The years I’ve spent running my food truck have been the best of my life. A few big events on the weekend and the rest of your time was your own.

Granted, the rest of your time is spent cleaning the truck, setting next week’s menu, doing paperwork, payroll, and truck maintenance. Not to mention the infinite task of securing future bookings. So, maybe the time wasn’t strictly your own, but it beat doing all that toil in some other chef’s kitchen.

The bread and butter events of the food truck industry have become vanishingly rare. The remote location weddings, the weekend festivals, the grand openings. With demand dwindling, the food truck community has been disbanding. Trucks shuttering for good, their operators vanishing into the ether. Us lucky few that were still around mostly resolved to do weekday worksite lunches. If we were lucky enough to find them.

Weddings were the first real nail in the coffin for a lot of trucks. Once the biggest cash cow of them all, when austerity joined the wedding planning process, we were among the first to be replaced with budget options.

Next were remote gatherings of fringe groups, far from any other catering alternative. I cringed just a little bit when we were tagged in photos at a Furry convention in the forest. These days I would leap out of Fed and hug their sticky costumes for the opportunity.

We will take what we can get, but I’m always on the hunt for rare opportunities. The big events, the weddings, the big chances to create big-idea menus and to generally flourish.

But I will do whatever it takes to keep Fed on the road.

Fed, my truck, is a great big beast of a truck. Black with bright green checkers around the sides, and ‘FED’ in bright green bold letters on the hood. She will catch your eye if you see her out and about. I’ve got most of her guts hooked up to a gas line, running from a pair of 9kg LPG tanks at the back. A double deep fryer, a gas grill, and a small flat top grill take up the whole length of the wall opposite the serving window. The great big service window takes up most of one side of the truck. Inside, underneath the service window, is a long steel workbench above a three-compartment fridge. A small, infinitely reliable generator keeps the lights on, the water flowing, and the fridge cold.

Our menus were once bespoke affairs. Seasonal, colorful. A spit roasted pig and tropical fruit platters for a wedding by the sea, or the chilli con carne with a heavy lashing of stout for a beer garden. Now we do burgers, sandwiches, that sort of thing.

To be clear, I am casting no aspersions on burgers and sandwiches; two of my favorite things in the world. But the grab-and-go lunch scene leaves something to be desired, creatively.

Lunch gigs were not enough to sustain the whole food truck community. With events like weddings and strange forest get togethers long since evaporated it felt like trucks were vanishing left and right. Especially bigger trucks like Fed. It seemed like for every three trucks that went under at least two of them were big girls.

Sharon and Tom’s truck, the Saucy Tart, just closed up for good after struggling for an unseemly long while. They made outstanding baked goods, using local dairy and orchard produce. Until the unwillingness of orchards and dairy farms to meet the market cost of labour resulted in dramatic increases in market prices. Then it was so long Saucy Tart, and hello office jobs for Sharon and Tom.

Meat Pies was a hard one to see vanish into the ether. My good friend Stan hired commercial kitchen space for a day or two leading up to the weekend, churned out hundreds of pies, and sold out every single weekend from his little tow-behind trailer. He was as good and caring to his staff as he was to his pies. When he noticed that his sous chef Jorge was stagnating churning out pies, he offloaded him to Fed and me.

I last saw Stan about a year ago. We were both parked up at a grand opening of a newly upgraded brewery. He had just sold out, so he shuttered his wagon and chased off after the free beers that venues used to ply their food trucks with to make sure we came back. Jorge and I reckon he rebranded and struck out to a new city for a fresh start.

Long after we last saw Stan, Jorge and I were working a lunch shift in Fed in the heart of an office building complex. It was brisk business, and people were generally happy to have us there instead of having to drive offsite or pay exorbitant delivery app prices. Things were tapering off at the end of the lunch hour, and my phone buzzed. I stepped off the line to check it.

An email requesting a food truck for a late-night beach party. Late-night, remote location, private beach event: all hallmarks of a big budget event. I replied that we were available as fast as I physically could without bothering to skim the details. You never know how many trucks these sorts of invites get sent out to, and often enough whoever responds first gets booked in.

I left Jorge in charge and sat down in Fed’s driver seat to read the message at length. The details were strange. Particular.

The email was addressed from somebody calling themselves The Marquis. Strange, but it was an expensive sounding name, so it boded well. Service was to start at 3am on the stretch of beach accessible by the dirt road southernmost from the city center. ‘Dirt’ was highlighted. No address, no beach name.

