Authors: Michelle Wildgen
Britt glanced apologetically at Leo. “We have a couple bottles of champagne to crack.”
Leo’s face went blank, just for a moment, and then he moved into gear, bustling into his coat, assuring them that this was fine and that breakfast at eight would be fine, fine. As he talked, he was looping a scarf several times around Thea’s neck, until she was wrapped all the way up to the chin. Discreetly, she undid a few loops and began the slow process of stepping toward the door, calling the same farewells over the brothers’ various repetitions of plans and reassurances, until finally they had all exhausted the options for chitchat and the door closed behind Leo and Thea with a muffled click.
The two of them walked half a block without speaking, their steps slow and contemplative. Finally Thea said, “How odd to see Britt in another restaurant. I think he would have liked us to stay.”
Leo looked at her gratefully. Her lipstick was long gone, and a faint sheen had reasserted itself on her cheeks; she looked again like the woman he knew. “Harry needs to be independent, I guess,” he said, and though he knew this was true and that it was a sound idea, he was a little crestfallen nevertheless. “It was a good meal, though, wasn’t it?”
“It really was,” Thea said. “Forgive me for putting it indelicately, but the lamb’s neck is fucking amazing.”
Happy as Leo was that this was true, he felt a jolt of jealousy to hear her speak this way of someone else’s food. “It’s totally terrifying to look at,” he said. “I mean, you’re shredding meat off vertebrae. I think I saw a nerve.”
“But the gremolata and the handmade cavatelli? It’s stunning. Stunning. In the best possible way, it made me want to up my game.”
“I don’t think your game is in need of a thing,” Leo said. And this was true, but he understood what she meant. The evening had been energizing; the space made him feel like he was in a bigger, better city; the food had been downright fun. He wanted only to be delighted for his brothers, but he could not quite banish the sinking feeling Thea’s enthusiasm had left him with.
“Thank you,” she said. “But I just mean I’m inspired. I had a great time.”
They fell back into silence.
“Maybe it was a little unexpected that we went together,” Thea ventured. They were almost to his car, and Leo was so uncertain how to answer this that he said nothing until they stood beside the passenger door. Surely this was his opportunity to state that any undercurrents were imaginary and their relationship was as it had always been. But the night had sped by so quickly. When would he have another excuse to see her laughing and swirling the wine in her glass, her posture becoming so relaxed and languorous?
“Well, we did say it was just business,” Leo said tentatively. Thea’s face lost its electricity, just for a second, and she looked away. Boldness surged through him, and Leo reached over, touching the curve of her jaw, the sharply lifting angle of it, with the tip of one finger. She looked back at him, a smile beginning to surface, and tilted her head very slightly into the cup of his hand. “We’ll be fine,” Leo said, “as long as that’s what everybody thinks.”
BRITT LOCKED THE DOOR,
peering out into the empty, dark street
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hen he returned
, A
nna was gathering plastic cups for the staff and Harry had pulled out two bottles of inexpensive but decent champagne. Britt grasped Harry’s shoulder as they headed into the kitchen and held his brother back as the door closed behind Anna. He’d intended a friendly clasp but ended up requiring a surprising amount of force to make Harry pause.
Harry turned, his eyebrows raised, and gestured with the bottles. “What,” he said, “you think we need something nonalcoholic too?”
“Huh? No, it’s fine. Well, maybe we do. Are you okay? You seem wound a little tight.”
“You seem a little relaxed,” Harry countered. “Listen, I can celebrate this for about ten minutes and then I have to get some work done. You mind sticking around?”
“It’s fine,” Britt said. “And if I’m relaxed, it’s because I know we can do this. We have plenty to build on, but we did pretty well tonight.” When had he taken on such a placating tone with Harry? There was something fraudulent in it, he thought, something too close to soothing a child or a pet.
Britt was about to bring up Camille when he saw that the kitchen was full, the staff was peering out at them, empty cups aloft, and he abandoned it. “You’re okay, seriously okay? Because you seem a little too freaked out. And I’m telling you I don’t think you need to be.”
“Jesus, of course I need to be,” Harry said, already turning away and heading toward the kitchen door. “You have Winesap. You’ll be fine. I have all the weight of that success but none of the cushion. Now let’s go drink a toast with these kids and turn ’em loose till we do it all again tomorrow.”
It was late enough for Britt to send a text to Camille rather than phone her, and to his surprise an answer buzzed while he was still finishing off a swallow of champagne.
