The Blue Bistro (32 page)

“You can cut the crap,” Jamie said. “I’m not stupid. Have him call me. His wife. At his house. He knows the number.”

“Okay, if I see him—”

Jamie Zodl hung up.

Adrienne passed on the message that evening when JZ came into the bar for dinner. He was wearing a dolphin-blue button-down shirt and his face and forearms were very tan. He and Fiona had rented a Sunfish that afternoon and sailed on Coskata Pond. Adrienne delivered the bad news with his chips and dip.

“Your wife called this morning,” she said.

“Here?”

Adrienne nodded. “She wants you to call her at home.”

“It can’t be important,” he said. “Or she would have called me on my cell. I had it on all day. She probably just called to make a point. To let everyone know she knows I’m here.”

“Okay, well,” Adrienne said. “That was the message.”

Later that night as they lay in bed, Adrienne asked Thatcher what he knew about Jamie Zodl.

“She’s unhappy,” he said. “She’s one of those people who thinks the next thing is going to save her. When I first met her twelve years ago, she was desperate to marry JZ. They
used to come into the restaurant all the time. He proposed to her at table twenty.”

“Oh, you’re kidding,” Adrienne said.

“After they got married, Jamie wanted to be pregnant. That didn’t happen right away and they went to Boston for fertility help and it worked, obviously, because they had Shaughnessy. But then Jamie realized how hard it was to be a mother. So to afford a live-in, she and JZ sold their house here and moved to Sandwich. Jamie had an affair with the guy who owned the gym that she joined, and JZ found out. Jamie promised to break it off, they went into counseling for a while, and JZ took a job driving for another company so he wouldn’t have to be gone every day. We didn’t see him here for two whole summers. But then he found out Jamie was back with the guy from the gym and he gave up. Got his old job back and he’s been trying to file for divorce, but Jamie won’t let him. She threatens to take Shaughnessy away and she disappears to her mother’s in Charlottesville, and once she and Shaughnessy flew to London for the weekend. The only way JZ was able to find them was by calling his credit card company. Jamie has run them into mountains of debt on top of it all. Pretty woman, gorgeous, but what a disaster.” Thatcher rubbed his eyes. “JZ used to talk to Fiona about the whole thing. It was strange because Fiona and I and the staff had watched the relationship from the beginning—the courtship, the proposal, the wedding, the child, the breakup, and the next thing I knew Fiona and JZ were in love.”

“When was that?”

“Two years ago.”

“So what do you think will happen, then?”

“What do I think will happen?” Thatcher repeated. He was lying on his back, arms folded over his chest like someone resting in a coffin. “Nothing will happen.”

“What does that mean?”

“JZ won’t leave Jamie. He’s too cowardly.”

“He’s worried about his daughter.”

“That’s what he says.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“JZ is a good guy,” Thatcher said. “But he’s not going to risk anything for Fiona. Leave his wife and lose his daughter for someone who’s going to die?” Thatcher rolled onto his side, away from Adrienne. “That would take a hero. JZ is nobody’s hero.”

Happiness might be contagious, but it was also fleeting, delicate, mercurial. On Day Six, Jamie called again, in the middle of second seating. The restaurant was loud, but Adrienne picked up a new tone in Jamie’s voice. She sounded manic and untethered, like someone who had pounded six shots of espresso.

“This is Jamie Zodl,” she said. “ISJZTHERE?”

“Yes,” Adrienne said. “Please hold on one minute.”

“You hold on one minute,” Jamie said.

“Excuse me?”

“I know Fiona’s sick,” Jamie said. “I know all about it.”

Adrienne said nothing. Across the room, a table burst out laughing. Rex played, “In the Mood.”

“Let me get JZ,” Adrienne said.

“I have a phone number,” Jamie said. “For a journalist who wants to write about her. He wants to talk to me about Fiona and JZ. The question is, do I want to talk to him?”

“Let me get JZ,” Adrienne said again, though she was afraid to put Jamie on hold. Bruno swung by the podium.

“I need your help on ten,” he said. “Can you pull a bottle of the Cakebread?”

Adrienne’s ears were buzzing; she felt like she had a bomb threat on the phone.

“Get JZ,” Adrienne whispered to Bruno. “His
wife
is on the phone.”

Bruno wasn’t listening closely—what he heard was Adrienne asking him for something in response to his asking her for something. He wagged a finger. “Honey, I’m slammed. Can you get the wine for me, please?”

