The Blue Bistro (13 page)

Duncan came onto the sun porch and he and Caren settled down on the wicker sofa. Then Charlie walked in and after looking around the room—no doubt hoping for better company—he plopped down on the piano bench next to Adrienne. That was all she needed.

“I’m getting out of here,” she said.

“Stay,” Caren said. “It’s fun.”

“Stick-in-the-mud,” Charlie said.

Adrienne peeked into the next room. Elliott, Christo, and a few of the unidentified Subiacos were smoking cigarettes watching
Apocalypse Now
to a soundtrack of Dr. Dre. Fun? In the kitchen, Tyler and Roy, the most definitely underage
busboys, were doing shots of Jägermeister. Adrienne thought she might get sick just watching them.

“Phone?” she said.

They pointed down the hall. She located a wobbly pie crust table where the last rotary phone in America rested on a crocheted doily.

Adrienne called A-1 Taxi but was unable to give them her exact location. “Out by the airport?” she said. “Surfside? It’s a big house at the end of a dirt road? The Subiaco house?”

“Subiaco?” the cab driver said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” Adrienne said. She went outside to retrieve her change purse from Caren’s car and decided to wait for the cab on the bottom step of the porch. Then she heard someone whisper her name. She turned around. Mario was lying on the porch swing, drinking a beer. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to the party,” she said, wondering if because she was a manager this would sound weird. She climbed the steps to the porch and leaned back against the railing, checking it first to make sure it wouldn’t give way, dumping her into the bushes. “But I have to go home. I’m tired.”

“You can sleep upstairs with me,” he said.

“No, thanks,” she said. “I’ve been warned about you.”

“Oh, really?”

“The King of the Sweet Ending?”

Mario laughed. “Please,” he said. “Just call me King.” He drained his beer then sat up. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt.
There was something about him,
Adrienne thought. He emanated heat. Smoldered, like all the other womanizers she had ever known.

“How’d you get that scar on your neck?” Adrienne asked.

“Pulling a cookie sheet out of a high oven,” he said. “A million years ago, in culinary school.”

“You went to school with Fiona?”

“Met her in Skills One,” he said. “It was a very tough class. We bonded.” He laughed. “She’s a big hotshot now but
when I first met her she couldn’t even carry a tray of veal bones, okay? We had to roast fifty pounds a day for stock and that’s more than half Fee’s body weight. Our instructor did a double-take when he saw her. He was like, ‘How did a fourth grader get into our classroom?’ ”

Adrienne turned around to search the darkness for the lights of her cab. It felt dangerous to be talking about Fiona like this, though of course Adrienne was enthralled. “Was cooking school tough?”

“A killer,” he said. He patted the spot next to him on the swing. “Sit here, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“I’m fine,” Adrienne said.

“You got that right,” Mario said. “If you’re wondering how an inner city Cuban schlub like me got into the CIA, the answer is, I’m a minority.” He laughed again. “And a fucking genius, of course.”

Adrienne tried to smile but she was too tired. She checked behind her. Nothing.

“I’m only kid-ding,” Mario sang out. “My whole family works in kitchens. My old man and his three brothers worked the line at the Palmer House in Chicago, and all the brothers had sons. There are eleven of us altogether and we all work in kitchens. My brother Louis was a prep cook at Charlie Trotter, Hector worked at Mango, Eddie flipped eggs at the North Side. I worked at so many places I can’t even remember them all, but after high school I got tired of making five bucks an hour. I wanted to learn technique. So off I go to the best cooking school in the country and it kicked my ass. I nearly quit.”

“Really?”

“I hated the hot line. Hated it. Now Fiona, she loved the hot line. The hotter and the busier it was, the more she liked it. The other guys worshipped her. Tiny little thing like that couldn’t even get the veal bones from the oven to the counter and here she is doing eighty plates an hour, swearing like a sailor. She was the one who told me I belonged in pastry, but you know what I thought? Pastry is for chicks. So I got a big,
brawny externship at the Pump Room back home and that made school look like
Sesame Street.
When I went back to the CIA and tried pastry, I realized there’s worse things in life than being in a room full of chicks.”

“I guess so.”

“You like dessert?”

“Of course I like dessert.”

“Everybody likes dessert,” Mario said. “And pastry is cool, okay? It’s quiet. It’s solitary. It’s a place where you have the time and space to lavish the ingredients with love. I’m all about the love.”

He made the word “love” sound like a big soft bed she could fall into. Adrienne gripped the railing.
Rule Three!
She took a big drink of night air. It was absurdly late. She checked the gravel driveway and the dirt road again. She couldn’t tell if the glow in the distance were headlights or lights from the airport.

“So you brought everybody here?” Adrienne said. “All your cousins.”

“Three stayed back home,” Mario said. “My brother Mikey is a lawyer. And Hector’s twin brothers, Phil and Petey, didn’t want to leave Chicago. They work together at the hottest sushi place in the city and have season tickets to the Bulls. So.”

“So,” Adrienne said. “What will you do next year, when the restaurant is closed?”

“Cry my eyes out,” Mario said. “But it’s far from over. We have a long summer ahead.”

“Yeah,” Adrienne said. It was going to be a very long summer if she didn’t get any sleep. Her head felt like it was filled with dried beans. But then she saw headlights, actual true headlights and even better, the bright top hat of a taxi. The cab stopped in front of the house and the door popped open.