“I was banished,” she said when he called. He’d left the restaurant and was walking to his car, keeping a watchful eye scanning the dark streets. “I’m so sorry. I called to let you know, but I knew you’d never hear it.”
“No,” he agreed, “I didn’t even feel it buzz. It was a madhouse in here.”
“I can’t believe I missed it,” she said, sighing.
“It’s okay,” he said, and decided that he meant it, at least as far as Camille was concerned.
“No, it’s not. But I felt terrible for him. He was really roundabout and motormouthed about it—I finally realized he was trying to suggest that I wait to come in
. Y
ou should be gentle on him, Britt. He seems pretty freaked out.”
“That’s Harry’s general mode,” Britt said.
“I guess you know,” she said. She paused. “But I did want to see you in your new element.” Her voice warmed. “I had a nice little plan for observing you from the bar all night and passing you my phone number on a cocktail napkin as I left. I was going to say nothing and tuck it into your pocket.”
“My shirt pocket, I hope.”
“Yes. It was a classy fantasy.”
Britt laughed. His defensiveness and exhaustion had dissipated. Here they were, talking, awake, and the hurdle of getting the restaurant open was almost cleared—really, he decided, the restaurant
was
open, for all intents and purposes. “I want to see you,” he said.
“It’s almost midnight.”
“I know what time it is. I want to see you. You want to see me?”
Camille lived fifteen minutes from Stray, in a Craftsman-style house on a quiet street
. A
light burned on the porch. She opened the door wearing stretchy black pants and a thin top, teeth brushed but hair ruffled, no makeup
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s much as Britt enjoyed a woman who was smoothed to a high shine, this was suddenly better: the worn fabric of her clothing still heated from sleep, the top riding up to show a narrow band of skin at her belly. No bra smoothed her breasts into neutral shapes; instead he could see the clear outline of her nipples and the surprisingly rounded, heavy undercurve of her breasts.
Her hand rested on the doorknob, and a leaping pulse showed in her throat. Britt reached past her and closed the door. He was thinking that her wide mouth looked softer than he’d thought, the full lower lip a darker, more suggestive pink than he’d remembered. Everything from her dress to her manner was always so well controlled, and he’d supposed that in the middle of the night she’d be softened and even awkward, off-kilter at seeing him at such an hour, on such short notice. But she wasn’t, not really—she wore dishevelment as easily as she wore a dress and heels. She wasn’t surprised at all, and somehow he liked this even more.
He slid a hand around her neck, pushing her heavy hair up against the hot curve of her skull
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faint breath of air—a gasp of surprise, desire, or just the impact—escaped her mouth as they backed to the door, and Britt hesitated
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heir eyes met, and the room quivered for a still moment. His hand was still buried in her hair, the other flattened beneath her clothes against the velvety stretch of her spine. Her roving hands had paused, at his neck and at his waist, and now she moved them slowly, one finger slipping beneath the loosened hem of his shirt. He felt her arch her back, her hips pinning his hand between her heated skin and the rough wooden door. It hurt just a bit, as she seemed to intend.
WHEN BRITT AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING,
he spent a long time listening to Camille moving around her kitchen
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rapped in the warm duvet, he listened to the clink of glassware and the burble of pouring coffee and felt both content and slightly nervous; she was already up and about as if it were any other morning
. W
hen he emerged from the bedroom, she was sitting cross-legged on her couch, drinking coffee and working her way through the newspaper on her laptop. On the table before her was a neatly folded green linen napkin, a plate of sliced pear and oranges, and a small pitcher of cream, which she offered to him when he returned from the kitchen, where an empty white mug had awaited him beside the coffee machine. In the daylight her living room seemed serene and welcoming, with high ceilings, sage-green walls, and a pale gray couch. On the coffee table was a wide white bowl of apples.
“This is a great room,” he said, sitting beside her.
Camille looked around as well, considering it. “Thanks. I painted it a few months ago. Before this it was orange, then taupe. I also tried painting something straight onto the walls, like a silhouette of a plant or something.” He looked around to see if the ghost remained on any of the walls. “It’s long gone,” she said. “I have no talent for figurative painting, but I had it in my head that maybe I’d developed some without my knowledge.”
“Stay with this for a while. I don’t want to leave. I can just use your toothbrush and have some food delivered.”
“You think?” She looked around the room, reaching over to touch his hand to indicate that she’d heard the rest of it too.
“Absolutely. Though if you still had some looming plant silhouette, I might not.”
