Authors: Elin Hilderbrand
“Now you know why I don’t like journalists,” he said. He twirled his glass then looked around the dining room—they were the only people eating upstairs. He hunched his shoulders and said, “Can we not talk about the article?”
Adrienne didn’t care for his tone of voice; it was the same tone he used at work when he was telling her what to do. She was about to say something tart when the bartender appeared with a second glass of champagne. Adrienne drank half of it down, questioning her decision to come on this date. This was what had happened in her relationship with Kip Turnbull in Thailand; right before they broke up he was micromanaging her personal life, telling her how to defog her snorkel, insisting she condition her hair with coconut milk, feeding her psychedelic mushrooms without her knowledge. That was the problem with dating the boss; they couldn’t get over themselves. Adrienne concentrated on her appetizer. It was pretty damn good, though she now resented the fact that Thatcher had ordered it for her, as though she weren’t educated enough to select something on her own. She noticed Thatcher still wasn’t eating. He was looking at her with a worried expression.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If you want to know something about me, you can just ask. You don’t have to read about me in my alumni magazine. Most of what I tell reporters is baloney anyway.”
Adrienne nodded once, but only to let him know she’d heard him. She finished her mushroom and her champagne in silence, and feigned interest in the photographs of sailboats on the walls. Then, when she could avoid conversation no longer, she reached for Caren’s purse. “I’m going to the ladies’ room,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Down the hall,” he said. He stood up when she left, just like Adrienne’s father used to do for Rosalie. Adrienne gave him points for that.
The hall leading to the bathroom was adjacent to a back corridor that was used as a waiters’ station. Adrienne noticed the folded food stands, the stacks of china and linen, the racks for the silver, the bud vases, and a plastic pitcher of white freesia stems. She eyed the computer where the waiters placed orders. Just as she was about to step into the ladies’ room to check her teeth, she heard two female waiters talking as they trudged up the back stairs.
“He hasn’t been here in, like, five years,” one said. “And Fiona, you know, never eats anywhere.”
“That’s not Fiona he’s with tonight?”
“No, it’s some other chick. He’s not married to Fiona or anything.”
“Oh, I know.”
Adrienne made sure the waiters got a good look at her before she entered the ladies’ room.
Some other chick!
When she returned to the table, Thatcher stood up again and remained standing. Their plates had been cleared.
“The female waiters were talking about you,” Adrienne said.
“I’m not surprised,” Thatcher said. “Whenever I leave the Bistro at night, it’s news. Are you ready?”
“For what?” Adrienne said. “Where are we going?”
“Across the street,” Thatcher said. “We’ve just begun.”
They crossed Federal Street to the Pearl, a restaurant that made Adrienne feel as though she were underwater. There was a waist-to-ceiling fish tank filled with tropical fish and the tables and chairs were very modern and sleek. The dining room had a blue glow that gave it a peaceful, floaty feeling despite the fact that it was packed with people. Young, hip, well-dressed. The people smelled like money.
“This is see and be seen in town,” Thatcher said. “Which isn’t what we’re after, but . . . I would have taken you downstairs to the Boarding House for pot stickers, except the Parrishes eat there every Wednesday and I couldn’t risk running into them.”
“No,” Adrienne said. She would have ended up babysitting Wolfie on her date.
“Danger,” Thatcher said. “Danger, danger.” He put his hand up to shield his face, as though the paparazzi were after him.
“Who is it? Not the Parrishes?”
“Cat is at the four-top by the window,” Thatcher said. “And Leon Cross is at a deuce in the corner with a woman
who is not his wife. He asked me yesterday if I would hide them away and I said no. Why he would bring her
here
is beyond me.”
“Since you don’t want to be seen with me, I could ask you the same thing.”
“I’m proud to be seen with you,” Thatcher said. “I just don’t want to work on my night off.”
“Should we leave?” Adrienne asked.
Before he could answer, a woman with straight black hair all the way down to her butt emerged from the crowd and pulled Thatcher and Adrienne forward as though she was granting them entrance to a hot club. “Follow me,” she said.
The woman was Red Mare, Spillman’s wife. She seated them at a table tucked back in the corner. Within minutes, Red Mare brought their drinks: a passion fruit cosmo for Adrienne and a club soda with lime for Thatcher.
