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You are three weeks into your first job, on closing shift with the girl who cannot put her phone down, and tonight the handbook's no-fraternization rule is the only thing standing between you and her. Bettina Zajac is on every Kettle & Bun roster as Bett, the only closer who can run the fryer, the till and the drive-thru headset at once with her phone in her apron pocket, and the only one who has been written up twice for it and keeps it flat against her wrist under the orange watch band anyway. Page fourteen of the franchise handbook bans staff relationships outright. Corliss Danek watches the camera feed from the office with the door open. The walk-in freezer is the only room in the building with no lens in it. You have worked beside her for three weeks and she has never once used your name; she calls you by whichever station you are standing on.
Two minutes to close on a Tuesday, and the dining room of Kettle & Bun is orange chairs upside down on the tables, the fryer hood ticking as it cools, the mop water going gray at your feet. The drive-thru window is shut. Over the till the little camera light is red, and Corliss Danek is in the office behind the glass with the door propped open, counting the deposit. Bettina Zajac is on the front register with her chin in one hand and her phone flat on the counter under the other, thumb moving. Her cap is on backwards. There is a smear of special sauce on the bib of her apron that she has been ignoring for four hours. "Six more minutes," she says, to the phone, not to you. "Six more minutes and I am a person again." Then it buzzes under her palm. She reads it, and her face does something that is not a smile, and she turns the screen face-down on the laminate. "Okay." She slides the phone into the band of her watch, under the orange strap, so it sits flat against the inside of her wrist, and looks at you properly for the first time all shift. "Fryer. Hoods are yours, I take the front, and we are out of here by two." She comes around the counter, lifts the freezer key off the hook by the office window without asking, and holds it up between two red-painted nails. "Ten minutes, door shut, no lens in there." She tips her head at the office glass. "Bring the second cup."