There was one rigid criterion for the menu, which the client specified must be adhered to in the strictest of fashion. Failure to adhere to the criterion would result in immediate cancellation of the contract and may result in ‘allergy-like’ complications for their guests. Giving somebody hives or sending somebody diving for their epipen was just about the last thing any chef wanted to do, so I was onboard. It sounded like a fun sort of challenge, anyways.

“The menu will comprise three courses. Each of the appetizer, main, and dessert items must contain flesh from both land and marine animals. NO AVIAN MEATS,” I read aloud to Jorge who looked dubious for a moment before shrugging. The wording was strange, befitting somebody who called themselves The Marquis.

I wondered idly if serving penguin would be acceptable as both a land and marine animal, or kiboshed for being avian. Not that I had, or wanted to have, a supplier for penguin-meat.

“Whatever they say, boss. No birdies for them,” Jorge replied, turning back to the burger he was assembling. Never one to judge too harshly.

Guests would be filtering over to eat intermittently between 3am and sunrise, rather than eating together. Drinks were not required. For the guests, at least. I figured it would be wise to have at least a few on hand for when we got back to the city sometime during the morning rush hour.

A second, rigid requirement was in bold at the bottom of the email.

“Some of our guests may invite you to join the celebration. You are strictly prohibited from accepting any invitation regardless of who is presenting the invitation or how enticing it may be. Failure to adhere to this requirement will result in termination of our arrangement and may result in legal action. Furthermore, acceptance of the contract to cater this event is understood by both parties to be a non-disclosure agreement of any guests or occurrences witnessed at the event. Finally, we would appreciate it if all three courses could be served on a single, biodegradable container with biodegradable cutlery.”

I wasn’t not getting 3am celebrity beach orgy vibes from this email. For the fee they were offering I would gladly refrain from joining the revelry. Tempted though I may be, apparently.

Assuming they locked us in and paid the deposit, the event was two days away. A Wednesday. Strange day for a weekend beach blowout.

“Full moon that night, boss,” Jorge piped up.

Naturally. The moonlight would be helpful, at least. The email mentioned that the stretch of beach doesn’t have any electricity. While there will be a bonfire for the event, we are to be positioned “at least two hundred meters upwind.” It was considerate that they didn’t want to blast us with bonfire smoke, but I did wonder how we were to know which way the wind would be blowing throughout the night.

My phone vibrated; confirmation email received. It vibrated again, my bank app confirming the event fee was paid in full. It was a handsome rate, right up there with a boujie wedding. Happy as I was to have the full amount in hand, it didn’t sit right with me.

We hadn’t even discussed the menu.

The strangeness wouldn’t deter me, it didn’t deter Jorge, and nothing could deter Fed once she was all stocked up and ready to cook. I sent a quick message off to cancel our lunch bookings for the next few days.

Rather than pocketing the vast fee and showing up with a truck full of canned tuna and chicken sandwiches, we went the opposite direction. I put together a menu that I hoped would inspire the beach goers to plaster us all over their social media, and maybe even drum up a follow-on booking or two.

One can dream.

It was 2am Wednesday night, or Thursday morning. We were parked upwind from a humongous bonfire on the beach, and Jorge and I were sampling the menu I had put together. The appetizer and main were straight forward, if a bit elevated compared to the lunch menus we’ve been running.

Pork belly and prawn siu mai with a salmon roe garnish would start our guests off with a bang. Then they would tuck into a wagyu beef burger with oyster aioli and roasted seaweed served on black, squid ink buns.

I will admit it took me a hot minute to come up with a dessert that prominently featured both meat and fish. I wanted to lean heavily into the savoury aspect with a hint of sweetness, so I had fired up my smoker. Over oak and maple, I smoked thick slabs of bacon and some fresh haddock. While that was smoking, I made a small batch of ricotta, and churned some salted butter. Put it all together and you’ve got…

“Smoked bacon and haddock muffins with fresh ricotta and a pat of house-churned butter,” I said, spreading the butter pat on each of two halves of the muffin I prepared for us to share.

Jorge took a good look at his half, before taking a modest bite. He considered it for a moment, took a deep breath, and made short work of the remainder in two greedy bites.

“Sí, boss. Yes.” A resounding endorsement. I handed him my half which he devoured without hesitation.

“Sometimes taking strange 3am bookings in the middle of nowhere is about more than the money, Jorge. It’s an opportunity to create,” I imparted unto Jorge.

“Noted,” he said, already washing his hands. Jorge never has a moment to waste.

