Bread and Butter (22 page)

“Why the hell am I here if that’s how you see it? Why was it so crucial to have me on board that you could never just shut the fuck up about it?”

“Oh, please.” Harry turned away and began chucking pans into a bus tub, shaking his head in disgust.

“All summer long!” Britt said. He was all pulse; his body was surging with an unbearable electricity. He jumped off the stool and began stalking in circles as he ranted. “‘Oh, wouldn’t it be perfect if we worked together, don’t we all need to be in this together?’ No matter what we said, you never listened.”

“So why’d you buy in, for chrissake?” Harry said. “To placate me?”

“I thought you knew what you were doing. I
thought
I’d underestimated you. I was under the misapprehension that you wanted my help, probably because you badgered me for months—”

Harry hollered at the ceiling, “I wanted
Leo’s
help!”

Britt stopped moving. Harry fixed his gaze on the wall just beyond his brother’s head, shaking his own head.

“You little shit,” Britt said. He breathed deeply, waiting fruitlessly for his heart to stop knocking in his chest, and then he got up and walked out.

CAMILLE WAS WAITING AT HIS HOUSE
when Britt arrived. It was too hard to go from that aggression to the calmest sight on earth, which was Camille’s sleeping profile.

She stirred when he got into bed. “You’re late tonight,” she said. She nestled against his rib cage.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t a good night,” Britt said. “The dishwasher broke and Harry got all Cro-Magnon on the repair guy. I never know when he’ll act like a normal person and when he’ll Travis Bickle on someone.”

Camille blinked, frowning. “Weren’t you going to talk with him about this?”

“When did we talk about me talking to him?” Britt directed this toward the ceiling, but Camille detached herself from beneath his arm and leaned over him, making him look her in the eye. He lay there like a pinned insect.

“When he wouldn’t let me come to the friends-and-family,” she said. “I asked you to calm him down. Or maybe I just asked you to go easy on him.”

She sat up and crossed her legs beneath the sheets, but Britt remained prone, hoping she would take the hint and lie back down. When she didn’t, he finally sat up too and said, “You try talking to him and see how well it goes. It’s like there’s a language barrier or something. He makes it all about me backing him up or not.”

“Well, are you?” Camille asked. “Backing him up, I mean?”

“Of course not!” Britt said. “How am I supposed to back up behavior like that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just know he admires you and he may need a little extra from you right now.”

“Maybe,” Britt said. How could he possibly tell her that Harry had settled for him? It was too humiliating to admit. Camille leveled her exacting vision on everything from her earrings to the dish of apples on her coffee table to the lighting of a restaurant, and that had made it so satisfying to have her admiration. He felt he’d been selected for a prize.

Now Britt watched her face, that unknowable oval, and wondered if he’d been preening all along while she held her opinions in check. He felt a flash of empathy for Harry, asking Camille to wait till Stray was perfect. At the time Britt had thought it ludicrous. Maybe Harry had told Camille months ago that he’d ended up with the lesser partner.

Camille looked at the clock. She seemed to make a decision, and in a lighter tone brought up a trade show she was attending the following week, but Britt was in no mood to be placated now.

“Do I not get to be pissed at Harry in front of you?” he said. “Am I talking to my girlfriend or my brother’s friend? Because I just want to know for the future.”

“I knew you couldn’t get over it,” she said. Britt went cold. She sat back against the headboard and crossed her arms.

“You said there was never anything to worry about.”

“It hardly seemed worth getting into it. But now you’re acting like I’m so unfair to you just because I don’t instantly agree that you’re right. I get it—Harry’s being annoying. He’s your brother. Don’t you care why he’s acting like this?”

“I don’t think there’s any big reason. He’s stressed and taking it out on everyone else.” This wasn’t entirely what Britt believed—in truth he had never seen Harry behave quite so badly as in these last few weeks, but he had no intention of admitting this to Camille, not now. “All I want is to be able to talk about my business and my brother without you thinking you have to automatically play devil’s advocate every time he comes up.”

Camille said, “I hate to tell you this, but I actually disagree with you.” She bent over the bed and fumbled around the floor, then sat up and began tugging on a pair of jeans. “And for the record, you’ve been talking about nothing
but
your business and your brother.”

It occurred to him that she really would leave, and this frightened him, both because she wanted to be away from him more than with him and because it meant he’d never get his side of things across. Unsure which point to address first, Britt chose the easiest one. “Hey, come on. Camille. Look, I’m sorry I forgot to ask how you are,” he said. “I was just looking forward to venting a little.”

