The Blue Bistro (41 page)

Thatcher smiled at her. Something was funny about him. Funny peculiar.

“What?” she said.

“I love you,” he said. “I was just standing here thinking of you and how much I love you. And I was also thinking about Fiona. Fiona is really fucking sick.”

Discreetly, Adrienne surveyed their surroundings. There was a man replenishing the buffet and a couple of guests lingering at the end of the table by the crab claws. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly,” Adrienne said.

“It’s true,” he said. “She’s sick. She can’t breathe. Her lungs are polluted. They’re a junkyard.”

“Thatcher?”

He grinned, then pulled her in close. “This is a great party. You know how many years I’ve been invited to this party? Twelve. And I’ve never come. You know, I heard the band warming up. They start playing at nine.”

“That’s nice,” Adrienne said. “But we have to go back. Second seating. Caren has no book.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“What?”

“And you’re not leaving, either. We’re going to dance. I’ve been dying to dance with you all summer.”

Adrienne picked up Thatcher’s glass. She took a sip. It looked like club soda with lime but it was the tail end of a gin and tonic.

“You’ve been drinking,” she said.

“Yep.”

“How many of these have you had?”

“Several.”

“Several?”

“Yep.” Thatcher took the glass from her hand and emptied it into his mouth in one gulp. “Come on, let’s find the dance floor.”

“No, Thatcher.”

“Yes.” He kissed her. As angry and agitated as she was, she succumbed. She’d had two glasses of champagne herself, three including the one she drank at work to calm her Doyle Chambers–induced stress, and she had a little buzz. For the second that Thatcher kissed her, she let her mind wander. How bad would it be if she just went along with this reckless course of action? Allowing Thatcher to get drunk and dancing to this band from New York instead of heading back to the Bistro to work second seating. Caren could get everyone down with a little creativity; she knew the guests as well as Thatcher and better than Adrienne. How bad would it be to blow off a little steam?

Bad, she decided. The bar would be packed. They still had the stealing problem. Fiona was sick and the priest was there. As for Thatcher’s drinking, Adrienne didn’t know what to think. He once told her that drinking, for an alcoholic, was like falling into a river filled with raging rapids. It was easy to get swept away, to drown. So should she stop him? Yes. Get him a Coke. Or a coffee.

“We’re leaving,” Adrienne said. At that minute, she heard Thatcher’s cell phone ringing. She removed it from his blazer pocket. She didn’t check the number; the only place that ever called him was the restaurant.

“We’re on our way back,” Adrienne said.

“Don’t bother.” It was Caren. “I’m calling to tell you that Chambers’s wife came in with the page from the book. Is it me or does that woman look like Stevie Nicks? Anyway, she apologized and I can get second down. Fiona and the padre left—she went home to sleep and Antonio said everything was fine. The kitchen is cranking the plates. We’re all set. You stay and enjoy yourself.”

“No, we can’t,” Adrienne said.

“Sure you can.” And Caren hung up.

Adrienne slipped the phone back into Thatcher’s blazer. Now what to do? Thatcher didn’t ask about the phone call. He was too busy attacking the buffet table—tenderloin, crab claws, gravlax, mushrooms, cherrystones on the half shell. He held one out to Adrienne.

“Eat this,” he said.

“No, thanks.”

“Come on.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Not hungry?” he said. He piled his plate with Chinese spare ribs. “This food is incredible.”

“Okay,” Adrienne said. “We can stay. But you have to promise me you’ll stop drinking. You have to promise, Thatch.”

He gave her big eyes as he gnawed on a spare rib. “I don’t need to stop drinking,” he said. “Because I feel fine. I feel better than I have all summer. When the restaurant is closed, this is what I’m going to do. Party like this.”

Adrienne surveyed the tent. Across the lawn, she saw Eleanor leading Darla Parrish out of the party. Home for ice water, aspirin, and bed. Adrienne was relieved. Darla’s news was still ticking in her brain like a bomb that had yet to go off.

“If you feel good now,” Adrienne said, “you should stop drinking.”

“What are you drinking?” Thatcher asked.

