“Do you work for the concession?” Daniel asked.
“Yes. I’m here to listen.”
“Then you can listen without making people afraid of losing shifts for being here.”
Gavin replied that he had no authority over staffing. When Margo asked him to say so on a signed sheet, he claimed he wasn’t permitted to make policy statements. He remained until the discussion shifted to wage complaints, then left without taking any of the cornbread.
Afterward Imani wanted to know whether he had recorded the meeting. Nobody could answer. Lorna pointed out that Gavin had spent most of the evening holding his phone in one hand. June, who had joined them after closing the garage, suggested they stop trying to guess what he might have done and decide what they themselves would do next.
They agreed to keep a shared list of outstanding pay questions, with personal records held privately by each worker. Two people volunteered to call the labor center. Nessa offered to write a short explanation of the kitchen changes she believed were needed. Rafael offered to help prepare food for the next meeting, provided nobody treated his time as an unlimited resource.
“And the hearing?” Daniel asked.
Imani looked around the room. “We should go. Not because a dead man built a table. Because these are our hours they’re talking about.”
Lorna nodded. “I can tell them what the original place was. You can tell them what the new place is doing.”
The group ended later than planned. Daniel stacked chairs while June washed the cups. He noticed that she’d left their father’s pin on the windowsill; he slipped it into his pocket.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“You talked too long at the beginning,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then you stopped. That helped.”
Outside, the night air was cool. The room behind them was dark, its empty chairs stacked against a painted wall. It had not solved anyone’s wage problems. But the workers had exchanged phone numbers and planned their own next step. Daniel thought of Nathan’s photograph, the long table crowded with people, and wondered whether this was how it had begun: not with a grand idea, but with the refusal to let one person face a difficult question alone.
Chapter Seven: What the Workers Said
Daniel returned to North Pier with June and a thermos of coffee. They stood on the public sidewalk and offered hot drinks to anyone who wanted one. They did not ask for names at first. They listened.
Imani told them her first two weeks of training had been unpaid. A cook named Rafael said supervisors regularly changed shift assignments after workers had already paid for childcare. A dishwasher named Tomas said the company deducted fees for uniforms that never fit. Another worker described being threatened with blacklisting after requesting a written schedule.
