Ashna dropped the tea leaves from her jars into a tea ball, and waited.
“You’ve been promising me a raise all year,” Mandy said finally.
Ashna forced herself not to squeeze the tea ball too tight. Fidgeting made her look helpless, and she was anything but helpless. She dropped her arms loosely at her sides and acted as though this didn’t feel like being kicked in the gut.
“We had thirty tables today, and we’ve had twenty-five a few times this week. It’s an upward trend.” More than anything, she wanted to give Mandy a raise, give her entire staff raises.
“You know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right?” Her assistant’s hand on her hip was a familiar pose, but Mandy had never taken that tone with her.
Ashna had hired her five years ago, after Mandy’s teenage daughter left her month-old baby sleeping in Mandy’s house one night and disappeared. When Mandy came in for the interview, her desperation wrapped tight in the cloak of cheery optimism had felt only too familiar to Ashna. She’d let Mandy set up a cradle and playpen for the baby in the room behind the kitchen. As someone whose mother had walked away from her without a backward glance, anyone who did not abandon a child had Ashna’s full support.
Then two years ago Mandy’s daughter returned for her baby, setting the harried grandma free, but Mandy had stuck with Ashna. The look on her face said that the statute of limitations on that obligation had come to an end.
“You wouldn’t be the first person to call me insane for holding on to Curried Dreams,” Ashna said gently.
“If you hadn’t reverted to the old menu, our thirty-table dinner rush might be a hundred-person rush by now.” Mandy was never going to let that go.
Ashna squeezed the bridge of her nose, then pulled her hand away. “I understand that our financial condition is frustrating to you.” She sounded imperious, much like her royal ancestors, and tossed in a smile, because she had to stay upbeat. “But Curried Dreams stands for something.”
Irritation flooded Mandy’s face, freckles darkening against her pale skin. “It stands for decrepitude and dated recipes, Ashna.”
Ashna’s hands squeezed into fists. “Where I come from, we call it history and tradition.” And respect for the dead.
That last part stayed unsaid. Nonetheless, it echoed through the spotless (not decrepit, thank you very much) kitchen, and Mandy’s eyes softened in response.
She sighed, half remorseful, half giving up the fight. “Where I come from, there’s no trust fund to indulge my need to stay stuck in the past.”
Ashna’s smile slid off her face. She unclenched her fists. “I have to run Curried Dreams the way I want to run it,” she said quietly, surprising herself with how calm she sounded.
Mandy buttoned her jacket. “Even if it means running it into the ground?”
Ashna took a step back. Mandy had never spoken to her this way. Something was very wrong.
Ashna’s mind started racing. Mandy had taken a day off last week and uncharacteristically not told Ashna why. Suddenly it was obvious what this was. An image of Mandy going to an interview at another restaurant formed in her mind. She imagined the sharp stab of abandonment when Mandy told her she had found a new job. It was inevitable, surprising that it hadn’t happened already.
“When were you going to tell me you had an offer?” The words were out before she could stop them.
Embarrassment colored Mandy’s cheeks, proving Ashna right.
The familiar discomfort of being left behind ballooned inside Ashna too fast. She swallowed it down. “You should take the job,” she said.
Mandy raised her chin, hurt and indignant. “Do you really want me to take it?”
If Mandy had gone looking, it was just a matter of time before she moved on. “You deserve to do what’s best for you.”
“Fine.” Mandy’s voice was too soft for what was happening. “Consider this my two weeks.” She opened the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The door creaked shut behind her. It needed a fresh coat of paint. The gray had peeled, exposing white patches of primer.
Decrepit.
Ashna ran to the door and pushed it open. Cool night air whipped her face. Mandy was halfway across the parking lot to her car. The lampposts painted ominous halos around everything. The idea of two weeks now, with the connection between them damaged—Ashna couldn’t imagine it.
“Mandy,” she called, making her turn around. “I know you deserved much more than I could pay you. So . . . so why don’t you take two weeks. Paid. Take that trip to Sonoma. Take a break before the new job.”
Relief suffused Mandy’s face. She didn’t want two more weeks of awkwardness either.
“Thanks, Ashna,” she said.
“Thanks, Mandy.”
As simply as that, it was over.
Back inside, the kitchen wrapped around Ashna, unchanged over the years. Bricks, mortar, steel. Solid, dependable, predictable. Not fragile and breakable like the connections between people.
Sure, the appliances needed updating and the exhaust fans had become maddeningly loud—to a point where they sounded like a dead animal was stuck in the vents and screaming for mercy—but the steel countertops gleamed. Not a spot of grime anywhere.
Evidently, Ashna didn’t have as hard a time with pride as she had with hope. Plugging in her headphones, she turned on her playlist. To the power blast that was Alicia Keys’s voice belting out “Girl on Fire,” she made her way to the storage area and pushed out the janitorial cart. Then, snapping on the bright orange rubber gloves, she got to her nightly vacuum, dust, spit-shine routine.
Letting the cleaning service go a year ago had been an easy decision. It’s how she had avoided cutting Mandy’s salary or hours. Mandy, who thought there was a trust fund to cover all this. Well, that wasn’t how royal wealth worked.
The physical exertion of cleaning made Ashna feel alive.
The mosaic floors needed a good buffing, the velvet jacquard on the chairs was frayed in places, and the teakwood tables could use a coat of varnish, but as she wiped and scrubbed, everything got a little brighter and took on the familiar gleam of long-owned artifacts. New things were overrated anyway.
Baba had hand-selected every fitting and fixture to his exacting standards. Every little thing here was a handprint he’d left behind. With Bram Raje at the helm, Curried Dreams had been Palo Alto’s hottest spot, the Bay Area’s first fine dining Indian restaurant. Reservations had been a coveted prize, favors Ashna’s father handed out in his magnanimous Prince Bram way.
Ashna switched the vacuum cleaner off and wrapped up the cord. She refused to turn toward the half flight of stairs that led to Baba’s office, where she had found him in a rapidly growing pool of blood. If she let the darkness knock her down, who would keep Curried Dreams alive?
“What are we going to do?” she whispered to the beloved walls. She was all out of options.
A ping sounded in her ear, interrupting Alicia’s rapture over New York City.
We’re at the door. A text from her cousin Trisha.
In a mad dash Ashna put away the cart, rubbed rose-scented lotion into her hands to cover the chemical smell, and ran to the door.
It was just past midnight, but a visit after closing time from one of her cousins or her best friend, China, was a common occurrence. Everyone Ashna knew worked too hard and too late, and after all the restaurants in the area closed she was everyone’s favorite food source. She opened the door and found herself to be right twice over. Both China and Trisha pushed their way into the kitchen.