“
This
is not how you’re supposed to be waking me up,” she said, but she stopped moving and stood beside the bed, her white camisole bunched over her jeans. “Not with a diatribe, and without at least a perfunctory ‘How’s your day?’ I
had
a day. I did things besides wait here like the interchangeable woman to see how yours went.” Her voice had lost a tiny bit of its edge.

Britt leaned across the bed and grabbed her wrist. “I’m sorry.” He felt drained of his anger and shocked at hers; till now they’d barely disagreed over what to have for lunch. “Stay.”

“I don’t want to commiserate with you about Harry,” she said softly. “I’m still his friend.”

“Okay,” Britt said, though it wasn’t. But he saw the chance to get their equilibrium back and he needed it. He and Camille were still too new to be addressing any deep wounds; there shouldn’t even be any. His confidence was rattled, and right now he just wanted to make the whole night go away.

She watched him for a second, then pulled off her jeans, folded them neatly, and turned away to lay them on the chair. When she got back into bed, she seemed uncertain how close to come, and he pulled her to him, holding her narrow, fine-boned face between his palms.

He could not stop himself from insisting, “You know I’m not really worried about you and Harry, right?”

“I guess not,” she said, and, pathetically, he decided to pretend that she had reassured him. “Okay,” he said, and kissed her, hoping to dispel whatever had just sprung up between them.

W
HEN BRITT ARRIVED AT THE RESTAURANT
the next morning, Harry was at the range, shaking a pan over a high flame
. T
he two looked at each other for a beat, and then Harry said, “Have a seat. I’m trying something here.” His tone was neutral but certainly not apologetic. Britt sat down at the bar, readying himself.

He had been too discombobulated to sleep soundly, and Camille had been restless all night before rising at six
. A
t least she had kissed him before she’d gone, and it seemed right. Nevertheless, now he felt surly and uncommunicative, disinclined to offer a word.

Harry added several spoonfuls of an orange-red sauce to the pan and then a handful of scallion and tossed it all with a few deft movements before transferring it to a plate. He sprinkled sesame seeds over the top and set the plate before Britt, then handed him a fork and kept one for himself.

“This is kind of the traditional way of doing the rice sticks,” Harry said, cutting a soft white square. “I woke up feeling hungover even though I didn’t drink enough to be. Anyway, I was craving it. I figured I’d at least eat the real thing for once, or as close as I can make it, before we yank it.”

Britt tried a steaming bite. The dish looked as if it would be fiery, but the chile sauce was surprisingly rounded and unvinegary. “They don’t sell,” he said.

Harry shrugged. “Off it goes.” He took another bite and chewed, gazing out the front window. “I’m sorry,” he said. He spoke so conversationally that for a moment Britt misunderstood him. He thought Harry was apologizing for the failure of the dish.

“For what?” Britt asked, and he could see that Harry understood that he meant not
You did nothing wrong
but
For which offense?

“I went overboard on the dishwasher guy,” Harry said. “And with Jenelle
. A
nd I didn’t mean it about Leo.”

“Yes, you did,” Britt said. “You did. Let’s not sit here and bullshit each other.”

“I wanted Leo in on this,” Harry admitted. “I wanted all three of us in on it. And to be honest, I still don’t know what the fuck Leo wanted that he didn’t see here.”

Britt shrugged.

“Leo has the most experience of any of us. He was in the business before you joined up. That’s what I meant.”

“I gave you a chance to tell me if you didn’t want to partner up,” Britt said
. T
hat was the worst part—how stupid he felt, having spent months sharing all his hard-won wisdom and guiding his little brother, now knowing what Harry must have thought all along.

“I wasn’t sure how it’d work at first, with just the two of us,” Harry said. “But it was working really well.”

“You think so?” Britt said. Harry looked startled. “I never know what you’re going to do when things go wrong,” Britt continued. “Something always will—crises happen all the time
. Y
ou have to thrive on that, not lose it.”

Harry said, “I know. Last night was a bad night.”

Britt didn’t know what to say. Harry seemed to feel that a bad night still justified him.

“I kind of miss the school year,” Harry said. “You work your way through the first chunk of fall, then it’s midterms, then the next chunk, then it’s finals. Time goes a lot faster.”

Britt said, “It’s been a long time since school, Harry.”

Harry colored slightly but didn’t look at him. “Well, sure,” he said. “It’s just something I was thinking about today.”

Neither of them spoke until the rice stick was gone.

“You hear anything about a review yet?” Harry said.

