The Blue Bistro (20 page)

So that was it. They were together in the wine cave with the door closed for six whole minutes and all she’d gotten was a deep stare and a lesson on one of the world’s easiest tasks.
Adrienne saw her options: quit or work as though nothing had happened. Life wasn’t made any easier by the fact that everyone on the staff knew she and Thatcher had been out together—and likewise, everyone knew that Thatcher returned to the restaurant to eat with Fiona. Caren had said it best that morning while she and Duncan (reunited) drank espresso and Adrienne drank ginger lemon tea because, to add insult to injury, Adrienne had a killer hangover, the worst of the summer so far. Caren had said, “How was your date? It couldn’t have been too wonderful.”

And Adrienne said, “There is something very fucked up going on between Thatcher and Fiona.”

Caren and Duncan had stared at her blankly but when they thought she wasn’t looking, they exchanged an alarmed glance. Adrienne caught it and said, “And you two pissants know what’s going on and you won’t tell me.”

Caren had nodded very slowly. “They’re friends,” she said.

And Duncan said, “I have to go. I’m sailing with Holt Millman at ten.”

Adrienne tried to lose herself in the service. One hundred and one covers on the books, but first thing there was a walk-in party of four, dressed in workout clothes. They informed Adrienne that they had arrived on their bikes after a long ride to Sconset, and they wanted to know if they could eat dinner and get back into town before dark.

“Sure,” Adrienne said. Table three was empty; it was a less desirable table, saved on slower nights for walk-ins. She sat the party, gave them the exact time of sunset along with their menus, and told them she’d have the kitchen on top of their order. The head biker palmed her fifty bucks.

“Thanks,” he said. “We’re really hungry.”

Joe took the table; he was psyched. “Good work,” he said. “How was your date last night?”

“What date?” she said.

She was a swan carved from ice.

First seating breezed by. She delivered three orders of
chips and dip, and she opened four bottles of wine. She completely ignored Thatcher and, at a couple of points, she was so busy, she forgot him.

In between seatings, Thatcher called her over to the podium. “Can I brief you?”

While he talked, Adrienne stared at the ceiling.

Table eleven was a four-top under the awning, a good table: a local lawyer and her husband and their friends visiting from Anchorage, Alaska. The lawyer was not Thatcher’s lawyer but she was a prominent Nantucket citizen—on the board of Hospice and the Boys & Girls Club—and a regular guest. VIP. Adrienne had delivered their chips and dip and opened their wine, the fantastic Leeuwin chardonnay from Western Australia. Now they were eating their entrées and Adrienne saw the lawyer glancing around the dining room in distress. Adrienne hurried over.

“What can I help you with?” she asked.

The lawyer beckoned Adrienne closer. “You won’t believe this,” she said. “But my friend swears her swordfish is overcooked.”

“Overcooked?” Adrienne said.

“And I’ll tell you what, it must be true because people from Alaska never complain.”

Adrienne moved around the table to the Alaska woman and eyed the swordfish. It was black and shriveled; it looked like one of the pork chops that Doug used to murder in his cast-iron skillet before he doused it with ketchup.

“I’m sorry,” the Alaska woman squeaked.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Adrienne said. “Let me bring you another piece. Believe me when I say this almost never happens.”

She carried the swordfish to the kitchen, poking it once with her finger. It was completely dry; it had the texture of plaster. Adrienne was thrilled. Two weeks earlier a complaint about the doughnuts had nearly made her weep, but today a complaint about the food was a gift from God. She couldn’t wait to confront Fiona with this hideous swordfish.

Adrienne slammed into the kitchen and dropped the plate on the pass with a clatter. No one was expediting.

“Where’s Fiona?” she said.

“She’s in the office lying down,” Hector said.

Adrienne deflated. Her rage was overcooked, shriveled, dry, and yet she couldn’t get rid of it.

“Well, where’s Antonio, then?” she asked.

“It’s his night off,” Hector said. “Which reminds me, how was your date?”

