“Get the water vase filled, wipe it down again, and pull the glasses from the freezer.”

“Yes chef!” He disappeared into the back.

I moved to my last work for the day. Charcuterie. Expensive cheeses made in-house; delicate, organic fruits from our hydroponic gardens in sculpted shapes like birds. Artfully scattered vanilla-infused sugar over the fruit, and crystalline sea salt flakes over the cheese. Peppercorns sprinkled across the exotic wood board like smooth rocks at the bottom of a stream, not to eat, but to hint at class and excess. And in the center, a tiny cup of caviar with a spoon, artfully enameled with actual pearl. Everything was carefully placed to maximize artistic and flavor ratios, color contrasts, any tactic that could be considered gourmet, I used it for something that should have been as simple as a cheese and fruit board.

But now, it was almost perfect.

Again, only for my standards. Anxiety pumped through me as I wondered what I could possibly do to improve this in the five minutes I had left.

One of the executives assistant popped his head through the double doors and yelled, panicking, to catch my attention. Almost as if we were an actual restaurant now. “Miss Jung Hwa! He’s here! He’s in the building! You need to come right now!”

I choked, looking at the tray, thinking I needed more peppercorns, or maybe some whole anise, “I haven’t finished the plate ye—"

“No time! Follow me!” The executive assistant disappeared, and I strode out, confused, walking as fast as I could after him.

“What’s going on? Everything’s almost ready, I need just a little more time to—"

“They want you in the conference room,” the assistant said breathlessly ahead of me, walking as fast as he could, tablet in hand.

Huh?

They wanted me in the conference room?

“Everything counts right now,” he said, walking, adjusting the designer glasses that were falling down his nose. “They want somebody in the room who can speak the language. You know, talk about food. You can do that, right?”

“Why wasn’t I warned about this?” I asked, almost yelling with panic.

“The chairman just ordered it!” The assistant slowed down, just barely pulling a napkin from his pocket and dabbing at his sweating, nervous face. “He’s… he’s not really, uh, thinking about the most conventional way to—” he cleared his throat mid-breath, readjusting his thought process as if somebody were listening in. He outlined between gasps, “the chairman is a genius, and he’s willing to make a risky move here if it means making the difference. So, you need to make sure that if there’s any talk of, you know, food, that you can handle that kind of stuff.”

“I thought the executives were going to handle the food talk!”

“No, just the business,” he squeaked nervously. “They don’t know a lot about food. Not that they don’t know about anything when it comes to food, I mean, they’re professionals! But, I mean, they just want you there, just in case. Good move by the chairman, in my opinion.”

He blinked as if that would help convince him that what he was saying was true, and that it wasn’t a last minute, panicked decision by a corporate executive who was terrified of losing this deal.

We walked faster. The building was like a maze. Every time I thought we were almost to the conference room, it just turned into a new department. Finance. Marketing. Advertising, with the most brilliant drawings and renderings of every possible food plastered across their walls in the first display of color outside of the test kitchen. Then there was the scent lab, where scientists piped the tiniest drops of chemicals into tubes and created blooms of flower scents, puffs of citrus, the mellow comfort of jasmine and vanilla and anything else a person could want.

We finally arrived in front of a door marked as the rear entrance to the conference room. The assistant pulled out another napkin – a clean one, and dabbed at my face, while his other hand somehow managed to pull a comb from his other pocket as he tended to my hair. Almost instantly, the assistant’s tablet chimed. “Oh my god,” he said, freezing, his voice high and tight. “They’re entering the elevator. You need to get inside the conference room, right now.”

“But what about the food?” I asked, trying to keep still as he went back to dabbing at my face and fixing my hair, but three times faster.

“They’ll bring it up and then present it through the front doors when he’s seated,” he said, finishing with me and now trying desperately to move his hair into something more professional, and less wind-blown from all the speed walking. “Get in!”

I sputtered. “What am I supposed to do? I have nothing prepared to talk about with them!”

“No time to explain,” he said, pushing me through the door, gave a series of bows to several of the people inside, careful not to let his hair move out of place, and then slammed the door closed, vanishing.

Now it was just me.

And the five most powerful people in the company.