"Georgia. Get out here. Your new coworkers are here."

Three knocks, flat and fast, knuckle on wood. Hazel's voice through the door, pitched to carry the length of the corridor, and pleased with itself in a way that made the hair on Georgia's arms stand up.

Ruby's hand was still on the deadbolt. She'd turned it herself, not ten minutes ago, and she hadn't turned it back. She looked at the letter on the crate between them — Hazel's letter, the O'Mahony envelope — and then she looked at Georgia's lap, where his cock lay half out from under the blue hem, still wet at the tip from the tray, from Dolly, from the whole unfinished afternoon.

"This isn't over," she said. Quiet. Not for Hazel. For him.

She thumbed the bolt and pulled the door, and the corridor light came in flat and yellow across the crate of peaches, across the letter, across Georgia's knees. Ruby stepped out first, smoothing the short wrap over her hips with both hands, and Georgia heard her voice change shape before he could see her face — bright, easy, a girl who'd been checking inventory.

"Boss."

"Ruby." A pause Georgia could feel through the doorframe. "Where's the other one."

Georgia stood. His skirt had ridden up in back and he tugged it down by the hem, which did nothing for the front, and he knew it did nothing, and he stepped into the corridor anyway with his apron folded over his arm like a napkin.

The corridor was narrow — four feet wide if it was that, pipes along the ceiling, the OUT OF ORDER door at the far end with its taped sign gone soft at the corners. Hazel stood at the mouth of it in her red skirt and white blouse, clipboard against her hip, and behind her the diner noise rolled in: the griddle, the shake mixer, somebody's nickel dropping into the jukebox.

And behind Hazel, three women.

The first one was already laughing. Sakura Korematsu — Georgia knew the name from the wire Hazel had read off the phone two days ago — long black hair to her shoulders, green eyes, a blue uniform that fit her like it had been cut on her, which it had, because Hazel cut every uniform in that closet with a yardstick and a pair of shears and no mercy. She had a laugh that came out of her whole chest.

"So this is the counter," Sakura said, not to anyone. "It's smaller than I thought."

The second one was already talking. Izabella Cortez, long black hair, brown eyes, a smirk that had probably never left her face since puberty — and she was mid-sentence, the way she'd clearly been mid-sentence since the front door.

"—and I'm telling you, the booth by the window, you can see straight up under the table from the sidewalk, which is why I always take that one when I'm off shift, because if a man's going to look, he might as well get his money's worth—"

"Izabella."

"—and anyway the counter's fine, I like a counter, you can put your elbows on it and lean, and when you lean—"

"Izabella."

"—everything you've got goes up on the shelf, and there's a man at every stool. Boss, I'm just saying it's good real estate."

The third one hadn't said anything yet. Natalya Stalin stood at the back with her arms crossed under her chest, black hair down past her shoulders, green eyes moving along the corridor like she was measuring it — the pipes, the door, the crates. When she finally spoke, the accent came through slow and flat, like she'd learned the words off a card and didn't care who knew it.

"Where is the storage closet."

Nobody answered her.

Because Ruby Maynard had turned, in that narrow space, with Hazel's clipboard between her and the wall, and put her hand on Georgia's cock through the blue skirt.

Just once. A closed fist, a squeeze through the cotton, thumb dragging up the length of him where he strained against the fabric — and Georgia's whole body went up on its toes inside his stilettos. His mouth opened. Nothing came out of it. Ruby's face didn't change at all, and then her hand was gone, folded back at her side like it had never been anywhere, and she was looking past him at the new girls with the mild, pleasant expression of a woman who had just checked the time.

"Georgia," Hazel said. "Are you listening."

"Yes."

"Then say hello."

Georgia got his voice back from wherever it had gone. "Hello."

Sakura's eyes came down his body and stopped at the hem. She didn't pretend not to look. Nobody in that corridor pretended not to look, except Natalya, who was still looking at the storage closet door with the flat patience of a woman who had asked a question and intended to get an answer.

"You're the one from the application," Sakura said.

"I'm the one from the application."

"The photograph." She tilted her head. "You weren't wearing the dress."

"I wasn't wearing the dress."

"I want to see the photograph."

"It's in the office," Hazel said, "and you're not seeing it, and neither is she—" a jerk of the clipboard at Izabella, who had opened her mouth "—and none of you are standing in my corridor gossiping about a photograph when the four o'clock rush is forty minutes out. Move."

They moved. Not far. There was nowhere in that corridor to move to, which was the point — Hazel had brought them back here where the dining room couldn't see, and now she had all five of them packed between the pipes and the crates and the OUT OF ORDER door, and Georgia could feel Ruby's shoulder against his arm and Sakura's hip against his other side and the heat coming off all of them in the close air.

Hazel tapped her pen on the clipboard twice.

"Introductions. You've met Georgia. Georgia, this is Korematsu, Cortez, and Stalin. Sakura, Izabella, Natalya. They start tonight. They're on the floor with Dolly and Ruby, and you're on the counter tomorrow, no apron, and if any of you have a problem with how anybody in this diner looks, you can take it up with me, and I will make you wish you hadn't."

"No problem," Izabella said. "I think he's got nice legs. I was going to say that anyway. I say what I think, it's a curse, my mother says it's a curse—"

"Natalya."

"No problem," Natalya said. Then, again, without any change in tone: "Where is the storage closet."

