By Any Other Name by J. M. Darhower

that be?
    "All right, then," he said, tossing a grungy white apron at her. "Let's get started then."
    As it turned out, she had absolutely no idea what she was getting into. She expected to slap dinner on a tray and mindlessly shove it along to the next person in an assembly line, never giving thought to the fact that someone had to cook the food.
    And that someone, it seemed, was the same someone who served it.
    By five o'clock, she was dripping sweat, her arms aching from hurriedly stirring a huge pot of chili, the front of her splattered by sauce, and her head itching from the hairnet she'd been forced to wear. In her eighteen years of life, she'd never cooked before—she never had to. Her mother was the farthest from domestic as a person could possibly get and Genna seemed to have inherited her kitchen skills. Her inadequacy earned her amused looks from the coordinator as he watched her scramble to be ready in time.
    Lugging the heavy pot out of the kitchen, she stumbled in her heels and nearly dropped the chili. Grunting, she shoved it up on the serving counter, barely having time to catch her breath when the doors opened and people started filtering in to eat. From that moment on, it was nonstop as she ladled the chili into small Styrofoam cups, barely a few bites for each person, before plopping it on a tray and sending it down the line for sandwiches and cartons of milk.
    When seven o'clock finally neared, her shift coming to a close, she was utterly exhausted, her feet aching, her muscles twitching. She almost longed for graffiti duty. On the way out, the coordinator met her at the door, where he stood most of the evening, greeting everyone who came along.
    "I'm surprised you survived all night, Miss Galante," he said, glancing at his watch. She knew it was a few minutes early, but she was hoping he would let it slide. It was only about a half hour trip home, but she didn't want to be late for dinner. "Well, nearly all night. Will we be seeing you again tomorrow?"
    "Of course," she replied. "And the next day. And the one after that, too."
    And almost every fucking day for the next eight weeks .
    "Good," he said. "And I assume in better shoes?"
    "Absolutely."
    She wouldn't make that mistake again.
    The next evening, she took the train into the city, getting off right across the street from the community center that housed the soup kitchen, and made it there fifteen minutes early, dressed in jeans and a tank top, sneakers on her feet, one of her brother's Yankee ball caps backward on her head, her hair loosely braided. The coordinator smiled, greeting her much more assuredly.
    "You ever made beef stew?" he asked, raising his eyebrows curiously.
    "Nope," she said. "I've never made anything… except for chili now, of course."
    That seemed to amuse him. "Well, no better time than the present to learn, huh?"
    Every day was something new, something just as unappetizing as the day before—beef stew, corn chowder, potato soup—but Genna dutifully followed the recipes given to her, making sure she was ready by the time five o'clock rolled around. Friday was special, a full tray of food: some mystery meat contraption billed as meatloaf with instant potatoes, brown gravy, mixed vegetables and a dinner roll. Twice as many people came through then, keeping them constantly moving as she slapped slab of meat after slab of meat on the old plastic trays before shoving them down the line.
    "Weekends are busiest," the coordinator explained, pitching in on the line to keep it steadily going. "More families come in, with more kids, so we try to make sure we have enough to sustain them all."
    She stayed until seven that day, not stepping away from the line until the last person had come through. Pulling off the filthy apron, she tossed it in a nearby hamper and scanned the packed room. The tables were old, the cracked multicolored seats filled with bodies, not a single one vacant tonight. "Do you ever run out of food before you run out