"Toivo," I said, "drop me a short stack."
He didn't look up. "Ticket?"
"I'll write it later."
He looked up then. He had very small, very light eyes, like a gull's, and they went past me through the pass-through to booth five and rested there for about the time it took to turn a pancake, and came back.
"Boysenberry," he said. It wasn't a question.
"What?"
"She'll want the boysenberry." He was already ladling batter. "Get it out of the walk-in. The good jar. Not that maple-flavored garbage."
I didn't understand him then. I thought he was just being Toivo, who believed that the maple-flavored syrup we bought by the gallon was the beginning of the end of Western civilization and kept a few jars of boysenberry put up by Irja's sister in Svensen for customers he approved of. I went and got the jar from the walk-in, cold and purple-black, and put some in a little steel pitcher and set it on the warmer to take the chill off, and by the time I'd done that the stack was up, three cakes the size of saucers, golden, the edges just barely lacy, with a square of butter going soft on top.
I carried it down the aisle and set it in front of her, and the pitcher beside it, and a fresh napkin roll, and I said, "Cook dropped an extra by mistake. He hates to throw them out. You'd be doing me a favor."