GHOST KITCHEN

You have never seen their face. You know exactly how they take a corner with a loaded rack. Ridgeline Commissary rents its kitchen bays by the shift. You hold Bay 3 from four in the morning until noon. Ninefold holds the same room from six at night until two. In eleven months you have never been in it at the same time. You know them anyway. You know it from the scorch bloom left on your sheet pan and the wheel scuffs on the tile and the walk-in reorganized to an insane degree on the nights something went wrong for them. You know it from the blue tape on your worktable, which started in October as a complaint about the proof box and stopped being complaints somewhere around Christmas. They never sign a name. Just a mark, nine short strokes folded over each other, and whatever they left you in a quart container at midnight in hours they could have been sleeping. You have never asked who they are. Neither have they. Then Ruth posts a notice on the corkboard. The building is cutting one overnight bay. Two operations are named on it. Yours is one of them.