Authors: Michelle Wildgen
H
ELENE’S HAIR WAS BOTHERING LEO.
He kept eyeing her at the maître d’ station whenever he walked through the dining room, noting the way her bangs flopped into her eyes. Leo understood that he was hovering. Maybe she was just trying out unpleasant new hairstyles now that Britt was over at Stray more often than not.
This was where Leo struggled, trying to match or mimic his brother’s flawless taste. For all he knew, Britt would have told him that he was being an old man, that Helene’s long side-swept bangs were solely responsible for a 5 percent uptick in bar sales.
“What can I do for you, Leo?” Helene finally asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “I just kept noticing your hair.”
A frown crossed her pointed, miniature features. “My hair.”
“It seems to be in your way,” Leo said. He swiped at his own sparse hairline to demonstrate. “You keep brushing at it.”
“I don’t even notice,” she said reassuringly, and looked back down at the book. Leo did too: thirty-eight on the books. Okay for a winter Tuesday
. A
moment later she looked up again.
“Leo?”
“It’s just that I worry about guests being unable to make eye contact,” he said. “People resist that. They like a nice, clear sightline.”
“You’re looking me in the eye right now,” she pointed out.
“That’s true.” Leo began to feel very uncomfortable. “Maybe if you don’t spend as much time looking down, the guests won’t even notice.”
“During service, I rarely do,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re right.”
Helene returned to erasing table numbers and jotting servers’ initials next to reservation names. “Leo,” she said after a few moments, “how are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m better than fine. How are you doing without Britt here?”
She shrugged. “Fine. It’s a basic Tuesday night. Alan’s hoping for a bar diner or two. Erica and Apollo are opening, David’s closing, and we have a backwaiter working-interview scheduled now that Christian’s leaving.”
“Are we still calling him that?”
“Apollo? I guess so. I can’t even remember his real name. I think it’s stuck.”
Leo paused, trying to remember the real name of the newest waiter, who was so glowingly beautiful and creamy blond that on his first night Jason had said, “Get Apollo back here to pick up his halibut,” and now no one could call him anything else.
“Kelly’s trying out a new dessert at staff meal. Some kind of tart.”
Kelly—tall, sturdily built, with near crew-cut black hair and two sleeves of tattoos—had just been hired for her deft touch with pastry and her ethereal sugar work. So far her desserts had been perfectly executed classics with one subtle switch or addition: the herbal bite of Chartreuse where one didn’t expect it, a reversal in texture or temperature
. T
he dishes were good—it wasn’t that she wasn’t good. It was just that Leo wanted to be stunned by the alchemy of it all, and she was amusing him instead.
According to Britt, Hector was spending the last few weeks before Stray opened perfecting some mad scientist’s ice cream cone, cacao custard in a cup constructed out of malt or something equally odd, plus a salted, buttered popcorn ice cream. He’d created some kind of hot fried pastry with a cool Meyer lemon center, served with Thai basil cream and a sparkling drift of sugared zest. Britt had described them as otherworldly beignets.
“That sounds good.” Leo sighed now. “But a tart? I don’t know—didn’t we hire her for her ideas? I thought we were branching out from this grand-mère shit, you know?”
Helene looked taken aback. “Were we?” she said. “I don’t know the details on the tart. Maybe you should talk to Thea about that.”
“Right, right.” Helene now had the patient look of someone who had been playing rummy with her great-grandfather for several hours. “Well. I’ll check in with Thea.”
On his way to the kitchen he reminded Alan, yet again, not to set place settings on the bar until someone ordered food. He sometimes wondered if Alan was really worth the trouble. He sometimes wondered if
any
of them were worth the trouble
. T
hat was one thing Harry would get a taste of: the enduring, Sisyphean struggle, on any given day, not to fire your entire staff. But Alan had been working for Winesap for years; he knew their wine list, and now that he could back up Helene on hosting duties he was more central than ever.