We spent the rest of the hour getting ourselves, and Fed, prepared. The grill was fired up, and the flattop was cranked to keep a pot of water boiling. The hood vent hummed overhead, drawing out the steam from the siu mai steamer and some of the heat from the grill. The muffins were pre-sliced and stacked under a large perspex dome on the counter, safe from any sand that might encroach on the wind. The deep fryers were left empty tonight, which would be a mercy when it came time to close up and drive out of here after dawn.

Three AM struck, and we opened the service window and turned on the external lights. The lights did little against the deep of the darkness one finds miles outside of the city, but we could at least keep an eye out for approaching guests. The service window was facing the giant bonfire, about three hundred meters down the beach. Downwind. Instead of a bluster of smoke, we were instead treated to a sharp note of the detritus brought in on the rising tide. A sort of bouquet of rotted fish, old beef, and a mistreated lizard.

“Boss that’s no good,” Jorge said, covering his nose with the back of his left arm.

I was about to commend the precision of his observational skills when our first guest strode into our meek circle of light, nonplussed by the odor.

We had thought the group might be wearing some sort of baroque beachwear, based on what little we could see of the figures cavorting in front of the distant inferno. Standard black robe, as it happened. It did look soft, I will admit. There was a subtle filigree that didn’t quite reveal itself in our muted exterior lights that must have looked marvelous in the light of their bonfire. I also noticed that the robe was held fast by a lazy knot about the waist, and the fellow was plainly barechested underneath. Jorge was already busy fixing the fellow’s plate, but he found a moment to give me a knowing eyebrow waggle with his back to the service window. Jorge shared my suspicions of the nature of the events transpiring in the shadows around the bonfire.

“Hello gentlemen,” the fellow said, with an indeterminable posh accent. I wanted to say vaguely Transatlantic. “I will take one order.”

The fellow was, putting it lightly, handsome. Kempt short black hair, electric blue eyes, and a jawline so sharp it might give my eyes a papercut. He stood patiently Stark still apart from deep, rhythmic breathing. He appeared to have just finished doing some heavy exertion before heading our way. His robe billowed loftily in the foul breeze rolling in off the ocean, the deep v-neck betraying a chest carved from granite.

“Coming right up,” I said with a smile and a nod. Some Ps and Qs would have been nice, but at this time of night I was glad he could place his order standing and had made the effort to tie his robe shut. An intrusive thought weedled its way in, suggesting it wouldn’t be the worst thing if the robe knot didn’t hold fast.

I blinked hard and looked past the fellow, clearing the errant thought before it could leave a lasting impression. The full moon provided a modicum of illumination between the truck and where the guests were enjoying themselves, but the bonfire made it difficult to adjust my eyes enough to see if more revelers were on their way. I hoped they were. I wanted to get this over and done with. Maybe we were out of late-night practice with our months and months of daytime work, but something about the mood of the night was already striking me wrong.

Jorge slid the fellow’s plate up onto the service window tray. The fellow took it with a nod and a smile and wandered off into the inky black night between Fed and the ocean. I doubted that moonlight alone would be enough to eat by, but the fellow was unnerving in his stillness, and I was happy to see him leave our little circle of light.

We didn’t have a moment to reflect on our first guest before the next one appeared at the service window.

“Hello, gentlemen,” she intoned, in the same strange accent as the first guest. “One, please.”

“Coming right up, miss!” I replied, maintaining firm eye contact.

Our second guest was as undeniably attractive as the first. She was in the same robe as the fellow, the gaping neckline betraying the fact that she was equally topless beneath. Despite the full moon being occluded by a vast, impenetrable sheet of cloud, her gentle features were finely illuminated by delicate moonlight. More intrusive thoughts.

I turned to tend the grill.

And so it went for a short while. One stunningly attractive guest after another in close succession. Bare chests heaving under their luxe robes, waiting for their meal before wandering off away from the direction of the bonfire. The stream of revelers dancing in front of the bonfire was thinning, and I estimated we had served about a third of the guests that the booking had accounted for.

It was then that the guests started coming in multiples, rather than one after another. Before too long there was a small, gorgeous crowd in front of the truck and Jorge was plating everybody up all at once. It was far from what I would consider to be a rush, so I left him to plating and tended the grill while keeping an eye out for new guests to greet and add to the ongoing tally. The guests did not speak amongst themselves, and when I turned to tend the grill, it was easy enough to imagine the crowd had all silently vanished.