Hazel looked at her for a second. "Behind you."

Natalya turned, took the two steps, and opened the door — just opened it, no knock, and stood looking into the little room with the peaches and the Quaker Oats and the dead bulb hanging on its cord. Georgia's heart came up into his throat. The letter was still on the crate. Ruby's crate. He could see the corner of the O'Mahony envelope from where he stood.

Natalya looked at it for three seconds. Then she closed the door, and turned back, and said, "Small."

"It's a closet," Hazel said.

"In my country we would put a man in there for saying the wrong thing about a photograph."

Nobody laughed. Natalya hadn't been joking, and everyone in the corridor knew it, and Hazel wrote something on her clipboard to cover the moment.

Georgia's penis was still hard under the skirt. He could feel it against the inside of the fabric, that hot ache that Ruby's squeeze had set off and left running, and he could feel the wet at the tip starting to mark the cotton, and he could not do one thing about any of it with five women in a space the size of a phone booth. He crossed his arms. He put one heel back against the baseboard and leaned, casual, like a waitress with nothing on her mind, and Izabella watched him do it with her smirk going wider.

"You lean like that on the counter," she said, "and you'll make a fortune in tips."

"Izabella."

"I'm helping."

"You're not."

Hazel turned to go, and the corridor opened up, and Georgia breathed for the first time in a minute and a half. Sakura fell in behind Hazel, and Izabella behind her, still talking. Natalya went last, unhurried, and stopped level with Georgia, close enough that he could smell her — cheap powder and something colder underneath.

"Tomorrow," she said. "The counter. No apron."

"That's what she said."

"Good." She looked at his hem, and then at his face, and the flat green of her eyes didn't move at all. "I like to know what I'm working with."

She walked out.

Ruby was still there. Of course she was still there. She had picked up the letter off the crate — Georgia hadn't seen her do it, she must have done it while Natalya had the door open and everyone's eyes were on the little room — and she was holding it against her thigh, face in, so the address didn't show.

"You're going to mail that," Georgia said.

"On my break."

"Hazel's buying a new diner."

"Hazel's buying a new diner." Ruby slid the envelope into the waistband of her wrap, where it disappeared against the dark of her dress. "Which means Hazel's got a plan, and the plan's got a date on it, and I don't work for a woman with a plan unless I know what happens to me on the other side of it." She looked up at him. "You've been here two years and you didn't know that about her."

"I knew she was buying something."

"You knew she was buying something." Ruby stepped in. Her hand came back, and this time it went flat against his stomach through the skirt, fingers spread, thumb just under his navel, and Georgia's breath caught in his chest and stayed there. "You don't know anything, Georgia. You stand behind a counter and you look pretty and you let Dolly ride you in a closet and you think you know where you work." Her hand slid down. One knuckle dragged over the head of his cock through the cotton, once, light, and Georgia's knees went soft against the baseboard. "You don't."

"Ruby—"

"Three days." Her hand stayed where it was. "That's how long I've been here. Three days, and I've had you on a tray, and I've got Hazel's letter in my dress, and I've got your whole body doing what I want it to do with one knuckle in a hallway." She leaned close, and her mouth was at his ear, and her voice dropped into something low and unhurried that went straight down his spine. "So when I say this isn't over, I want you to understand I'm not asking."

Georgia's hands were flat on the wall behind him. He hadn't decided to put them there.

"The new girls," he said. His voice came out rough. "They're going to be on the floor tonight."

"They are."

"With you."

"With me." Ruby pulled back enough to look at him, and her hand came off his cock and rested on his hip, friendly, like a girl steadying her friend. "Sakura asked about the photograph. Natalya asked about the closet. Izabella asked about nothing, which is the one I'd watch." She smiled, and it was the same smile from the first day, the one that had caught him with his apron wet and done nothing about it. "And tomorrow you're on the counter with your little skirt and no apron, and I'm going to be on the floor, and every one of them is going to see exactly what Hazel hired."

"And Dolly."

Ruby's smile didn't move, but something behind it did. "And Dolly."

From the dining room, Hazel's voice, sharp: "Ruby. Order up."

Ruby stepped back. She smoothed her wrap, checked the envelope's edge against her waistband with two fingers, and walked out of the corridor without looking back — and Georgia stood alone between the pipes and the crates with his cock hard enough to hurt and the wet spot spreading on the inside of his skirt, and the OUT OF ORDER door at the end of the hall, and the letter gone.

He heard Sakura laugh again, out on the floor. He heard Izabella say something about a booth. He heard Natalya's flat accent ask Dolly where the napkins were kept.

Then Dolly's voice, low, right at the mouth of the corridor, where she'd clearly been standing for longer than he wanted to think about.

"Georgia."

He turned. She had her order pad against her chest and her green eyes on the wet front of his skirt, and her face was doing the thing it did when she'd decided something and hadn't told him yet.

"Ruby's got Hazel's letter," he said.

"I know."

"You know."

"I saw it in her dress when she came out." Dolly's jaw worked once. "And I saw her hand on you through the door crack before she did it, because I was standing right here the whole time, Georgia, and you didn't notice me, which is its own kind of answer."

"Dolly—"

"Order up." She said it the way Hazel said it. "Four plates. Move your feet."

She turned and went, and Georgia put his hand on the wall to push himself off it, and went after her into the light.