“Fuck you,” Adrienne said.

This set the platoon of Subiacos laughing. Adrienne picked the swordfish up off the plate and flung it at Hector, who was, conveniently, working grill. It hit him in the shoulder, smudging his white jacket.

“You killed the swordfish for eleven,” she said. “The guest complained—in fact, she was practically in tears because it tasted so bad. Fire another one.”

“Boo-hoo,” Hector said, laying a swordfish steak across the grill.

Adrienne marched back out to table eleven. “Sorry about the swordfish,” she said. “We’re going to comp your bill this evening and I hope you’ll forgive us.”

The lawyer touched Adrienne’s wrist. “You don’t have to comp the meal,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” Adrienne said. “Yes, I do.”

A few moments later, table six, a deuce, guests from the Nantucket Beach Club, called Adrienne over. No lobster on the lobster club. What they showed her was a twenty-nine-dollar BLT.

“Please,” Adrienne said, picking up the plate. “Let me get you some lobster meat. And your dinner tonight is on the house.”

The third table she comped because the top of the butterscotch crème brûlée was scorched. The guest hadn’t even complained but Adrienne saw the desserts go out, and she saw the black spots. She had an infuriating vision of Mario back in his lair doing the bossa nova while he took a welding tool to
the custard. The dessert was going to a table of six, which meant a tab of at least a thousand dollars. Adrienne bought their dinner. The revenge was so sweet it made her dizzy.

Later, Thatcher cornered her at the podium. It was eleven fifteen; she had a line of five people. The bar was packed but unusually quiet.

“You comped three meals,” he said. “One tab was twelve hundred dollars. Because that six-top was drinking a Chateau Margaux.”

Adrienne shrugged. “The food was bad tonight. Fiona wasn’t expediting. You should have seen the swordfish at eleven. It was a piece of drywall.”

“I understand the swordfish. And that was Leigh Stanford’s table and I would have comped it myself. But a piece of lobster missing? A bad crème brûlée?”

“The lobster missing was a table Mack sent us, and the brûlée looked like it had the bubonic plague. At the beginning of the season you told me that close to perfect wasn’t going to cut it.”

“I did. But to
comp
a twelve-hundred-dollar dinner?”

“During first seating, I took a walk-in four-top that one of your other managers probably would have turned away because they weren’t wearing Armani. They drank two bottles of Cristal and had a thousand-dollar tab themselves. Take the difference out of my salary.”

Thatcher sighed. “I’m not going to take it out of your salary,” he said. “All three tables left huge tips so the wait-staff loves you. And I know you did what you thought was right.” He nodded at the kitchen. “I’m going to eat.”

Adrienne didn’t answer. She was crushed. He didn’t even care enough to fight with her.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 16, 2005 9:14
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: Surprise!

I sent you the last of the money I owe you—not bad for two weeks of work! And your “interest” should arrive at the office tomorrow morning. Bon appetit—and thanks for always being there for me. Love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 16, 2005 9:37
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: First date of the summer

I can honestly say I would rather go out with drug abuser and felon Doug Riedel than ever go out with my boss again. Doug may have stuck my life savings up his nose and robbed my place of employment, but at least he didn’t leave me stranded for another woman!

For Father’s Day, Adrienne bought her father a gas grill from the Williams-Sonoma catalog and a box of Omaha steaks. It cost her over seven hundred dollars but money,
now, was the least of her worries. The balance in her bank account was steadily growing and she had paid off her thirteen-hundred-dollar debt to her father. If for the money alone, she was going to keep her job.

A week had passed and Thatcher hadn’t said a word about their date. Of course, Adrienne hardly gave him a chance—she spoke to him in only the most perfunctory way, in only the most professional capacity, and he returned the favor. With each passing day the evening of their date faded into yesterday’s news. Adrienne tried to regard it as a failed experiment. A fallen soufflé. She had broken Rule Three and she was paying the price. So now it was back to the straight and narrow. If she felt bruised—her heart, her ego—she was going to make sure that no one could tell.