“Hey, everybody!” a voice called out. It was Delilah. She was, inexplicably, wearing a belly dancer costume—a red satin bra and transparent harem pants. She ran up the steps,
dinging finger cymbals. Adrienne hurried past her, before the cab drove off. As she pulled away, Adrienne gazed back at the house in time to see Mario, ever the gentleman, leading Delilah inside.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 7, 2005, 8:37
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: See and be scene

At first I thought the Bistro was all about the food but after a week of work I can tell you, it’s all about the drinks. It’s a huge scene. Some nights it’s like a fraternity party and some nights it’s something else entirely (think of a dozen women in for a fiftieth birthday party belting out “New York, New York” while doing chorus line kicks). Last night, I let a man into the bar and he tipped me five hundred dollars. I told him I couldn’t possibly accept it and he said, ‘You want me to give it to the bartender instead?’ So I put it in an envelope and mailed it off to you this morning. Only five hundred to go!

I never considered myself a night owl but since I started work I haven’t gotten to bed before two. I sleep until at least eight then take a nap on the beach. I haven’t gone jogging even once! But I am brushing and flossing and doing my best to stay away from the candy plate. How are the smiles in Maryland? Love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 7, 2005, 8:45
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: Nobody knows the troubles I’ve scene

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to handle being the father of the doyenne of Nantucket nightlife. Should I be worried or proud? Or both? Mavis says she wants to visit Nantucket—I know I always promise and never come, but this time I think we might. Can you research some B & Bs? And book us a night at your restaurant, of course. I’d love to see my little girl in action. Love, love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 7 2005, 8:52
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: Don’t book ’em yet, Don-o

Let me get my sea legs before you show up, okay? Promise me you won’t book anything without double-triple-checking with me first?

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 7, 2005, 8:59
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: I promise

Love, love, love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: June 7, 2005, 9:04
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: sex, drugs, and lobster roll

Duncan has spent every night here for the past nine nights. They always look so tuckered out in the morning—thank God the walls are thick! Caren thinks it’s this big secret, but one of the other waiters at work said he was pretty sure the only reason Duncan shacked up here was because he doesn’t want to sleep in the same apartment with his sister. I, of course, pretended like I didn’t know what he was talking about.

Aspen seems like a million years ago. I haven’t thought about Doug in weeks. I miss you, though. How’s Carmel? Seen Clint Eastwood?

Adrienne wasn’t sure how long her father’s affair with Mavis had been going on. When he set up his dental practice in 1984, the office had three employees: Adrienne’s father, whom everyone called Dr. Don, Adrienne’s mother, Rosalie, who worked the reception desk, booked appointments, and did all the billing, and Mavis, the hygienist. Five years later, when Adrienne’s mother got sick, Adrienne was old enough to fill in for her mother after school and on Saturdays—and to work during the week they had hired a retired woman named Mrs. Leech.

But there had always been Mavis with her blond Dorothy Hamill haircut, her smell of antiseptic soap, and the Juicy Fruit gum that she chewed to freshen her breath after lunch (despite Dr. Don’s fatwa on chewing gum of any kind). When she was first hired, Mavis was a single mother with three-year-old twin boys named Coleman and Graham, who was deaf. Mavis’s husband had left her, and Mavis’s family lived in the French part of Louisiana, which she described as a “stinking swamp.” She had no desire to return. Adrienne’s parents took pity on Mavis, especially Adrienne’s mother, who was prone to fits of do-gooding. As a happy coincidence, it turned out that Mavis was a talented hygienist. She had a light touch, a Southern accent, and because she dealt
on a daily basis with her deaf son, she took great pains to make her communications with children gentle and clear. How many times had Adrienne heard her go through the brushing spiel?
Now I’m just gonna put a little bit of paste on the brush—see, it tastes like bubble gum. Don’t tell the doctor! The brush is gonna move in really fast circles so it might tickle a bit. You’re laughing already, I can’t bee-leeve it!

It was impossible to think of Mavis without thinking of Rosalie, not only because Rosalie and Mavis were best friends, but also because as Rosalie’s presence in Adrienne’s life waned, Mavis’s increased. Rosalie’s illness came on very strong and suddenly. There might have been a clue in the fact that Rosalie had lost her first child in a hard labor, and after Adrienne, Dr. Don and Rosalie had not been able to conceive another child. But Rosalie’s outlook was that some people were blessed with many children and some with only one, and she reveled in the fact that her one child was as well-adjusted and delightful as Adrienne. Then when Adrienne was eleven going on twelve (and was, at that age, neither well-adjusted nor delightful) Rosalie started having pains. She went to her gynecologist and came home looking like she had seen a ghost. A biopsy a week later at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania had diagnosed her with inoperable ovarian cancer and four to six months to live.

Adrienne knew these details now, as an adult, but at the time she had not been well-informed. Her father, a graduate of the dental school at Penn, was friends with the head of internal medicine at HUP and Adrienne was aware of her father’s conversations with him and other doctors at the hospital. Initially, she thought it was Dr. Don who was sick because it was he who looked like he might die. Eventually both her parents sat her down and told her that Rosalie had cancer.

It was Mavis’s idea to send Adrienne to Camp Hideaway in the Pocono Mountains. Adrienne didn’t want to go. She claimed she wanted to help take care of her mother, but really she didn’t want to leave her friends and she was addicted to
General Hospital
and she knew from reading the
brochure that Camp Hideaway didn’t have a single TV. She begged her father to let her stay home and when begging didn’t work, she threatened him. She would run away. She would hitchhike. She would accept a ride with any stranger, even if it was a man with yellow teeth. Finally, Adrienne appealed to her mother. Adrienne knew her mother loved her to the point of distraction. Once she had snooped through Rosalie’s desk, where she found a tablet on which Rosalie had written Adrienne’s name a hundred times, and in the middle of the page, it said, “Unconditional love.” When Adrienne spoke to Rosalie about camp, Rosalie said, “Please do as your father says. He and Mavis think it’s for the best.” Rosalie’s tone of voice was distant; it was as if she were already gone.