“I was drinking champagne,” Adrienne said. “But I’m ready for coffee. Do you want coffee?”

“No.”

“Okay. We don’t have to drink anything. We can dance. There’s the band over there. Come on.”

“I have to use the bathroom,” Thatcher said.

Adrienne regarded him. She had no idea if he was going to sneak another drink and she was too worn down to care. She remembered back to a time in high school, her senior year in Solon, Iowa, when she snuck out of her house to go to a party in one of the cornfields. She drank beer and
smoked a cigarette and after the party she sat in the back of one of the kids’ vans and played strip poker and drank more beer. To recall the events in this way made them sound like fun, but they hadn’t been fun at all because the entire time, Adrienne experienced fear like a cold hand gripping the back of her neck. She was afraid that her father would find out, that he would call the police and start a manhunt. At five o’clock in the morning, the kids she was with wanted to go to the Egg & I for breakfast and at that point Adrienne finally relaxed. Sure enough, when her friends dropped her off at six thirty and Adrienne slipped back into the house, her father was asleep. He hadn’t realized she’d been gone.

She convinced herself that this was a similar moment. It was a Saturday night in August, it had been weeks since she’d had a night off. And here she was at the fanciest party she could ever hope to attend with a man she loved. If she got swept away in the spirit of things, who would ever know—and who would blame her?

Adrienne drank and Thatcher drank.

They danced. Thatcher spun and dipped her, and through the crowd, Adrienne caught sight of Cat dancing with Holt Millman, and a few minutes later, Cat dancing with one of the handsome male waiters. Only Cat. The band slowed down. They played “Wonderful Tonight.” Adrienne clung to Thatcher; they were holding each other up.

Someone tapped Adrienne’s shoulder. She turned, a flash went off. Drew Amman-Keller had snapped their picture.

Thatcher recoiled. “Hey,” he said. He blinked. “Hey, fuck you, Drew.”

Drew Amman-Keller smirked. “It’s good to see you out, man.” He held out his hand. Thatcher and Adrienne stared at it. “Hey, come on. Adrienne?”

“Don’t talk to her,” Thatcher said. “Don’t talk to either of us, you fucking parasite.”

“Thatcher,” Adrienne said. Her mind was fuzzy, buzzing television snow. “Don’t give him anything to write about. That’s what he wants.”

Drew Amman-Keller bowed and shuffled backward off
the dance floor. “I’m still waiting for you to call me,” he said to Adrienne. “Callmecallmecallme.” He was drunk, too. Adrienne looked around. Everyone at the party was drunk.

“Let’s get out of here,” Adrienne said. “Let’s go look at the water.” They stumbled through the tent (where coffee and dessert were set up), past the pool (where people were indeed swimming with their clothes on), and out onto the small beach in front of Holt Millman’s house. They fell over into the sand, Adrienne first and Thatcher on top of her. Adrienne felt a shell behind her ear, some damp seaweed under her left leg. Was anyone watching them? Was Drew Amman-Keller going to take a picture of them in this compromising position? Thatcher started to kiss Adrienne in a sloppy way. She struggled to sit up but Thatch pressed her down.

“We’re not,” she said. She lifted her knee between Thatcher’s legs. “Thatch, I mean it.”

She had sand in her hair and inside her dress. Thatcher fiddled with her bra; it came unhooked. “We’re not going to do this,” Adrienne said. She pushed him off her and he fell heavily to the side with a grunt. His eyes were closed, his features were blurry. He didn’t even look like himself. Adrienne poked him in the ribs harder than she meant to. She reached inside her dress to shake out the sand and rehook her bra.

“I want to ask you something,” she said. She was feeling so confrontational, she scared herself. Off to the right she saw the red light of Brant Point, warning, warning. She had read somewhere that the definition of elegance was restraint. Adrienne wanted to be elegant—what woman didn’t?—but it was hard to be elegant when her skirt was hitched up and her bra was left of center and she had sand in her ears and under her fingernails. It was hard to be elegant when she was drunk. Restraint was a good idea, noble, but at that moment it was too flimsy to hold back the urgency of her question. “Are you and I going to make it past the summer?”

