Chapter 8
When Johnson got to the kitchens, steam was already steaming from the sinks. Sarah was crouched over a pile of dirty dishes that the evening shift on Kitchen Duty 'accidentally' forgot.
"You're up early." Sarah smiled up from the dishes.
"Yeah, well Queen Ranavalona woke up early."
"Ouch. Did you get out of there in time?" Johnson donned the yellow rubber gloves, which were getting ever larger holes.
"Yes, but just barely."
"So, how long have you been afraid of her."
"What did you say?" Sarah turned to him with the high powered water hose aimed right at him. But he knew she was tough. She wasn't scared of anything, at least not anything that Ranavalona could do.
"Nothing ma'am. I said nothing. You are not afraid of anything. Have I mentioned how nice those rubber gloves look on you?" Sarah turned back to the dishes smiling, and squirted them without mercy, sending a rising cloud of steam and bubbles into the air.
They fell into their calm routine, Sarah washing and Johnson drying and putting away. This mundane ritual was nice. They didn't need to talk. There was no other world then the world in this room. This world of warm, soapy air, and the smell of industrial cleaners and plates that seemed that no matter how many times you washed them they were never truly clean.
Then before they knew it they were done with the dishes and had to start in on making breakfast. The huge vats of batter for the waffles was dug up, mixed and then put in the waffle irons. Johnson noticed while heating up the syrup that Sarah was being uncharacteristically quiet. Should would have been complaining for the whole time about how this was stupid and how the food didn't even taste that good to begin with and how she should be in bed catching up on some z's.
"You okay Sarah?" Sarah jerked up from grabbing an industrial sized tub of butter, hitting her head on the counter.
"What? Of course I am. Why?" Sarah talked fast, not making eye contact. This in itself was not strange. They were very busy in the kitchen, and they always had to be watching what they were doing, but Sarah seemed to be trying to avoid his eyes. This was unlike Sarah. If she had a problem, she came right out with it. She was very... clear. But now she was avoiding what she really wanted to talk about. But he wasn't going to push it. He knew that pushing Sarah would never work. You always just had to wait. She would come around eventually.
"Oh, you just seemed a little quiet. Thats all."
"Weren't you telling me just the other day that I needed to talk less?"
"Guess that I was wrong. It's nice when there is some noise in here." Johnson shot her a small smile. She looked for a second as if she was going to say something, but then the breakfast bell rang and they had to scramble to finish the breakfast.
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