Chapter 4: Seat 4C

On Saturday morning the bus to the airport had forty-two seats and a long line of men carrying hockey bags.

I stood on the curb with my knife roll and my Dutch oven, and nobody had my name.

"Ms. Prendergast," said a young man in a headset. "The kitchen travels by equipment truck."

"The truck leaves tonight," I said.

"Yes. You'll meet the team in Boston."

"Who made that call?"

"The front office."

He looked at his clipboard, not at me.

I knew exactly whose office he meant.

Behind me, a pickup door slammed.

Doran came across the curb with his bag over one shoulder and his suit jacket straining at the seams.

He read the clipboard over the kid's head.

"Where's Prendergast?" he said.

"Sir, the chef is on the truck."

"Then I'm on the truck."

"Sir, you're the captain."

"I'm also very strong," Doran said. "I'll sit in the back."

Nobody laughed, because he wasn't joking.

Hank Doyle came out of the bus with his whistle bouncing.

He took one look at all of us and sighed.

"Delphine," he said into his phone. "Put my chef on the plane. No. No. I don't care about the seat map. Make a seat."

He hung up.

"Seat 4C," Hank said to me. "Don't thank me. Make it good tomorrow night."

The charter had leather seats and ten rows of men trying to nap.

Doran took 4D, which was not his seat, and the man who owned it moved without being asked.

"You can't have the aisle and the window," I said.

"I can hold your hand over the armrest."

"You can't hold my hand over the armrest in front of Pavel."

"Pavel is already looking," Doran said.

Pavel, across the aisle, wiggled his eyebrows at us over a copy of a sports magazine.

"I did not see anything," he told the cabin. "I am very discreet. I am a goalie."

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