The rotating pie case

Four revolutions an hour, roughly, though no one has ever timed the motor precisely enough to argue the point at the counter. Inside the glass drum, seven to nine pies rotate on a shelf lit from below by a bulb warm enough to keep the meringue from weeping too badly before the dinner rush. Coconut cream turns fastest, gone by early afternoon most days; the lemon holds on until closing, its peaks browned in even rows by a broiler pass that predates most of the staff currently on shift. The case turns whether or not anyone is watching it, a fact that unsettles no one and delights small children seated at the counter for exactly as long as their attention span allows, roughly one and a half revolutions. Condensation gathers on the inside of the glass by evening and is wiped clean each morning before the first pie goes in, a small daily ceremony performed without an audience. The motor has been replaced twice in the memory of the longest-tenured cook, each time with an identical model ordered from the same supply house, because a case that turns at a different speed would announce itself as new in a way management has decided is undesirable. It keeps turning after the last slice is sold, empty shelves circling past the register at the same four revolutions an hour, patient in the specific way that only machinery built for one task can be patient, unaware that there is currently nothing inside it worth revealing.

R. Quist