“They’ll let us know,” Britt said. “Usually they need to take a photo. Harry, this person isn’t going to be our new mentor—it’s just going to be some reporter moonlighting from the sports desk or something, you know? It’s not the
New York Times
.”

“So it doesn’t matter?” Harry said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“You’re just expecting too much from it. They’ll describe the food and say some stuff we agree with and some that feels completely random and deranged. That’s how reviews always feel.”

“I’m just trying to be positive about it,” Harry said.

Britt sighed. “I know you are,” he said. They seemed to have exhausted their capacity for overt conflict without actually resolving anything. The moment had slipped past them.

Britt gazed around the restaurant space. He could hear Harry drinking water, which irritated him more than it should have. He believed the two of them could work together that night without any hostilities spilling over, but the mutedness and evasiveness of Harry’s apology left Britt feeling as if Harry hadn’t really heard half the conversation. His manner now seemed to leave no room for Britt still to be angry—and he was. Because he’d let Harry cajole him into a few moments of regular conversation, it would appear churlish to return to the problem
. A
pparently Harry got to decide not only when to set a fire but when it pleased him to extinguish it.

Their reflections in the grand mahogany mirror looked hazy and distant, Britt’s face a blur set with two smeared eyes and a grim mouth. He watched the reflection of the back of Harry’s head, his bony shoulders and his wristbones like pebbles, as the image began to gather dishes. Britt had always imagined Harry’s years away from home as carefree and picaresque, but maybe they’d been darker and more violent than that. Perhaps that was how his brother had become this other man, whom Britt felt he might not really know and might not have chosen.

“I think I was wrong about that mirror,” Britt said. “It brings the whole room down.”

“No, I like it,” Harry said. “For a while I didn’t, but I do now.”

L
EO’S HOME KITCHEN WAS A DISGRACE.
He’d been meaning to renovate it for years to get rid of its ancient gas range and crappy oak cabinets, the white paint left over from Frances’s first paint job, which was now a yellowed ivory
. W
ho had time to renovate a kitchen he never cooked in? The kitchen that mattered was at Winesap.

Thea looked all wrong in here, which was what bothered him. Her white limbs only made the older paint and appliances seem duller by comparison—the surroundings failed to elevate her
. A
chef like Thea should be cooking in a renovated kitchen.

But at least it was private. Her car was parked in his garage while his was in the driveway, and he had pulled the shades down
. T
his wasn’t a big city; who knew who might be driving past his house and see her at his stove, hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed unmistakably casually and intimately in a T-shirt of Leo’s and a pair of cut-off leggings?

It was just after ten
. W
as it embarrassing that they’d left the restaurant at nine—it had been a quiet night—and had already had time to dash home to his bedroom
and
to start dinner? Leo tried to draw things out, but they never managed this until they’d rushed each other the first time and then settled in to luxuriate for the second
. A
nd they were always so hungry, depleted either from sex or from work or from both, a blend of exhaustion that was strangely satisfying, because it left them wallowing in pure sensation until they were tired and sated, their clothes trailing through the house.

Thea barely tired over a ten-hour shift, thanks to running and swimming
. T
he disparity in stamina between them had become a little embarrassing as he had started to realize that her portion sizes were half his, that in her free time she really liked great bowls of fresh vegetables and brown rice. Leo had the distinct sense that the first thing he’d cooked for her, the eggs and chorizo, had branded him. He’d only been pleasantly buzzed that night, still grateful for the dinner she’d sent up earlier and trying to impress her by doing something like rendering fat from dried chorizo instead of copping out with a drizzle of olive oil. But now he was convinced that part of the reason Thea had avoided introducing him to her daughter for several months was not just sensible maternal caution, and not just that she wasn’t sure the relationship would last, but that she thought he might drop dead at any moment.

Leo had no idea what one did with a three-year-old, and he wasn’t entirely certain why he had been lobbying to spend time with this one, whom he had met only once, in passing, at a staff party
. T
here was always a slight air of gamesmanship in his time with Thea, a pattern set by their working relationship and still in place in their romantic one. Maybe his desire to meet this child came about only because Thea had hesitated, and maybe she’d hesitated at least partially out of the habit of not immediately accommodating him. Or perhaps she wasn’t wild about drawing a three-year-old into an illicit relationship
. Y
ou couldn’t count on a child not to spill secrets.

Another thought occurred to Leo: maybe it simply felt sleazy to her, the rush to sex, secret lunches, separate cars.