Leo glanced back toward the dining room and saw that Alan and Helene were in close conversation, heads bent together. Now he’d pushed them together in union against him. It was as if he’d never managed people before; he was behaving like a neophyte. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d dealt with the minutiae of the dining room. Britt had taken over so much of the personnel handling that Leo had forgotten how prickly and unruly a staff of thirty adults could be
. T
he front-of-the-house staff was not only at odds with the world at large (who liked to ask what
else
the waitstaff did in their lives) but also with the kitchen staff, who resented their higher income and their requests for sauce switches and onion-free sautés.
The kitchen staff Leo could deal with
. A
n early boss of his had said,
Nobody forced you to be a cook, so suck it up or go get a server job
. A
nd of course the kitchen staff would never dream of it
. T
hey considered waiters the tender underbelly of the restaurant world, whimpering about guests and swanning in hours after they themselves had worked up a sweat.
Thea was at the table by the back door, going over a delivery while the driver stood beside her, his arms folded, in a mustard-colored down jacket and with a three-day beard
. T
hea held up a carrot from one of the delivery boxes and bent it like a licorice whip, then tossed it back in the box and made a sweeping series of scratches on her delivery form.
“You want to call the Makaskis and tell ’em why their order’s just sitting on my truck instead of being in their walk-in?” The driver made a show of checking his watch.
“They’re not missing much,” said Thea, inspecting a yellow onion.
The delivery guy caught Leo looking at them. His face cleared, and he uncrossed his arms and raised his palms in supplication. “Hey, Leo. You want to talk a little sense here?”
Leo smiled. Thea glanced up at the delivery guy. “You want to wait outside while I do this?” she said.
“It’s thirty degrees and sleeting outside.”
Thea shrugged. “Up to you,” she said. She picked up the carrot she had just discarded and inspected it with exquisite slowness and care. Then she laid it back down in the box and picked up a bunch of celery, examining it so minutely that Leo suspected she was counting the ribs on each stalk. She peered at its base, down between the stalks, sniffed at a leaf, and considered the scent. After a while she glanced over at the delivery guy. “This could really take a while. I have that feminine eye for detail.”
The delivery guy looked toward Leo, who shrugged. “Could take hours,” he said.
Thea said, “Hang out here and watch me go through this delivery so we can talk about credit for all the stuff I’m sending back.”
Leo poured himself a glass of water and took a contented sip. Thea ran a kitchen staff of drinkers and brawlers and parolees; she had a kid just past the toddler stage—he’d have bet the restaurant itself on her. Finally the driver realized he had no backup and no choice and headed out the back, slamming the door behind him.
“Hi, Leo,” Thea said over her shoulder. “Care to see what Gourmet Kitchen is trying pass off as food these days? I hate winter.”
“Is it always this bad?” Leo rifled through the box with distaste.
“Britt and I have been discussing this for a while now. Didn’t he tell you?”
Leo frowned. “He probably mentioned it. But if they’ve been getting worse, why are we still ordering from them?”
“We were giving them a second chance. Now they’ve officially gone downhill. We can’t work with this crap till spring.”
“Okay,” Leo said. For a moment he said nothing, flummoxed. What had he come in to discuss? Watching Thea knock down the Gourmet Kitchen delivery guy had put him in such a good mood he couldn’t quite grasp it.
The tart. “What’s the new dessert again?”
“Kelly’s doing a pear frangipane tart. She’s been steeping vanilla beans in rum for two weeks for the ice cream
. W
ait’ll you taste it, Leo, it’s so potent it barely sets up.”
He nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He lowered his voice. “When we hired Kelly, didn’t we talk about upgrading our dessert menu? Something a little fresher
. T
his feels pretty Julia Child.”
Thea looked up, perplexed. “Well, sure. She’s working on some other things too, but they aren’t ready yet. Britt wasn’t worried. Plus we have a case of ripe Seckels and she’s a whiz with puff pastry.”
Leo had to take a deep breath. “Listen,” he said. “I’m glad you and Britt were on top of this, but I’m going to need to be in the loop.” Thea gazed at him impassively, one hand resting on a tomato stem. “And I’ll concede it’s my fault if I’m not in the loop already. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the last syllable a touch longer than needed. “I just thought you didn’t want to be bothered directly, that’s all.”
“Well, why would you think that? I’m here every day.”
