Fire Lodge ( jenlisa )

Part 2

Having put away all the clean linen, and in the process studied Korean until she felt like her head was going to burst, Lisa came upstairs for the first time in hours. When she did, she saw Jennie still sitting at her desk, still staring at her laptop. The only difference is that the furrows in her brow were deeper. Obviously time had not fixed the problems that Jennie was having with whatever she was working on. Lisa checked the time - it'd been three hours since she went down to the basement. If whatever Jennie was trying to do hadn't been solved by 3 hours of aggressive thought, then obviously that wasn't the way to go about it. But how could she get her boss to see that? Just then, Lisa happened to pass by a window and looking outside, her breath was taken away by the beauty of the scenery, which gave her an idea.

After fifteen minutes of puttering around taking care of things, Lisa presented herself in front of Jennie's desk. Bowing deeply, she summoned as much as she could of the Korean she'd studied. "Excuse me, HuiJang-nim. Good afternoon." Then she switched back to Japanese to add "I've prepared a surprise for you on the back deck, if you'd care to come with me."

Jennie shook her head, started out of her reverie. "Oh, Lisa! You startled me. Your Korean is already improving! But you don't have to call me HuiJang-Nim. Jennie-unnie will do." She got up from behind her desk and stretched.

Lisa put on her jacket, then rushed to bring Jennie her jacket and help her put it on. "Right this way," she said.

They walked out onto the back deck, where Lisa had built a fire in the firepit and had two steaming cups of cocoa waiting for them.

"I was planning to either go skiing or hiking on my day off tomorrow," Lisa said, as she led Jennie to a chair and handed her a cup of cocoa. "And I was hoping you could recommend some routes for me, and maybe tell me which you think tomorrow would be better for."

Lisa picked up the other mug of cocoa and sat down in the chair next to Jennie. Looking over at her boss, she saw that a lot of the tension had drained from her face. A smile had even started to turn up the corners of her mouth.

"I think I can do that." Jennie said, taking a sip of the cocoa. Looking out over the mountains behind the lodge, she said "Yes, I definitely think I can do that. And if you can go get my laptop, I can finish up the marketing newsletter at the same time."

Lisa rushed back inside and grabbed Jennie's laptop. When she made it back to the deck, she saw that Jennie had leaned back in her chair and was sipping the cocoa, a contented smile on her face. Lisa hung back a moment, trying to let her boss enjoy this moment of peace a little bit longer.

******

Chaeyoung looked down at her grocery list. Through skillful use of her recipes and advance knowledge of the weekend's guests' preferences she'd managed to keep it shorter than it might have been. It was probably still longer than Jennie would want it to be, though. Well, that couldn't be helped - they were still in the process of restocking the staples that had to be bought in large quantities even though they were only used in little bits at a time. Spices, for example. Even buying the bare minimum each week, spices still made up a significant portion of the current grocery list. Mentally estimating the total cost of the items on the list, she squared her shoulders and prepared to go give Jennie the bad news.

On her way out of the kitchen, Chaeyoung stopped to give her assistant some instructions; she looked forward to when she could just say "roast a butternut squash" and Jisoo would know what to do, but she was nowhere near that point yet. "When you finish with those peppers, I need you to get started on dinner. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Peel a butternut squash and cut it in half. Scoop out and discard the seeds. Cut it into a 1-inch dice. Toss the pieces with olive oil, spread them out on a baking sheet, salt and pepper, and put it in the oven."