Leo watched Thea toss the spaghetti in tomato, olive oil, and scallions. How was it that she was so calm about it all? She was too sensible and professional to be doing what they were doing, but here she was. Leo didn’t know whether to be ecstatic that he’d managed to tempt her to cross a boundary or worried that this meant she was not as levelheaded as he’d always believed her to be. Being at work with Thea but unable to touch her left him in a constant state of anticipation, suspended between the workaday present and the vivid, saturated past and future. It was a pleasurable ache but an exhausting one. He was the only one who knew her this way, he often reflected. He’d once thought of her gaze, when it landed on him, as chilly and searching, but now he found her thrillingly direct.

He hadn’t told Britt. He hadn’t told anyone, and he couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which he would be able to. But he was a terrible liar. If anyone asked him straight-out if he had been dating his own executive chef, he’d probably get out a calendar and chart it for them. No one did ask, however, and he tried to believe that this was because no one suspected. This contradicted everything he’d ever seen in the restaurant business, where knowledge was shared osmotically, flashing from busser to cook to waiter to owner like a nerve impulse. He comforted himself by remembering that he and Thea were all business everywhere but here. Yes, people might have seen them leave Mack’s together, but they were colleagues. And yes, Britt had looked suspicious at Stray’s friends-and-family, but he’d said nothing to Leo since. Could anyone really know anything just from seeing two people go through a doorway one after the other?

They could, of course. He could. He’d seen it a thousand times, in owners and managers who were foolish enough to do what he was doing.

Leo kept watching her bare feet against the floor, the flex of tendons and the spread of her heels as she shifted her weight.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “How is it?” she said.

Leo looked at the laptop, forgotten before him on the table. “It’s good,” he said. “It’s really good.”

The first real review of Stray in the
Star
was a two-pager by a critic who had written up Winesap a number of times, a woman with whom Britt had cultivated a relationship for years—one in which he managed to suggest simultaneously that he was intimidated by his respect for her yet also on the verge of devouring her at any given time. It was the sort of thing Britt could do.

Britt had run through the restaurant that afternoon, on his way to Stray, brandishing an advance review he refused to share. “I can’t,” he’d said. “Harry’ll freak out if he doesn’t see it first.”

Britt still appeared for two shifts a week at Winesap, and soon he would need to renegotiate a long-term schedule
. T
wo and a half months into its life, Stray was settling in, and Leo knew from experience that by now each night should not be a fresh terror. Helene was getting tired of her extra shifts each week, while Alan had discovered that he preferred the bar to the maître d’ stand after all. He did seem to enjoy the aura of power conferred upon the host, however, and now and then Leo caught him hemming and hawing, for the pleasure of it, over an easily granted request. He’d also turned out to be an enthusiastic updater of blue cards, which were now filled with his notes on conversational preferences, suspected marital issues, and probable food aversions.

The disturbing part was that Alan had turned out to be quite perceptive. So far he had correctly predicted two divorces (the spouses later appeared with new people) and had taken to casting an appraising eye in Leo and Thea’s direction
. T
hey gave him nothing; under scrutiny, Thea smoothed her expression as blank as a mannequin’s
. T
hey never touched; they did not even pause in the office when they thought they might be alone. But now that he was downstairs and in the kitchen so much more often as they worked on a new menu, this distance was torturous. Leo could swear he knew where she was at any given moment—every day at work he could feel her move through the restaurant’s space. He recognized her profile and the set of her shoulders from across a room, from another room altogether.

“So read it to me,” Thea said. She began portioning out the pasta in two bowls
. A
baguette sat on a platter before him
. T
hea sat down and tore a large chunk from it. “No, wait, let’s eat in the living room.” They carried their bowls and the computer to the couch, where Thea liked to drape her legs across his
. T
his was another surprise to him—she didn’t like to go from bed to the formality of the table. She said they had all day to sit across from one another at a table. Now they set the laptop on the coffee table and read the review as they ate.

When he’d first read it, he couldn’t help but feel a faint satisfaction at the reviewer’s characterization of the location as “equal parts bold and foolhardy,” but when he spoke it aloud he felt offended on his brothers’ behalf—as if they weren’t wise enough to make a considered choice! He shook his head and continued
. T
he reviewer extravagantly praised the interior and noted approvingly Britt’s less polished demeanor in this new setting, all before she got around to discussing the food.

“It’s kind of like those reviews where they tell you all about their Christmas vacation for two paragraphs first,” Leo said with a snort.

“She’s got a bit of a thing for Britt,” Thea said.