“I know, but you’re upstairs a lot. I’m not saying I have a problem with it—you don’t need to be watching over us down here. I’m just saying…”
“I get what you’re saying,” Leo said. He was realizing that he and Thea did not have a lot of sustained conversations; they simply ran through the basics and moved on. He’d been pleased with that until now. “I didn’t realize I was being…uncommunicative.” Thea shrugged in acknowledgment and held up the tomato with a questioning expression. “Yeah, go ahead.” She returned to checking off her list. “But, Thea, I do want to branch out with these desserts. I’ll talk to Britt next time I see him if you want, but I think it’s important that we shake things up. If that wasn’t clear, let’s be clear about it now.”
“Fair enough. But I thought we also were trying to work with our clientele, and you know they like a classic. Our clientele, Leo. Not the one Stray’s hoping for.”
That stung. “Our clientele isn’t in the restaurant business,” Leo said, setting down his glass of water. “They don’t know what they want till we tell them. You think some random Joe decided he wanted salt in his caramel or foam on his sea bass? Of course not. We tell them.”
Now Thea did set down her pen. “Do you think I’m not up on things, Leo, is that it? You want us doing some tired old
foam
?”
“Well, no, not foam. Just…something different. Something other than tarts and crisps and whatnot. I don’t know. I don’t know what.”
“That’s because you’re not a chef
. Y
ou tell the clientele, but the chefs tell
you
. A
nd I am telling you that we’re working on some ideas and that in the meantime Kelly’s making a gorgeous dessert that’s going to sell like crazy.” She tilted her head and peered at him. “You look like shit,” she said. “Are you sleeping?”
“Of course I’m sleeping,” he said. She inspected his face with disconcerting intensity, while behind them the kitchen clamored. Nested and steaming pans hissed as they hit the dishwater, hotel pans clanked as Jason unstacked them and dealt them out over the stainless steel tables, and the Robot Coupe whirred as Kelly, looking reproachfully over her shoulder in Leo’s direction, emptied a large bag of hazelnuts into the bowl and pulverized them.
“I’ll be down later,” he said. He cracked a smile. “It’s miserable outside, by the way. Take your time on the order.”
Upstairs, the servers had begun to arrive and populate the changing room, but he didn’t stop to chat, just went into his office and closed the door. Half an hour later, the line buzzed.
“Are you coming down to staff meal?” Thea asked. “We’re having chicken and rice.”
“I’m a little swamped,” Leo said. “I’ll try to pop down for a plate.”
“We’ll send something up. You relax.”
Leo went back to flipping through old menus, looking for dishes he wanted to revisit or revamp, looking for the moment when Winesap had begun to shift the way Harry and Britt insisted it had. And they were probably right, he knew. He suspected it was not long after the pasta makers arrived. Not that it was their fault—they made gorgeous pasta; Leo wasn’t giving it up. But it had opened a door, he supposed. It had diluted a bit of focus.
A knock sounded on his office door and Jason’s face peered around the corner. “You decent?”
“Come on in,” Leo said, clearing a space on the desk before him. He turned to set a folder on the shelf behind him, and when he turned back he saw that Jason had set down a napkin and silver and a plate of food. The plate was filled with rich yellow rice, scarlet peppers, carrot dice, and silky golden onions. Two pieces of chicken, the skin perfectly, evenly browned, nestled in the bed of rice, scattered with minced parsley and cilantro. A few green leaves of salad were on the side, sheathed in vinaigrette, with shards of cheese shaved over the top.
The sear on the chicken was what he most appreciated: staff meal chicken and rice would be only the braised legs, delicious and shredding off the bone but not skillfully browned and crisped solely for the pleasurable contrast of the velvety meat and the rich, salted crackle of skin. Leo touched the golden edge with the tines of his fork. They dealt with such volumes of food at Winesap, all headed outward and never coming back in to his own table, that he forgot sometimes what it was like to have a dish made solely for him.
“This looks wonderful,” Leo said. “Thank you, Jason.”
But Jason, who believed not in God or human nature but only in even dice, hot pans, and being on time, who regarded emotion as a sucker’s extra, like bottled water, merely shrugged. “No problem,” he said, already turning to leave. “Thea told me to make you something special.”