She laughed, taking a slice of pear and leaning back into the couch cushions, tucking her shoulder beneath his arm. “The plant did turn out looking like marijuana. Though my mother thought it fit the town. She likes to say things like ‘This town is so earthy and real.’”
Britt made it a policy not to knock other people’s families even when they were clearly trolls. He preferred neutral questions and gentle statements of the obvious. “You’re not close, I take it,” he said.
She shrugged. “My sister and brother and I don’t talk much, but we’re okay
. T
hat’s just how she communicates. My parents are frequent-sniping types. Every now and again it devolves into a real conflict and then we have to get around that by not discussing it and having cocktails an hour earlier than usual
. A
nd then the holidays are over for another year.”
She put her feet up on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles. He was used to women who presented their familial troubles to him like a broken clock, something he felt obligated either to fix or to make disappear. Camille seemed to view her family with clarity but without rancor. It seemed something to aspire to. His conflicts with Harry were so petty, weren’t they? Why not view Harry for what he was, a guy who got a little more into things than he should, who was still learning to modulate his approach? He resolved to let more go.
“I hate to leave, but I should go,” he said. But he didn’t get up.
“Do you want to shower?”
“I don’t have any clothes here anyway,” he said. “I might as well shower at home and change.” He sounded so businesslike; it wasn’t what he’d intended, not after a night like that. He should have been up first, arranging some grand gesture. He set his coffee cup down, pulled her over, and drew her on top of him. She had the scent of clean sheets and warm skin. “I don’t care about a shower,” he told her. “That’s not what I’m thinking about right now, just so you know.”
Camille grinned. “I do know,” she said. “I know exactly what you’re thinking about.”
T
HEA THOUGHT MAYBE WINESAP NEEDED
another big staff party. No one had thrown one since well before Britt went off to Stray—not that Britt had been so integral to the staff parties, which were more about the kitchen staff than any front-of-the-house people, but she could tell the staff was still recalibrating around his absences. Stray had been open for a couple of months now, and while it found its footing, Britt was at Winesap only one night a week
. T
he front of the house had lost a little of their smoothness, asking too often for repeats on the verbals, forgetting to communicate with the back
. A
nd in the kitchen Jason and Suzanne seemed peevish and out of it. Even prep for staff meal seemed a little depressed, as if they were waiting until the last minute for a dinner guest to arrive.
At staff meal one evening in March, the cooks clustered at one end of the table just as they always did, while the servers gathered at the other end, their ties tucked into their shirts, the women hunching carefully over their plates
. A
pollo sprawled picturesquely in his chair, long legs stretched out into the aisle while he tore pieces from a baguette.
Thea took a seat in the middle, where she could get a good look at both sides of the table. Something was brewing between two of the servers: Annette had ended up sitting next to David, but she never looked at him. David was staring straight across at Alan and talking in a carrying voice about a recent guest: “So this lady asks me what a pork cheek is, like it might really be a tenderloin or something, and I finally had to say, ‘It’s the face of a pig, ma’am.’ Some people
. T
hey think they know everything but they don’t know a damn thing. It’s embarrassing.”
Annette’s profile never shifted, but her posture stiffened almost imperceptibly
. T
hea watched David smooth his shirtfront and shake out a napkin. So that was what it was: David was pulling the same thing he did with every female front of the house. Sometimes he gave it a week, sometimes they worked there for six months before the moment arrived, but invariably there came a day when David picked a little battle about how they poured wine or whether they were overheard too obviously bullshitting on a menu item or had folded a napkin poorly during sidework. He waited till someone was promoted to be his equal, then he reminded her that in his eyes she wasn’t.
Thea noticed that he never fucked with backwaiters, and he hadn’t bothered to give Apollo a hard time, either. He had some women issues, David did
. T
hea glanced over at Helene, to see if she was aware, and was pleased to see that Helene was observing David with a chilly expression. She wondered whether Britt just hadn’t noticed or David was emboldened in his absence.
Leo had served himself with a plate of chili and salad and a few slices of baguette, then settled several seats down from Thea, among the cooks and one stray novice backwaiter, a girl in her early twenties who blushed when Leo said hello and then stared at her plate. New backwaiters were always intimidated by Leo and outright frightened of the cooks.
Leo seemed to take pity on the backwaiter. “Ginny,” he said, and she nodded. “Remind me what you do when you’re not here.”
“I’m in school,” she said, clearing her throat. She had brown hair pulled back in a bun and a dark sprinkle of freckles across her pink cheeks. “Zoology.”
“Zoology?” Leo echoed, tilting his head. “So what’ll you do?”