“You’re Adrienne,” Red Mare said. “John really likes working with you. Much better than with Kevin. Didn’t you think Kevin had a pole up his ass, Thatch?”
Thatcher shrugged. “Sure.”
“I’m glad you finally got smart and put a woman up front. An attractive woman.” She touched Adrienne’s shoulder. “Great dress.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway, Thatch, I know you called in your request, but the kitchen knows you’re here and chef wants to make you his six-course Asian seafood menu.”
“Tell chef thanks,” Thatcher said. “But we’ll stick with our original plan.”
Red Mare clapped her hands and held them together in front of her chest like a praying mantis. “You got it.”
After she disappeared back into the beautiful crowd, Adrienne said, “Everyone knows you.”
“I’ve been here a long time.”
“Twelve years isn’t that long.”
“It is when you’re young. Listen, twelve years ago you were still in high school. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“And it’s a small island. The restaurant community is tight. Over the course of the summer we’ll have all the chefs in on their night off. We take good care of them. They just want to do the same.”
Adrienne saw Red Mare peek at them from her position by the door, checking up on them like Adrienne herself did eighty-two times a night. Now that she worked in a restaurant, she noticed the things that other guests wouldn’t. For example, the number of glasses hanging from a rack over the bar was dwindling (a few seconds later, the bar back appeared with clean glasses) and a certain busser, in this case a tiny brunette, kept bumping into one of the male servers. (They were obviously having a fling.) Adrienne might have shared these insights with Thatcher but he, no doubt, had outgrown being amused by the behind-the-scenes of other restaurants.
“What do you do around here all winter?” she asked.
“Catch up on my sleep,” he said. “And Fiona and I take a trip back to South Bend at Christmas.”
Adrienne had worked the last six Christmases but just the thought brought the face of Doug Riedel to mind. Those damn shearling gloves! She drained her cosmo. At that instant, Red Mare appeared with a second cosmo and their food. “Two tuna martinis—this is seared tuna with wasabi crème fraîche.”
Adrienne tasted it as soon as it hit the table. “The best second course on the island,” she said.
“If you’re not eating at work,” Thatcher said. He sipped his club soda.
“I have a question,” Adrienne said, a challenge in her voice. Just breathing in the vapors from the second cosmo sent her good judgment through the roof.
“Shoot.”
She had many questions, all of them provocative: Why had he been to see the priest? Why was he closing the restaurant? Why no journalists in the kitchen? But the one she chose was: “How did you come to be an alcoholic?”
His laugh was so forceful it startled her. “Ha!” After two weeks, she still wasn’t used to that crazy laugh. “You’re trying to shock me with a direct hit,” he said. “And it’s working.”
Adrienne speared a piece of tuna. Even the silverware here had a sleek design. “You don’t have to answer,” she said. “I’m at the mercy of alcohol now myself.”
“That was my goal,” Thatcher said. “Get you drunk so you forget I’m your boss.”
“Why do you want me to forget you’re my boss?”
“So you’ll like me.”
“I do like you.”
He stared at her a minute then reached for her hand. She looked at the side of his face, at the clean pink skin around his ear, newly exposed from the haircut. With his other hand, he loosened his tie and undid his top button. He had barely touched his food.
“You’re not eating,” she said.
“I’m pacing myself,” he said. “Remember, I know what’s to come.”
Adrienne reclaimed her hand to finish her tuna, and if Thatcher wasn’t going to eat, she would finish his.
“I became an alcoholic as a result of the business,” Thatcher said. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know that anything happened,” he said. “I was just drinking a lot every night. A couple of cocktails, a bottle of wine, a glass of port. And by the time the hand bell chimed, I was sloshed. I did stupid things. Forgave all the tabs at the bar. Doubled the tips for the waitstaff. This made me very popular, mind you, but it was bad for our bottom line. I started AA four years ago. Fiona insisted.”
“Did she?”
“My behavior was threatening the business. It had to stop.”
“Isn’t it hard, though, not drinking? Especially when you’re around alcohol all the time?”
“At first, I tried to cut back. Have one cocktail, one glass of wine. But I couldn’t do it. One cocktail wasn’t an option.
Alcoholism is a disease and I have it. But it’s not so bad.” He held up his drink. “I really love club soda.”
