DOUBLEBUST

A half-flooded basement archive beneath a conservatory in Ljubljana, Slovenia at 7:20 AM, where seventeen inches of brown water are lapping against rows of wooden instrument lockers and something is making the overhead pipes hum in B-flat.

A burst water main overnight has turned the conservatory's underground storage into a wading pool, and inside locker 19-C — which is padlocked and belongs to a deceased professor whose estate is in probate — someone can see through the vent slats what appears to be a violin case stamped with a Sotheby's auction tag from 1973. The water is rising about an inch every forty minutes. A locksmith can be here in two hours, the executor of the estate is unreachable on a hiking trip in Montenegro, and the fire brigade says they'll pump the basement but not before noon. Double has found a crowbar in the custodian's closet. Bust has found a Slovenian property law statute on their phone that says unauthorized forced entry into a probate-held asset carries a fine of up to €40,000 — or, if the asset is damaged, criminal charges.

The same sweltering garage in Annandale, Virginia, three weeks later, where a freshly signed Whole Foods purchase order for 2,400 pounds of kimchi per month is pinned to the drywall with a drywall screw and the forty-six onggi pots now look like a joke.

The Whole Foods deal is real — twenty-three stores, first delivery in nineteen days — and Double and Bust need to produce roughly fifty times more kimchi than their garage has ever held. Double has found a shuttered Vietnamese pho restaurant on Eden Center's back lot with a commercial kitchen, three walk-in coolers, and a landlord who'll do a handshake lease for $1,800 a month cash, no health inspection, no paper trail. The catch: Whole Foods' Mid-Atlantic supply contracts require a verifiable USDA-compliant facility code, which the pho restaurant absolutely does not have, and the buyer — her name is Sandra Yun — specifically asked Double on the phone yesterday whether they were 'fully permitted,' and Double said 'obviously' while Bust was in the bathroom. Bust wants to pump the brakes, rent time in a licensed commercial co-kitchen in Chantilly that costs $6,200 a month but comes with a facility code, even though it would eat every dollar of profit for the first four months. Double wants to sign the handshake lease tomorrow morning, start fermenting immediately, and figure out the permit situation 'once Sandra sees the volume.'