She did a crisp, clean job on the floor. She handed out menus, delivered the chips and dip, ran food, opened wine, processed credit cards, and worked the door without compassion. Tyler Lefroy informed her that patrons of the bar called her the Blue Bitch. That made her smile for the first time since Dionis Beach.

What she needed, she told herself, was a life apart from the restaurant, and so she started jogging in the mornings. She ran to Surfside Beach, she ran to Cisco Beach, she ran along Miacomet Pond. She rode her bike to the rotary and ran along the Polpis Road. One day she ran to the restaurant—the Sid Wainer truck was in the parking lot and Adrienne saw Fiona and JZ sitting in the back of the truck talking, their legs dangling over the edge. She ran on Cliff Road past Tupancy Links and the water tower, out to Eel Point where the road turned to dirt.

Every way she went, Nantucket revealed its beauty. The rosa rugosa was blooming pink and white, the ponds were blue, the eelgrass razor sharp. The beaches were clean and still not crowded. The island had a lot more to offer, Adrienne told herself, than just Thatcher Smith.

One morning, Adrienne ran all the way out to Madaket Harbor, which was too far on a hot day. She bought a cold Evian at the Westender before she embarked on her limp
home. She was on the bike path by Long Pond when a green Honda Pilot stopped; the tinted passenger window went down.

“Do you need a lift?” the driver asked.

It was a man, in his forties, with dark hair. The exact kind of person one imagined offering candy to an unsuspecting young girl.

“No, thanks,” Adrienne said, waving the empty water bottle. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“All set.”

“It’s awfully hot. I can drop you in town. It’ll take three minutes.”

Adrienne looked at her dusty shoes. The soles of her feet burned. The guy was right: It was hot. She was out of water and she had three, maybe four, miles to go. She noticed a child’s car seat in the back of the Pilot. So he probably wasn’t a serial killer, and he couldn’t exactly abduct her on Nantucket.

“Okay,” Adrienne said. “Thanks.” She climbed in. The air-conditioning was a blessing.

The man put up her window and hit the gas. “I’ll just drop you in town,” he said. “I’m headed in to pick up my mail.”

“Fine.”

He hummed along to a song on the radio. Adrienne sat up very straight to avoid sweating all over his car.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” the man said.

Adrienne fumbled with her Walkman and it fell to the floor. She bent over to retrieve it, trying not to panic. She slid in a sideways look. He looked familiar, but she met so many people on a nightly basis that . . .

“Drew Amman-Keller,” he said.

Adrienne glanced up. Drew Amman-Keller? Adrienne studied his face. The lips she recognized, but the rest was different. Hadn’t he had a beard? And an awful pair of glasses?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You look different.”

“I shaved,” he said. “My wife insists that I shave in the summer.”

“You’re married?” Adrienne asked.

“Three kids,” he said.

Adrienne stared out the window. They were passing the landfill. She prayed to see another car, but they seemed to be the only one on the road. She tried to parse her fear. The guy was a freelance journalist, not a criminal. And it wasn’t as though he was stalking her; he was on his way to the post office.

“You can just drop me off here, if you want,” Adrienne said.

“At the dump?”

“I can walk home. It’s not far.”

“Did Thatcher tell you not to talk to me?”

A car approached, a red Jeep Wrangler with the top down—two very tan college boys with a couple of surf-boards strapped to the roll bars. They were gone before Adrienne could think of how to signal for help. What, she wondered, would Thatcher do if he learned she’d accepted a ride from Drew Amman-Keller? And why did she care what Thatcher thought?

“I know what’s going on with Fiona,” he said. “I’ve known for years. What she and Thatcher don’t understand is that I want to help. I have an offer on the table from the
Atlantic Monthly
if Fiona ever agrees to talk to me. Sometimes by writing a feature in a big magazine, you can create positive change.”