“Well, last summer I worked in the primate house at the zoo,” she said. “I’ll probably try to do more of that, I guess.”
“The primate house,” Leo said. “That probably gave you good training for waiting tables.”
She laughed, then took a small bite of her chili and frowned as she chewed. Then she swallowed and ventured, “I ate at your other place last week. It was awesome.”
The cooks were watching Leo closely. Thea ate some bread, trying to look at Leo with only as much interest as everyone else displayed.
Leo stabbed a few leaves of salad with his fork. “Oh, it’s not my place,” he said. “I’m glad it was good.”
“Whose is it?” she asked, looking around from face to face. “I thought it was your brothers’?”
“Exactly,” Leo said pleasantly, and Thea relaxed. “My brothers’, not mine. What did you have?”
“I had the lamb’s neck and the salt cod,” she said. The cooks eyed her afresh. As if sensing it, she added with a note of defiance, “It was great. It’s some serious neck.”
“It’s a terrific dish,” said Leo. “They’re getting a lot of press for it.”
“They’re getting a lot of press, period,” said Suzanne.
Leo paused, a bite of chili in midair, then resumed eating. He said nothing.
“You know how it is with a new place,” said Thea. She was careful to address the table as a whole. “Always a feeding frenzy for the first couple of months.”
“And anyway, it’s not all good,” said David. “I saw a couple blog reviews that said the service was shaky and the dishes were overworked.”
Leo looked up. “Let’s not give credence to every moron with a blog and an immersion blender,” he said sharply. “The real reviewers haven’t covered it yet.” David looked away.
Thea cleared her throat and picked up the menu from beside her plate. “Let’s start the meeting, shall we?”
LEO WATCHED THEA RUN THROUGH
the menu changes and additions, the items to push and the ones running low, while the servers took notes. Now and again she paused to tuck a lock of hair beneath her cap, revealing the pale underside of her wrist. Leo let his glance skate over it and back, in order not to stare at the twisting rope of muscle in her forearm, the violet thump of her veins. He felt he was becoming very Victorian, thrilled by the uncovering of a wrist or an ankle.
It was nearly April, which meant that local produce would be available soon
. W
hen that happened the dishes changed more quickly, as small crops of new items appeared and disappeared
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here would be two or three verbals each night instead of one or none
. T
hea would spend longer hours in the kitchen, working her way through new dishes for the evening ahead, and Leo would have to taste them, extending this amiable form of torture by a few more crucial minutes each day.
Thea fell into step beside him as they all headed back to the kitchen, bearing empty dishes. She was carrying a hotel pan with the remnants of the baguettes.
“I have a few potential interns coming through this week,” she said. Her eyes met his and slid away again as they neared the kitchen door, which Alan was holding for them. “Do you want to meet them?”
“Sure,” said Leo. He nodded at Alan.
“Really?” Her eyebrows rose and her head tilted. “I usually only ask you as a courtesy.”
Leo handed her a roll of plastic wrap to cover the bread. Cooks and servers eddied around them, holding pans and knives and cutting boards. “Really,” he said, careful to keep his tone neutral. They were skirting awfully close to knowing banter. “I’d prefer to have a look at them.”
The temptation to soften this with a smile was nearly overwhelming. This playacting was supposed to be hot, but being cool and professional with Thea made him nervous, as if they were always on the verge of a fight. He feared that even these gentle, silent admonitions of each other set a poisonous precedent for them the rest of the time.
“Of course,” Thea said crisply. She tore off the plastic with a brusque movement. “I’ll let you know when they’re here.”
Leo nodded and left the kitchen, ruminating on his dismissal. He was trying to recall whether, back when he was merely her boss, Thea had let him know so precisely the moment he went from necessary to unnecessary. Or had that been his prerogative, as the one in charge? Their interactions now had about three additional layers, and he was never sure which ones he was inventing. He’d have to ask her.
An hour later she stuck her head into his office. Downstairs the service was flowing at a good midweek pace, everyone occupied but not frazzled. “We’re eighty-sixing the bison,” she said.
“Thanks,” he replied. He’d pushed his chair back from his desk automatically, thinking to get up when he saw her, but now sat back down. Anyone might be behind her, getting changed or grabbing stock. So he just smiled at her. No one would hear that. Thea grinned back at him, leaning far enough into the office for the door to block any view of her face from the hall behind her. Then she disappeared.
Leo returned to his work. His chest felt buoyant and full. There was no need for him to be told that they were out of bison. Her trip upstairs was a kiss hidden in plain sight, a little gift.