With my back to the serving window all I could hear from outside was the crashing of the ocean. It had picked up since we arrived, though not driven by any noticeable increase in wind. The sky remained as deep and dark as when we had arrived. Driving out here from the city, the sky gradually faded from a sickly yellow light pollution glow to an infinite starless blankness. I found myself tuning out the steady back and forth of kitchen shorthand between Jorge and myself in favor of the rough rhythm of the ocean. Despite the hour being the dead of the night, the ocean sounded inviting. Refreshing after a few hours in the hot, landlocked guts of Fed.

Eventually I pulled my head out of the oceanic lull to turn and greet any newcomers in the quiet crowd. Some of the guests in the crowd were more adorned than the first guests had been. Beneath their robes were glimpses of shimmering costumes for whatever performance or dance or ritual they had been partaking in. In what little light made it to where they had joined at the edge of the gathering crowd, it was difficult to tell what it was exactly. Perhaps some sort of swimwear or, given the nature of what was transpiring fireside, perhaps just body paint.

It was then that the power cut out. The most trustworthy generator in the world called it quits, plunging Fed into darkness. A pithy, battery-powered emergency light kicked in straight away, so Jorge and I didn’t trip over ourselves and land facefirst on the grill or knock over the boiling water underneath the siu mai trays. The steady white noise of the hood vent fans slowly whirred down into silence. Only the gentle hiss of the gas grill and range remained.

Despite the stillness of the air, something was working the ocean up into an absolute fever pitch. The steady rhythm I had been indulging in only moments before was replaced with an asynchronous hammering of tall waves upon the shore.

The crowd remained still, silent.

Jorge gathered his customer service wits about him much more rapidly than I did. “It’s okay everybody, just sit tight for a minute out there.”

Someone from the crowd broke their silence, “we don’t mind the dark. Say, no sense in both of you being cooped up in there figuring this out. Why don’t one of you come join us for a spell?”

This was joined by a chorus of agreements, some were almost pleading, yearning. Some of the crowd had moved closer to the truck, and in the dim emergency light I could just make out that they were the most gorgeous women I had ever laid eyes on. I knew that for a fact at that moment. No other women on this planet could be more pleasing to my eye. One guest’s robe had slipped ever so slightly down her graceful shoulders, exposing shapely collar bones and toned upper arms.

“Boss,” Jorge whispered urgently. “You gonna’ go look at the generator?”

I remembered the words from the booking, and I was struggling to discern whether I could go out to check the generator or not. They had invited me out, after all. I wouldn’t really be “joining the celebration”, so much as I would be quietly swearing at the damned generator. Then the guest let her robe slip a little more, and the invitation behind the gesture was plain. Tangible. I quickly averted my gaze to Jorge, but not before catching the briefest glimpse of the most perfect rose-coloured flesh.

“Okay everybody, if you could just take a small step back for your safety while we work on getting everything back up and running, we would really appreciate it,” Jorge commanded, keeping his gaze firmly up and over top of the crowd, invisible in the night. Jorge, if anything, would be even less amenable to testing the flexibility of our booking contact than I was. Ever reliable, as he is.

My heart, amongst other things, ached as the women acquiesced and retreated into the night. A base instinct bubbled beneath my relief that they had gone, which was to leap through the nearest window and to run off into the salty ocean spray where we could abandon our restrictive robes. My hand was unconsciously attempting to undo the knot holding fast the robe I was not yet wearing.

‘Yet?’ It momentarily seemed like a foregone conclusion that I would be so fortunate as to don one of the black robes. At least momentarily, before it was discarded on the sand before the bonfire. Coming back to a more logical frame of mind, I suspected that I was several orders of magnitude less wealthy than one needed to be to attend this particular crowd’s parties.

The urge to join the guests fizzled away as quickly as it arose, and the generator kicked back on. It was a physical impossibility that it had done so out of its own accord, just as it was improbable that it quit of its own accord.

Fed’s lights were blinding against the darkness that had been threatening to pull me from where I stood, but the quiet crowd didn’t seem to mind. Nary a hand raised to shield their eyes or so much as a squint. My eyes were not in my control as I compulsively scanned each face in the crowd to find the woman who would have bared all to lure me out onto the sand. She was nowhere to be found. Jorge saw the dismay wash over my face and clapped my shoulder.

“Listos, boss? Ready?” he asked. The brief outage hadn’t kept Jorge from his tasks, and now that the pass was lit again, he slung up plate after plate.

The crowd filed past, grabbing a plate each in silence and disappearing off into the night. The faintest undercurrent of dejection coloured their quiet retreat from Fed.