A
T TEN O’CLOCK THAT NIGHT,
Thea took the evening’s printouts up to the office, where she chose an empty desk—Britt’s—and unfastened her hair and pulled her heels up from the backs of her clogs, letting them rest on top of the thick leather lip while she examined what had sold and what had sat. She missed the way they used to do it before the system was computerized, when the cooks ticked off hatch marks on a menu—the meditative scratch of the pen.
It was probably a sign that she needed to cook more, this nostalgia for such a simple, tactile thing. It was the same in any industry: you show your worth, you move up, you stop doing what you were good at. Now and again she imagined a return to the essentials of cooking, but it was just a fantasy. She made better money now than as a line cook, and she needed it all. Bryan was on time and reasonably generous with the child support, but it was always just enough, with nothing to spare.
Bryan had their daughter tonight, tomorrow, and the following afternoon
. W
hen Iris returned from her time at Bryan’s house, she invariably was wearing some odd new hat or sweater, something Bryan’s mother had decided was a crucial item for a three-year-old
. T
hea felt a fresh discomfort every time, seeing this evidence of Iris’s life away from her. It never stopped surprising her, a three-year-old tromping confidently through more than one house and calling them her own, unafraid to be miles away from her mother.
She had no rush to get home
. T
he house would be empty and dark except for a single kitchen light left burning.
Because no one else was upstairs, Thea ran her fingertips through her hair, massaging her scalp, enjoying the fresh looseness and even faint pain that came with letting her hair move in a direction other than the one in which it had been pinned all night.
She should go to Mack’s. She had planned to go for months, the way one plans an unpleasant doctor’s appointment, but there was always a reason to skip it. Yet tonight Thea was a strange cocktail of keyed up and tired. Normally she was simply exhausted, but her discussion with Leo had been running through her head all night. She wanted a deep glass of red wine, which she would not get at Mack’s. But Mack’s would have a short glass of bourbon, she supposed, and that would be almost as good.
She changed into her jeans and a gray sweater, kicking her clogs into her cubbyhole in the changing room and wincing at the feel of the leather boots she’d worn to work. By now they always felt stiff and cold, her feet swollen and heated as muffins. It was tempting to use this as an excuse to go home, but Thea knew she needed to go: show her face, remind the other chefs of her presence, of Winesap’s presence beyond its line cooks. She would never admit this to Leo, who had been edgy for weeks, but she didn’t like word of Stray filtering over any more than he did. Probably less: Thea liked Harry and Britt both, but they weren’t her brothers; she wasn’t invested in their success the way Leo must be, however complicated that investment was. Her fear was that Leo was right about Kelly, the new pastry chef, that the problem was not Leo’s restlessness but Thea’s judgment
. T
hea was thirty-six—younger than Leo, who seemed older than he was, and younger than Britt, who seemed poised at some eternal moment between youthful style and masculine maturity—but all the industry chatter about Stray’s freewheeling setup and oddball menu made her feel staid and old
. W
ho knew what was going on in the heads of her kitchen staff? They might be over at Mack’s even now, complaining about Thea’s staleness, her dishes’ predictability and blandness.
She paused outside the bar door, then shrugged and pushed it open with a touch more force than it needed; now she had banged open the door as if to announce her presence like a sheriff’s. Several heads nearest the door jerked in her direction
. T
o her surprise, one of them was Leo’s.
He was sitting at a table with a woman in her twenties, who was talking expansively and writing something on a napkin. She kept darting glances from the napkin to Leo and back again, a silky wing of black hair flipping into her eyes and back out with a flick of her chin
. W
as this Leo’s type, androgynous and narrow-boned, wearing a sort of modified shag and no eye makeup, no jewelry but for a complicated series of leather rings looped around one wrist? The truth was, she looked pretty great. She just was not what Thea would ever have guessed.
Leo waved her over, and Thea stood next to the table, hesitating before sitting down. “Join us,” he said. “Fiona, this is Thea, my executive chef
. T
his is Fiona. She’s the pastry chef at Hot Springs.”
Fiona shot out a hand to Thea, rising slightly from her chair, and shook her hand heartily. “It is so great to meet you,” she said. “I was telling Leo how much I love your place.”