Adrienne searched the dining room for Thatcher. Her eyes snagged on table ten, a deuce, a middle-aged couple,
fidgeting, glancing around. They wanted their wine. Adrienne snapped back to her senses. This was a restaurant! She put Jamie Zodl on hold, zipped into the wine cave for the Cakebread, then she shouted into the kitchen, “JZ, call for you on line three!” By the time Adrienne opened the wine for table ten and made it back to the podium, the phones were quiet. Jamie had hung up.

Adrienne didn’t see JZ on Day Seven, but she gathered he had packed up and left. Fiona took a day off; when she returned, she was back to her old sarcastic, scowling self. The White Sox lost a double-header to the Mariners. Adrienne stayed out of the kitchen.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: July 21, 2005, 10:35
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: happiness

Not sending spores. You don’t want them. Happiness is fickle. Plays favorites.

A couple of days later, Adrienne was working the phone when a man walked in dressed entirely in black. Black jeans, black shoes, black dress shirt open at the neck. Bulky black duffel bag. He was a young guy who had shaved his head to hide his baldness, so all Adrienne could see was something like a five o’clock shadow where his hair used to be.
New York,
Adrienne thought, and immediately her guard went up. The press. Who else dressed in black on a hot July day at the beach?

“Can I help you?” Adrienne said.

He offered her his pale hand. “Lyle Hardaway,” he said. “
Vanity Fair
magazine.”

Yep. Adrienne eyed her phone. If he didn’t leave when she asked, she would call the police.

“I’m sorry,” Adrienne said. “You don’t have an appointment and our owner isn’t here.”

He held up his palm. “I have a meeting scheduled with Mario Subiaco. He said he’d be working. He said I should come here.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. Mario, the pastry chef. This is the Blue Bistro?”

“It is.” Blue Bitch voice. She pointed a finger at his raised hand. “You wait right here. Don’t move. Is there a camera in that bag?”

“Yes,” he said.

“No photographs,” she said. “Understand?”

“Okay,” he said, and he smiled like maybe this tough act of hers was supposed to be funny.

Adrienne marched into the kitchen. She heard Fiona’s voice in the walk-in; she was making an order list with Antonio. Adrienne slipped into pastry. Mario was all gussied up in his houndstooth pants, washed and pressed, and his dress whites—the jacket with black piping and his name over the chest pocket. He was rolling out dough.

“You have a visitor,” Adrienne said.

He didn’t look up. “Do I?”

“Lyle somebody. From
Vanity Fair.
”

“Okay,” Mario said.

“He’s not coming back here,” Adrienne said.

“Yeah, he is,” Mario said. “He wants to watch me work. I’m making my own pretzels today. For chocolate-covered pretzels. It’s a special on the candy plate.”

“I thought there was no press allowed in the kitchen,” Adrienne said. “I thought that was a law.”

“This isn’t the kitchen,” Mario said. “It’s pastry.”

“Does Fiona know this guy is coming?” Adrienne asked.

“Not yet.”

Adrienne watched Mario fiddle with the pretzel dough, twisting it into nifty shapes. “What’s going on?” she said.

“They’re doing an article about me,” he said.

“Just about you?”

“Just about me. I hired a publicist.”

“You did
what
?”

“I hired a publicist and she sent out my picture and my CV and
Vanity Fair
called. They’re doing some article about sex and the kitchen. You know, sexy chefs. Rocco DiSpirito, Todd English, and me.” He raised his face from his work and mugged for her.

“Now I’ve heard it all,” Adrienne said. “You hired a publicist and you have a writer from a huge New York magazine in the bistro with a camera to take pictures of you making chocolate-covered pretzels because you’re sexy.”

“King of the Sweet Ending,” he said. “They loved the name.”

“Yeah, well, Fiona doesn’t know. And guess what? I’m not telling her.”

“No one was asking you to.”

“So you’ll tell her yourself?”

“Tell her why? It’s my business.”

“It’s not your business,” Adrienne said. “It’s her business.”

“Just send the guy back, please, Adrienne.”

As Adrienne returned to the dining room—Lyle Hard-away was right where she’d left him—the phone rang. Darla Parrish, bumping her reservation to three people. Adrienne asked cautiously, hoping, praying, “Not Wolfie?”