Thatcher opened his eyes for a second, then closed them again. “I don’t know,” he said.

Later, Adrienne would call a cab and have the driver take them to her cottage, where Thatcher would vomit until sunrise and then fall into a comatose sleep. Over espresso the next morning, Caren and Duncan would berate Adrienne for letting him drink. “Couldn’t you see he was in a dangerous state when you went to that party?” Caren would ask. And Adrienne would counter that Caren had granted them permission to stay and that was when things had gotten out of hand. Duncan would concede that Thatcher was an adult and not Adrienne’s responsibility. He and Caren would pump her for details of the party and various images passed through Adrienne’s mind—the crab claws, the dark-tiled pool, the smell of the powder room, the distaste on Mitzi Kennedy’s face, the smudge of lipstick on Darla Parrish’s tooth, the semicircular deck—but all Adrienne would really retain, the only part of the night that had any meaning for her, were those three words spoken as she buried her feet in the cold sand and gazed out across Nantucket Sound.
I don’t know.

The next morning, Fiona was at work as usual. Adrienne went in early to answer the phones and generally atone for her many sins of the night before. The only two cars in the parking lot belonged to Fiona and Hector. Through the window of the kitchen door, Adrienne saw Fiona behind the pass portioning swordfish. The restaurant had a Sunday hush, which was a good thing since Adrienne was suffering from a dreadful hangover. She poured herself a Coke at the bar and sat down with the phone and the reservation book. There were two hundred and fifty covers and a fourteen reservation wait list. The two halves of Sunday’s page had been smoothed out and carefully repaired with Scotch tape.

Adrienne jumped when the door to the kitchen opened and Fiona came out. Adrienne wanted to ask how she was feeling, but she was too afraid. Fiona set down a plate of toast, a cake of butter, a Ball jar of apricot jam. The same toast that Adrienne had eaten at her first breakfast.

“You didn’t have to . . .” Adrienne said. “I mean, how did you know I was here?”

“I heard the brakes of your bike. You should have those oiled.”

“Oh.” Adrienne looked at the toast. “Thank you for this. I really need it.”

“Yeah.” Fiona stared at her and Adrienne attempted a smile. Fiona didn’t look sick. She was wearing white cotton drawstring pants, a white tank, clogs. She was tan, she wore lipstick.

“I want you to have dinner with me tonight,” Fiona said.

“Tonight?”

“At the table out back. Around midnight. Thatcher can take the bar while we eat. I want to talk to you.”

“About what?” Adrienne said.

“Stuff,” Fiona said. “I’m tired of Thatcher. I’m tired of him worrying about me. He worries so much that I start to worry and I made a decision this morning that I’m done worrying. Whatever happens, happens. To think that I can control it, or the doctors, or the priest . . . no, it doesn’t work like that.”

Adrienne sat, speechless.

“So midnight?” Fiona said.

“Yes,” Adrienne said. “Of course.”

The special was a tomato salad with bacon, basil, and blue cheese. It was a work of art. Fiona had found a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes—red, orange, yellow, green, purple, yellow with green stripes—and she stacked them on the plate in a tower as colorful as children’s blocks. It flew out of the kitchen; by the end of first seating, it was eighty-sixed.

Adrienne didn’t see Thatcher until five, though he’d called her at noon to say he’d woken up and, first thing, cleaned the bathroom. Then he’d gone to an AA meeting.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said.

“I’m sorry, too,” Adrienne said. There was no denying the regret she felt about letting Thatcher stay at the party and drink. It was monstrous of her. The worst thing was, she had
wanted
him to drink. She had wanted to see what he was like
and she had hoped that with his guard down she might wheedle some promises out of him about the future. But all she had gotten was the truth: He didn’t know.

At menu meeting, Thatcher looked and smelled chastened. He was clean-shaven, his red-gold hair held teeth marks from his comb. He wore his stone white pants and a new shirt from Thomas Pink with cuff links. He had shined his loafers. He was professional, in charge, sober. It was time to move on.