The Jerk Chicken Incident

She has been doing this for eight years and she has never once fallen apart in the chair.

Not when the bride cried and smeared everything twenty minutes before the ceremony. Not when the power went out mid-shoot and she finished a full editorial look by phone flashlight. Not when a client showed up with a face full of someone else’s work and expected a miracle in forty-five minutes. She is the kind of professional who does not rattle. Her hands are steady. Her kit is always organized. She shows up early, she stays late, and she has built a reputation on exactly this — the ability to hold it together when everything around her is falling apart.

None of that prepared her for the spot on the corner.

She’s been getting jerk chicken from that spot every Friday for eleven years. Same order, same extra container of rice and peas on the side. It has never, not once, been a problem. It is comfort food. It is routine. It is the one thing she does not have to think about at the end of a long week.

So when she grabbed the leftovers Saturday morning — cold, straight from the container, standing over the kitchen sink at 7am before her 9 o’clock booking — she did not think twice. Same chicken. Same rice. Same everything.

Except this batch had a little more scotch bonnet than usual. She noticed it in the moment, thought nothing of it, finished the container, and got in the car.

By the time she’s setting up her station the first signal arrives. Not loud. Just a low, deep rumble somewhere in the region of her midsection — the kind that could still be nerves, could still be hunger, could still be nothing. She ignores it. She’s a professional. She has a client arriving in four minutes.

The client arrives. Beautiful skin, great energy, easy brief. This is going to be a good appointment. She starts the skin prep, gets into her rhythm, everything is fine.

Then the second signal arrives. This one is not ambiguous.

It is loud enough that the client’s eyes flick up from her phone. Not dramatically — just a flicker, the involuntary response of a person who heard something and is being polite enough not to acknowledge it. They make brief eye contact in the mirror. She smiles. The client smiles. They both look away.

She keeps working. She is a professional. She can manage this.

She cannot manage this.

The third signal is less of a signal and more of a declaration. A full, extended, deeply committed announcement from her digestive system that what is coming cannot be negotiated with, reasoned with, or held at bay by any act of human will or glute engagement currently available to her. The client has put her phone down. The client is now just sitting very still, looking straight ahead, with the careful expression of someone who is absolutely not going to say anything.

The brush is still in her hand. The foundation is halfway blended. The bathroom is twelve feet away.

She has maybe ninety seconds to make a decision.

Case No. 008

Your stomach just made a sound that stopped her from scrolling. You have ninety seconds and no good options. What do you do?