Even better, all of the guests had to be out of the dining room within the next half hour so she could finish prepping for a VIP event that night. A new employee was supposed to come in and shadow her, which would have been great if she had been working with someone besides Dan. Dan, who couldn’t manage the simplest task without having to come back for reinstruction several times.

“I was setting up for the event and I think I’m having a quarter-life crisis,” he said. She thought he was joking until she saw his expression. He was completely earnest and also looking at her as if she was his therapist instead of his coworker.

Fuck my life.

“Dan.” She exhaled slowly and tried to think of a response to this bullshit. “The life expectancy of the average American male is seventy-eight, and you’re thirty something, so this would be closer to a midlife crisis.”

“Shit.” Dan’s eyes went wide. “You’re absolutely right.”

Ledi’s forearms were strong, but the large cuts of fish and fine dining ware were heavy. She hadn’t dropped a plate since she’d first started waitressing in high school, and if Dan made her break her streak she’d significantly reduce his life span.

“Is there anything else?” she asked, voice strained. Her arms were beginning to feel shaky.

“It’s just . . . I didn’t think this would be so hard,” he said, plucking at the wrinkled tuxedo shirt that all servers at the Institute dining hall had to wear. “Unfolding tables, carrying trays of dishes, cleaning up after these people. I mean, aren’t they supposed to be geniuses? They’re slobs. I thought this job would be easy.”

This motherfucker, she thought.

“This job is easy, actually,” she said, trying to not to let her frustration show. She needed to manage whatever meltdown he was having and get through the rest of the night. “It’s physically demanding, and sometimes emotionally, but unlike the work they’re doing out there, it’s not rocket science.”

Dan’s mouth sagged into a grimace. “I thought this gig would really help me get into the mindset of the hero of my novel. You know, getting my hands dirty. But everyone is always expecting me to do something for them.” He glanced at her, as if he pitied her. “I know you wouldn’t understand anything about creativity, but this place is killing my muse.”

Only the knowledge that Yves would fillet her if she asked him to make another swordfish steak prevented her from flinging one of her plates into his face. She was used to people thinking she wasn’t capable of comprehending things, but it was the pity in Dan’s voice that grated on her. She didn’t need anyone’s pity. And the patrons could be a bit odd, but they were actually changing the world, while Dan scribbled lines about “eyes like spots of caramel.”

Yves peeked out from his office. “If I have to reheat that fish one more time,” he growled, and made a slitting motion across his neck. Ledi wondered how people had ever mistaken the Swiss for a peace-loving people. They had invented those knives and they knew how to use them.

She took a deep breath and remembered that this was a job that paid her well and provided insurance to part-time workers. Dan wasn’t worth losing her access to low co-pays.

“Just give me a minute and we can talk this through, okay?”

He nodded but his gaze was past her, as if he was still mulling his napkin-folding-induced crisis.

She hurried the food to the mathematicians, making it to the table just as her arms were ready to give out, with a gentle reminder that they needed to actually eat it this time. They nodded and dug in without looking up at her, but as she headed back to the kitchen one of the astrophysicists flagged her down, asking her to bring him some more of the kale that had been used as garnish on his plate so he could demonstrate a wormhole theory.

“It’s in the curl of the leaf, you see,” Dr. Zietara began, and launched into a complex explanation of matter folding in on itself. Ledi couldn’t grasp everything he was saying, but it was still fascinating. It was moments like this that reminded her why she loved working at the Institute—great minds had to eat, and sometimes they shared some of their greatness within earshot. She appreciated that he made eye contact with her, including her in the conversation—researchers in her own field sometimes gazed past her when explaining things, as if assuming she wouldn’t understand—but then she remembered all the work looming ahead.

“The dining room is actually closing soon, sir,” she said when he finally took a breath.

“Excellent!” he replied, taking more paperwork out of his backpack and dropping it decisively on the table. “We can work in peace once those ridiculous mathematicians leave.”

He and his colleagues glared across the dining room.

Ledi groaned and hurried back to the kitchen. The kitchen that was much too quiet. There should have been the clang of metal as Dan moved tables out from the back storage room or at least the sound of the expensive Italian espresso machine as he freeloaded yet another cappuccino.

“Dan?”

The end of her question ended in a yelp as she stepped on something slippery and almost lost her footing. She looked down to see an abandoned tuxedo shirt beneath her sensible work shoe. Of course he couldn’t just quit like a normal human being, or wait until after his shift. He had to make an artistic statement. He was probably walking shirtless to freedom and planning to use that as the final triumphant scene of his novel.