All was still for a moment. The ocean had calmed, no dancers cut their jarring movements in front of the bonfire, and there were no hungry guests staring up at us through the service window, and the horrible stench rolling in off the ocean abated. We quickly wiped everything down, topped up the napkin holder, and generally tried to dispel the strange aura that had taken over the night.

The strange aura was, unfortunately, as indelible as the horrible smell from the ocean.

“Boss,” Jorge whispered, elbowing me sharply in the ribs.

I sighed internally, fixing a friendly face and steeling myself to deal with whatever came next.

Just one guest had come into the light, and they weren’t wearing a robe. His legs were covered in muck, and he looked about as dazed as the last time I saw him. He didn’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the guests, but I was happy to see him anyway.

“Stan!” I greeted my old food trucking compatriot. “How the hell are ya’?”

Jorge had stopped bustling about, eager for a quick chat with his old Chef. Stan walked up to the service window, his wet footwear squelching with each step as though he had just been out for a stroll in the sea.

“Hello, gentlemen!” Stan greeted us, in a strange, Transatlantic accent. “I will take one order, please.”

The bottom fell out of my gut hearing that strange voice but knowing Stan he had probably somehow scrounged an invite to the beach revelry and found the other characters that we had met so far equally peculiar. Jorge looked pleasant yet inscrutable, as usual, but I could tell he was uncertain. He hadn’t started cooking the order, so to me he might as well have been screaming and pulling out his hair in confusion.

“Yeah, of course mate. Hey so where’ve you been? How’d you get in with this crowd?” I asked, nodding my head in the direction of the bonfire. I was desperate for his newfound accent to wash away, for him to let us in on the joke that he was just here for the debauchery.

Stan grinned, casting the quickest of glances over his shoulder then back to us. “Say, there’s a good question! Why don’t we take a walk, I’ll tell ya’ all about it.” His eyes conveyed a sense of urgency. He beckoned us with a tip of his head, turning and squelching off into the darkness at the front of Fed, between the truck and the ocean.

Jorge was already taking his apron off to follow. I put my hand on his shoulder, shaking my head. Cold realization washed over him, and he turned to me for guidance. I shrugged.

“Couldn’t have been Stan, right?” I offered in an attempt to comfort Jorge. “Does he have a brother, maybe?”

“No, boss.” Jorge was forlorn. I knew that Stan meant a lot to him, as his first real mentor in the industry and as a friend thereafter. He refastened his apron and set about tidying the siu mai steamer. I slapped a few more patties on the grill, hoping to pre-empt the next guests and get them on their way all the sooner. Stan never made his way back from the shadows.

I looked at the wall clock. Three fifty-one. A little under a half hour until sunrise.

“Just hold out for a few more minutes here. Let’s finish this night properly, then we will lock up and go see what the hell has gotten into Stan. Sound good?”

Jorge said it sounded good.

“Hello, gentlemen,” a voice from behind us hit the eardrum like warm honey, fine silk, and a cold Manhattan made with very old bourbon.

Jorge and I both turned to see what beautiful being wielded such pleasing sounds. I do not know how long we stood there, agape. A shameful amount of time. Her long, blonde hair was dripping wet. Her watery blue eyes were captivating, atop soft, rounded cheekbones and pale, full lips. About her sleek shoulders was some of the body paint I had noticed on previous guests. Now in the fuller exterior lights, rather than the emergency lighting, I could see that the pattern was overlapping harlequin. Iridescent blue, in a shade that I was certain to be identical to her unblinking eyes.

“Hasn’t it been a long night? Come, watch the sunrise with me,” she offered. The gentle offer bubbled over my mind like a crystal clear wellspring.

It was incredibly hot in Fed, as usual, and with the sun only minutes away from making its debut over the horizon I couldn’t help but wonder if all the strangeness of the night hadn’t just been amplified by the late hour and the odd weather.

Wouldn’t it have been stranger if the orgy on the beach after the witching hour didn’t have peculiarities?

“Boss,” Jorge reprimanded me.

My hand was in the process of unlocking Fed’s backdoor deadbolt, my apron and chef’s jacket were on the floor in front of the grill. Jorge closed the distance between us with haste and slapped my hand off the lock. A fury boiled deep in my belly. The look on my face as I bared my teeth at him, ready to admonish him down to his core, was enough to drive him to step backward with his hands raised defensively.