Thea was bemused to find herself relaxing a little, caught off guard by the mix of this girl’s punkish look and her warm damp hand, her shining cheeks. “Thank you,” she said. “I hear good things about you. Nice to put a face to the name.”
Fiona blushed and looked away. After a pause they all jumped in at once, offering drinks all around. Fiona won and darted off to the bar, waving away any cash.
“What’s on the napkin?” Thea reached across and turned the napkin in her direction: it was a dish diagram, showing a composition of what from her seat appeared to be circles and sticks.
“Some ideas she has,” Leo said. “They’re not bad, either.”
“You wishing you’d gone after her?” Thea asked.
Leo looked contemplative. “Not really,” he said, eyeing Fiona as she leaned over the bar. “She’s good, but she’s really young. You want to keep an eye on her over the next year or so?”
“Sure,” said Thea. She couldn’t resist defending poor Kelly. “Why, you think we have room for two pastry chefs?”
Leo smiled at her, turning his gaze away from the bar. He wasn’t handsome, really: his thin hair often stood up in tufts from his scalp, and despite his good suits and shined shoes, he had the face and stocky build not of a smooth restaurateur but of a steamfitter or a short-order cook. His eyes were dark where Britt’s and Harry’s were flinty and pale, and the faint coarseness of his prominent nose and the lines bracketing his mouth suggested that the genes had been refined with each sibling
. W
hat Leo reminded her of, Thea realized, was one of those executives who had worked his way up from the shop and still had a touch of grease beneath his nails. She’d grown up among men like this, and she found them comforting. Leo’s dark eyes turned down just a bit at the outer corners, and he had surprisingly long lashes, making his gaze seem both kind and a touch melancholy.
“I’m not gunning for Kelly,” he said. “But we both know people move on sometimes. I like to keep up with who’s out there.”
Mollified, Thea nodded and accepted the bourbon Fiona placed before her. Fiona glanced down at the shifted napkin and blushed once again, turning it over. “That’s just this thing I’m working on,” she said. “I was boring Leo with it. I’ll spare you.”
“You weren’t boring me—I asked,” Leo said. “So how’re Barbara and Donnie these days?”
Interested, Thea tilted her head as well. Barbara and Donnie Makaski were one of the more intriguing pairs in the local industry: to look at them, you’d assume that she was the heavy with the staff, what with her hawk’s gaze and muscular build, but Thea had heard that it was Donnie who was a thrower and screamer.
Fiona sipped her drink determinedly, her gaze fixed on the table. “They’re good,” she said. “Business seems pretty good.”
“I was there a little while ago,” Leo said. “It was hopping.”
“Yeah,” Fiona said noncommittally. “They’re pretty good at bringing ’em in.” A silence hooked on to the end of the sentence
. T
hea and Leo waited, but then Leo seemed to take pity on her and delicately shifted the topic to the song that had come on the jukebox—a rap song, which he not only knew but apparently liked
. T
hea laughed, sipping her drink and enjoying the looseness blooming in her throat and her chest, the pleasurable mix of physical exhaustion and comfort
. A
hollowness opened in her belly; she was suddenly terribly hungry, though she’d eaten at staff meal. Still, that had been at four thirty. It was eight hours later, and there was something surprisingly draining about standing at the pass all night; she often ended up in her darkened kitchen at home, trying to be silent as she swiped spoonfuls of crunchy peanut butter over a pile of saltines or wolfed the leftovers from Iris’s dinner. Sometimes she went all out and cooked, so that in the morning the house still smelled of a burger and sautéed mushrooms.
Fiona waved to a new crop of cooks entering the door
. T
hea and Leo exchanged a glance and a shrug; neither knew who they were. “I should say hi,” Fiona said, reaching tentatively back for her jacket. “I used to work with those guys.”
“Good talking to you,” Leo said, extending a hand. “Keep in touch.”
“Thanks for the drink,” Thea said, raising her glass. After Fiona was gone, Thea eyed the remaining quarter inch of amber liquid swirling around the glass.
“Another?” Leo said.
“Better not. I have to get home at some point, and I just realized I’m starving.”
“Me too,” Leo said briskly. “Come on, let’s get something.”