Adrienne smiled and stared at Thatcher’s tuna, ruby red in the frosted martini glass. She could stay here all night. She wanted to enjoy being waited on for a change. But Thatcher seemed antsy. He checked his Patek Philippe. “Time’s up,” he said. “We’re going.”
At a restaurant called Oran Mor, Thatcher and Adrienne hid at a tiny table tucked behind the horseshoe-shaped bar. The table had a view of the harbor and the ferry—the same ferry that Adrienne had arrived on two weeks, and another lifetime, ago. A male waiter brought Adrienne a glass of red wine followed by an enormous porterhouse steak topped with Roquefort butter. Thatcher got a shallow dish of lobster risotto.
“I couldn’t decide between the two,” he said. “So we got both.” He watched Adrienne take a bite of steak. “Now taste your wine.”
Adrienne bristled once again at being told what to do, especially since she knew he’d be right. The steak and wine were made for each other.
“How’s the wine?” he asked.
“Incredible.”
He picked up her glass and inhaled. “Big,” he said. “Plummy. Just as they described it.”
Adrienne offered her steak to Thatcher but he shook his head. “Go on,” she said. “There can’t be more after this.” He relented, then hand-fed her a bite of his risotto, and all Adrienne could think was that it was a good thing no one could see them. Nothing brought more sarcasm from the waitstaff than a couple feeding each other.
Adrienne drank down her wine and another glass appeared. She was officially drunk; across the table, Thatcher was blurry. He was looking at her so intently that it took the place of conversation.
He’s soaking me up,
Adrienne thought.
Whatever
that
meant.
The more Adrienne drank, the
more it seemed like Thatcher himself was drunk. When she finished eating, Thatcher took her hand again.
“Who are you, Adrienne Dealey?” he said. “Who are you?”
She didn’t have anything resembling a good answer. She couldn’t say “I’m a dentist and a father.” Or “I’m a restaurant owner.” Or “I’m a chef.” She couldn’t even say “I’m a childhood friend of Fiona’s. I’ve been a friend of hers since kindergarten.” She had no identity. She lived in a place for a while, working a desk, skiing bumps, visiting Buddhist temples, sitting on a sugar-sand beach, making poor decisions, fudging the details of her past—and six months or a year later she was somewhere else. Someone else. New friends, new boyfriend, new job, new location. The most important thing in her life had been the money for her Future, the money saved up for . . . what? Some bigger plan that she had yet to identify. Her father was right. One of these days she was going to have to pick a place and stay there.
“I’m a student of human nature,” Adrienne said. She was so drunk this didn’t even sound corny. “I’m trying to absorb it all before I settle down.”
“Do you think you’ll ever settle down?” Thatcher said. “Get married?”
Adrienne pushed her plate away; she was absolutely stuffed. She reached for her wine and held the glass with two hands. “I don’t know. I’ve had a lot of boyfriends. There was a guy on the Cape who asked me to marry him and I considered it for about a day and a half. Then I freaked out and flew to Hawaii. It was very immature behavior on my part.”
“My mother bailed on us when I was nine,” Thatcher said. “My three older brothers were sixteen, fourteen, and eleven at the time. There is no doubt in my mind that we drove her away; we would have driven Mother Teresa away. So I used to have an issue with women who run, but I got over it. I forgave my mother—that’s one thing AA really helps with, forgiveness. She lives in Toronto now, but I never see her.”
“Yeah,” Adrienne said. “My mother died when I was twelve.”
“I didn’t know your mother died,” Thatcher said. “Something you said earlier made me think . . .”
“I’m sorry about that,” Adrienne said. “I have a hard time talking about it and sometimes it’s just easier . . .”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Thatcher said.
“Maybe not to you,” Adrienne said. “But I’ve lied to a lot of people about it. I pretend my mother is still alive. I want her to be alive.”
“Of course.”
Adrienne placed a fingertip at the corner of her eye. “I probably don’t need any more wine.”
Thatcher looked around the restaurant. “I was going to take you to Languedoc for the Sweet Inspirations sundae.”
“It may interest you to know,” said Adrienne, “that the key to dessert is not sugar.” She bent her head close to the table and whispered, “It’s eggs.”
Thatcher groaned. “When a woman starts quoting Mario Subiaco, I know she’s had too much to drink. No sundae for you. Let’s go for a drive.”