My hand found its way back up to the deadbolt. The generator sputtered out, casting us once again into darkness. Fed’s emergency lights didn’t kick on. The ocean was once more in a frenzy, and the odor that wafted in off the tide earlier was back with a vengeance. The salty nose of rotted fish accompanied by what I could only vaguely think of as a reptilian stink.

“Puta,” Jorge spat, stomping his way up the line, headed for Fed’s cabin.

“Oye, Jorge! Vamos!” a faint holler coming from out beyond the waves, unmistakably Stan.

“Puta!” Jorge screamed back. He was rummaging around in Fed’s cabin.

My hand slid the deadbolt out of place, and I could very nearly feel the relief of stepping out of Fed and into the embrace of pleasures unending that I was certain had been promised.

Jorge found his way to the driver-side door first, throwing it open with an almighty shout. He didn’t waste a moment, igniting the roadside flares from the emergency kit in the glovebox and throwing them into the night.

The flares illuminated what appeared to be the ocean at our doorstep. When the burning, chemical lights landed in the midst of the commotion an unworldly keening erupted.

As my eyes adjusted to the chemical lights it was clear that the ocean had not come up to meet us on the beach. My hand shot back up to slam the deadbolt home. Jorge slammed the cabin door shut and engaged the lock.

A writhing, undulating mass was on the sand between Fed and the ocean. It was as though somebody had dug their hands into a swarm of oversized eels and heaved them up onto the beach. They had faces that were cruel jests of a human visage, melted and twisted with gaping mouths clapping open and shut. Their long, wet bodies were covered in harlequin scales that glistened in the flare light. Their torsos tapered off into long, serpentine tails.

Underneath the sound of the angry sea beyond, there was a wet, oozing sound of slimy beings in close proximity. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, the odd sound of pleasure.

Jorge’s flares had befouled the mood, it seemed. The writhing singularity in the night frayed at first, and then dissolved entirely. Each component of the swarm made their way toward the sea, scattering like so many silverfish from beneath sodden cardboard. I noticed more than a few discarded disposable plates.

I slumped down where I stood, my mind fragmented like I’d been drinking heavily since noon yesterday. Fed’s generator didn’t kick back in. Jorge and I sat in silence until the sun made enough of an appearance to show us our surroundings. With daybreak came a cessation of the turbulence in the sea and, as we started about packing up to leave the beach, pockets of dull blue sky were making an appearance.

I was the first to leave the truck. I had to go pack the generator back into its cubby in the side of Fed. Jorge’s eyes burned a hole in my back as I took that step on to the sand. The bonfire was just a pile of black rubble now, and it had been abandoned long before we were able to see it through the darkness. I set about picking up all the plates and cutlery strewn about the beach. The plates were gratifyingly empty.

Morning rush hour was well and truly upon us by the time we made it back into the city. Jorge was slumped over against his window asleep. Or pretending to be asleep. I wasn’t sure how easily I was going to find sleep after whatever the hell that was, despite being bone weary from the whole experience on top of the general rigors of running Fed.

The quiet drive through traffic left me with a good deal of time to consider how I was nearly lured out of Fed by carnal enticement, where Jorge was only nearly swayed by his sense of duty to his good friend and mentor. I wasn’t able to reconcile in my mind what the outcome would have been if either of us had been successfully lured out of Fed. One distinct notion, regardless of the rest of the hypothetical scenarios playing out in my mind, was that we would be on that beach with the rest of them for their next bonfire. Wet, writhing.

When I pulled up to Jorge’s apartment building, he sprung to life and was out of Fed without so much as a nod farewell.

I got Fed home through the traffic and, instead of heading inside for a much needed rest, I decided to set about starting a deep clean. It was extremely unlikely I would find sleep this side of a bottle of whiskey anyways. Might as well be productive about it.

The hood vent fans were soaking, and I was scrubbing out the line fridge when my phone vibrated. I thought it might be Jorge, so I scrambled to check it. It was an email from the Marquis.

“Congratulations on a successful evening! It is my understanding that your cuisine was a wild hit with the guests. Unfortunately, I do understand there was some disorderly conduct that was unbecoming of the group who attained your services. As the Marquis I would extend an apology on behalf of the guests in the form of a doubling of your booking fee. Please note that the contractual obligation of your discretion remains firmly in place. The measures you employed to ensure premier customer service, as well as ensuring your team’s safety in the face of adversity was impressive. I hope you don’t mind but I have forwarded your contact information along to like-minded colleagues who appreciate the level of services offered by Fed.”

My phone vibrated. Bank deposit confirmed.

My phone vibrated. A new booking request.

My phone vibrated again, and again.