The lunch lady of hollow ridge playthrough

Turn 20 of 32

Start on lunch with the other Tammys, the stations rotating again. no one wearing shoes, only a pair of slippers. lunch is grilled cheese. the same portions.

Hunger arrives right on the dot, and the lounge empties as one, twelve slippered feet padding down the corridor, shoes left behind the chairs because nobody wears shoes in this building anymore, just the soft nylon slippers that were somehow always in the closet. The wheel turns another notch in the kitchen: yesterday's servers take the cooking line, the fetchers step up to serve, and you find yourself among the fetchers today, hauling bread and butter and the big bricks of processed cheese from the walk-in, cold air rolling over your windbreaker while the griddles warm behind you.

Grilled cheese, then. The bread comes out of the sleeves in even slices, the butter goes on by feel, the cheese lays down two squares to a slice, and twelve women work the line in rhythm — butter, lay, flip, press — until the whole kitchen smells like toast and melted gold. 'Press 'em gentle now, hon, they'll brown up nice,' the Tammy at the griddle says, and they do, every sandwich coming out even and blistered just so, cut corner to corner the way the children like.

You carry plates to the long table, and every plate holds the same: one sandwich, two triangles, a little paper boat of chips, twelve times over. You eat with the others, warm and full, and the sandwich tastes like the good years, like a divided tray and a little milk carton, and it is very good.

'Supper we ought do the fried rice,' somebody says, and the table hums agreement, and the talk drifts on to how fair the portions came out and whether the little ones eat their crusts. Tammy refills your water before you ask, and you top hers off right back, and nobody at this table has a name but Tammy, and nobody needs one.

The clock ticks on at 8:30, and Tammy is content.