk to you some more!  It’s about the worst time possible right now, though.”  As if to prove her right, another line lit up, and then another.  “I’m about the only person here, and the phones just went nuts.”

“Then we should meet.  I won’t be in town for much longer–in fact, I prolonged my stay in hopes that I’d see you again.  Can we meet for lunch tomorrow?”

“That would be cool.  Can you hold for like ten seconds?”  Dori put him on hold, answered the other two lines with, “GoodeveningPandora’scanyou hold?” and then went back.  “Okay, sorry about that.  Give me your number, Mr. Barrett.”