Thea hesitated. “Shouldn’t we stay? Make the rounds?”
“I see we’re both here for the same reason,” Leo said. He shifted in his chair and took in the room. “But I got here a couple of hours ago and I can give you the general drift. Fiona’s too decorous to say that Donnie’s been working on a serious drinking problem and Barbara’s gotten really protective of the books. Do with that what you will. The barbecue place is going to expand its menu. They’re trying out regional variations—I think even some Kentucky mutton, if you can believe that—rather than learning to make a decent brisket in the first place. Berlucci’s is making money hand over fist despite the fact that they serve the blandest pizza crust and the soggiest pasta I’ve ever had. But they can barely fit the hordes in the door. Don’t hate me, but I kind of want to go just to see what the hell they’re doing there.”
“Free booze.”
“Must be
. A
nd that guy back there in the corner is doing some kind o
f T
hai-French fusion thing, or planning to, but he hasn’t found financing, and personally I don’t think he will, because this town isn’t interested in Thai-French fusion.” Leo settled back in his chair. “Now you have what I have. I’m dying
. A
nd I owe you a meal
. Y
ou coming?”
They walked back in the direction of Winesap, the air suddenly chillier. She was warm from the bourbon, but that superheated feeling she always had after a shift at the restaurant had departed entirely
. A
s Leo unlocked the back door she felt a flash of exhaustion and impatience
. W
hy had she agreed? She could be on her way home by now, closer than ever to some disgraceful, salty midnight gorging instead of whatever genteel little pasta Leo was about to whip up. But, flipping on the lights, she followed Leo into the kitchen anyway because he seemed so relaxed all of a sudden, so informal and friendly, that she was curious to see what lay beneath his general veneer of crisp aloofness and the constant sweep of his gaze.
“I’m going to cook,” he said over his shoulder. “You want to hang out?”
“Sure,” Thea said. She hopped up on a prep table and watched Leo gather two sauté pans and a couple of pairs of tongs. It was cool in the restaurant now that the heat had automatically turned down; he still wore his leather jacket. He disappeared into the walk-in and returned with a partial baguette beneath one arm, a carton of eggs, and a block of white cheese clutched in one hand. “You wanna slice this?” he asked, proffering the baguette, and Thea jumped down and went to work while he returned to the walk-in
. W
hen he came back, humming under his breath, he had two jalapeños and a package of dried chorizo. “Don’t worry,” he said, turning on the flame beneath the sauté pans. “I’ll hardly use any of this. I’m not depleting your kitchen stocks.”
“You’re using staff meal cheese anyway.” Thea shrugged. “It’s just food from the mouths of your workers, that’s all.”
Leo chuckled. He swirled olive oil in one pan, took Thea’s sliced baguette, and set the slices into the oiled pan. He sliced the chorizo thinly, fingers properly protected from the blade, Thea noted, and laid the sausage in the dry pan to render. A moment later she heard the spitting sound of the pork fat, and her stomach growled audibly. Leo was now clutching a bowl between his arm and his rib cage and whisking eggs rather madly, glancing back and forth at his pans as he did. The eggs slopped onto the counter, but he didn’t seem to notice. Thea saw a pop of scarlet oil arc out of one pan, and though Leo started at the sound, he made no move to turn the heat down.
“I’m going to lower that just a bit,” she said.
“You’re the professional,” Leo said. He was ignoring the tongs and turning the oiled bread slices with his fingers
. T
hea watched, fascinated and made faintly nervous by this slapdash new Leo, as he tipped the chorizo pan over a metal dish and spooned out the sliced disks of sausage, splashing several fat drops of red oil onto the counter, before pouring the eggs into the pan and stepping back with an air of satisfaction. It was the mess that made her so tetchy, she realized, the mess combined with Leo, who had never been known to cook, standing here, cooking away in what she considered to be her kitchen. She hated sloppy cooking, but there was nothing to say about it to him—though she felt a frisson of unease and an edge of hostility lurking just beneath it, in case he left the dishes when they finished for the cooks to clean up in the morning
. A
lot of owners would.
“Are you cooking the peppers?” she asked.
“I was going to slice them over the top with the cheese,” Leo said. “Too much?”