“No, it’s our youngest son, Luke. I can’t wait to introduce you. Oh, and Adrienne, dear, will you put us at that new table?”

“Sure thing,” Adrienne said. She made a note on her reconfirmation list. The writer was watching her every move. She hung up the phone, then said, “Follow me.”

Adrienne and Lyle Hardaway made it three steps into the kitchen before Fiona stopped them.

“Whoa,” she said. “Whoa. Who’s this? Not a wine rep back here?”

“His name is Lyle Hardaway.” Adrienne was afraid to say more.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Fiona asked.

“No,” Adrienne said.

Suddenly, Mario appeared from the back. “He’s here for me.”

“What is he, your new dance instructor?” Fiona said. She glared at Lyle Hardaway. “Who are you?”

“I’m a writer for
Vanity Fair,
” he said. He offered Fiona his hand. “You’re Fiona Kemp? It’s an honor to meet you.”

Fiona pointed to the door. Her cheeks were starting to splotch and she bent her head and coughed a little into her hand. Antonio spoke up from behind the pass.

“Get him out of here, Adrienne,” he said. And Adrienne thought,
Yes, get him out before he sees Fiona cough.

“Fuck off, Tony,” Mario said. “He’s here for me.”

Antonio said, “What are you, crazy?”

Fiona spoke to the floor. “I have to ask you to leave,” she said. “I don’t allow press in the kitchen.”

“Come on, Fee,” Mario said in a voice that normally got him whatever he wanted. “He’s here to take pictures of my pretzels.”

“No,” Fiona said.

Lyle Hardaway held his arms in front of his face, like the words were being hurled at him. “Maybe I should wait out front while you work this out.”

“Wait outside,” Fiona said. “In the parking lot.”

Lyle Hardaway disappeared through the door.

Fiona slammed her hand on the pass. “And now there will be a line in
Vanity Fair
or one of the other magazines they’re sleeping with—you can bet on it—about what a bitch I am.” She glared at Mario. “What were you thinking? You
invited
him into our kitchen?”

“He wants to write an article about me,” Mario said.

“No,” Fiona said.

“You can’t tell me no,” Mario said. “The article is about me. It’s not about you, it’s not about the Bistro.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Fiona said. “He told you the article is about you. But that was just so he could get through the door. Did you hear him a second ago? ‘You’re Fiona Kemp? It’s an honor to meet you’? He’s using you to get to me.”

Mario laughed and looked around the kitchen at his cousins, and his brother Louis, who was filling ravioli and pretending not to listen. Only Adrienne was captive, rooted in the kitchen, afraid to leave lest she attract attention to herself, or worse, miss something.

“I cannot believe how self-centered you are,” Mario said. “You think the world revolves around your tiny ass? It does not. You think people care so much about you? They do not. That man came here to interview
me.
And I’m going to let him. Because my career isn’t over in September, Fee. I have to move on, I have to build my prospects, increase the value of my stock. So maybe I get investors and open my own place. Maybe my cousin Henry gets investors for his root beer. We have to move on, Fee. Move forward. We aren’t quitting at the end of the summer.”

“I’m not quitting, either,” Fiona whispered.

“The Bistro is closing,” Mario said. “That’s a fact. The building is sold, it’s torn down, it’s rebuilt as somebody’s fat mansion. There is no more Bistro. So what do you expect us to do, lie down and die with you?”

“Mario!” Antonio said.

“Get out!” Fiona shouted. She whipped around and caught Adrienne standing there, but she didn’t seem to care. Her eyes were ready to spill over with tears. Was Adrienne going to see Fiona
cry
? “Get out! Get out of my kitchen!”

Mario ripped off his chef’s jacket and threw it to the floor. “Fine,” he said. “I’m finished with you.”

He stormed out the door, leaving the kitchen in a stunned silence. Adrienne felt a strong desire to run after him. She liked Mario and she saw his point—once the Bistro closed, everyone had to fend for himself. Fiona would be four million dollars richer, but where would the rest of them be?

Fiona retreated to the office and slammed the door.

Adrienne heard the faint ringing of the phone. She went out front to answer it. That was her job.

That night, there were 244 covers on the book. Family meal was pulled pork, corn muffins, grilled zucchini, and summer
squash. At the menu meeting, Thatcher announced that there would be no desserts. All Antonio had been able to find back in pastry were a few gallons of peanut butter ice cream, a tray of Popsicles, and the unfinished pretzels.