When six hit, they had the bagels boiled and baking in the oven.
Cal headed over to the diner. No sign of either car. But the diner wasn’t empty even right at six. Cal was always first in as the doors were unlocked. Excitement rose—until he saw that it was Jessica, not Natalya, sitting at the counter.
The Judge was back in place in the kitchen and Greg was running the front of house again.
Cal dropped down on his stool, “The usual.”
Greg wrote it up just that way (“The usual”), put it in the spinner rack, and slapped it around. The Judge immediately set a fully dressed tall stack of pancakes on the service ledge and pulled down the order slip. It was all ritual now between the three of them, had been for a long time. Cal liked the comfort of it. The steadiness.
“Hey, Jess.”
“Hey, Gia