“Okay, finally, the food. ‘The signature lamb’s neck with gremolata and cavatelli is a gauntlet thrown before the diner. Will you see past the restaurant’s refusal to prettify the cut in order to enjoy its tender richness? Only the cavatelli feel as if they ought to be on another dish—one could imagine a lamb ragù with these little mouthfuls, but here they feel overly rich.’” Leo frowned. “I thought the cavatelli were excellent,” he said. “Didn’t you? The gremolata keeps it all from feeling over the top.”

He shook his head and continued: the socca and baccalà got high marks, as did the octopus with ginger, the duck, and all of the desserts, though the reviewer also felt that many of them seemed to be coming from a different restaurant. Thea said nothing as he read a listing of Hector’s most recent triumphs: a chocolate menthol geode, a hot fried dumpling with a startling cool center, the malt cup of cacao custard, and a flight of shiso leaf, lemongrass, and yuzu gelati with black rice crisps. They were both silent as the last word lingered in the air, and then Thea reached over and closed the laptop.

“She says Harry’s physique is ‘cranelike,’” Leo said.

“He
does
need to eat more,” Thea replied.

“Harry’s wound a little tight. That, we knew. We’d hear about it from Britt if there was really a problem.”

“Maybe,” said Thea. She took a bite of her spaghetti and rubbed her foot against his shin absentmindedly.

“Should we have found a way to keep Hector?” Leo said.

“I don’t know if we could have,” Thea replied, running a crust of bread around her bowl. “It would have been nice to have him longer, I know, but I don’t think he was right for you, Leo. He drove you batty, if you recall. He never talked except to deliver the names of these dishes or just to say things like ‘umeboshi.’ Let Harry deal with it! And I think Kelly has come into her own, anyway.”

Leo nodded. Kelly was doing nicely. She lacked Hector’s pure fearlessness, but he had to admit that she worked beautifully within the confines of Winesap’s menu. Her desserts felt intriguing but not overly challenging.

“We just can’t do some of that sci-fi malt shop stuff Harry can,” Leo said morosely.

Thea frowned. “Leo
. W
hat do you want to do to the menu? Seriously
. W
e’ve streamlined it
. W
e’ve made it simpler, more elegant, we’ve integrated the random influences and lost the ones that just didn’t fly
. W
e gave up on that damn brittle
. A
nd I think it’s working—the comments from the diners are really good
. W
hat more do you want to do?”

Leo sighed and sat back. It was an affront not to finish Thea’s spaghetti, but he wasn’t hungry anymore. “I don’t want anything,” he said. “I really don’t. I feel like the place is running fine, that even without Britt the floor is run well, the cooks seem productive, it’s all fine. I just feel a little bored with it all, I guess.”

He was expecting Thea’s hand on his, a sympathetic look on which they could segue back upstairs, but instead Thea’s expression hardened. She stood up, removed his bowl and hers, and before he could stop her went into the kitchen, where he could see her scraping his remaining pasta into the sink.

He followed her into the kitchen. “What?” he asked.

“I have a kid, you know?” Thea said.

“I know you do,” Leo said. “I’ve been hoping to meet her.”

Thea ignored this. She leaned against the sink and crossed her arms. “I have a kid to think about, and a job I work hard at and that I am excellent at, Leo, and if you think some vague sense of ennui from you is enough to start shaking things up at work
again
, you’d better find yourself another chef
. W
e run a good place, and if it needs a reset now and again that’s fine—but we gave it one, and it’s been successful. So let well enough alone. If you wanted to go in with Harry, you should have. But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “You’re right about that.”

“Okay, then,” she said.

The dressing-down left him weirdly soothed
. T
his felt like the old Thea—the unsentimental, straightforward self she’d been before they got together, unsoftened by affection
. T
hat Thea was not the sort who liked being placated, and so he did not embrace her. He got up and began to wash the dishes instead.

It was a relief to hear Thea’s complete willingness to say what she thought, even if it wasn’t nice, even if it was directed at him. She hadn’t fallen in with him in a daze of boredom or sudden-onset madness. She was her same old self, but now she was also with him. Leo gave in to the urge to whistle
. T
hea looked searchingly at him, but Leo gave her a smile in return.

“It never occurred to me that he’d have a knack for it,” he said after a while. “I know that sounds terrible, but I never paid a lot of attention to whatever he was doing, and I just figured he’d quit before it went too far. I mean, if anything, the closer it got, the more I freaked out, you know? I just thought,
This kid has no idea what he’s doing, and he’s going to be up to his neck in debt and have nothing to show for it
.”

“I know you did,” Thea said. “So why did Britt disagree?”