The Blue Bistro (3 page)

“Fresh-squeezed,” he said. “The last of the blood oranges.” He set the glasses down then disappeared again.

Adrienne eyed her glass. “The last of the blood oranges,” she whispered. The juice was the fiery pink of some rare jewel. Was it okay to take a sip before he got back? Adrienne listened for noises from the kitchen. It was silent. She took a deep breath. The air smelled like something else now: toast.
Hunger and thirst,
she thought.
They’d get you every time.
Thatcher hurried out of the kitchen with two plates and set one in front of Adrienne with a flourish, as though she were someone very important.

It was the best omelet Adrienne had ever eaten. Perfectly cooked so that the eggs were soft and buttery. Filled with sautéed onions and mushrooms and melted Camembert cheese. There were three roasted cherry tomatoes on the plate, skins splitting, oozing juice. Nutty wheat toast. Thatch had brought butter and jam to the table. The butter was served like a tiny cheesecake on a small pedestal under a glass dome. The jam was apricot, homemade, served from a Ball jar.

Adrienne dug in, wondering where to start in the way of conversation. She decided the only safe thing was to talk about the food.

“This jam reminds me of when I was little,” Adrienne said, spreading a thick layer on her toast. “My mother made jam.”

“Is she a good cook?” Thatcher said.

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

Adrienne paused.
Rule Two: Do not lie about past!
But it was hard when someone hurled a question at her like a pitch she couldn’t hit.

“Yes.”

For Adrienne, the silence that followed was studded with guilt. She should have just said, “She was,” but then, by necessity, there would be tedious personal explanations about ovarian cancer and a motherless twelve-year-old that she
was never in the mood for. She would rather talk about her felonious ex-boyfriend and her empty Future.
It’s okay,
she thought. She would never see this guy again after today and she vowed she would tell the truth to the next person she met. Her mother was dead.

“Well,” Adrienne said. “This is the most delicious breakfast I’ve ever had in my life.”

“I’ll tell Fee,” he said. “She likes to feed people.”

Adrienne ate every bite of her eggs and mopped up the tomato juices with her bread crust and drained her juice glass, thinking to herself—
Manners, manners! Turn the fork upside down on the plate when you’re finished, very European.
If nothing else, this would make a great e-mail to her father. Her first morning on Nantucket she ends up eating a breakfast of champions in a restaurant that wasn’t even
open.

She collapsed in her chair, drunk with food, in love with this restaurant. If she ever caught up enough to pay off her credit cards and refund her father with interest, she’d come here for dinner and order the foie gras. “Why is it your last season?” she asked.

“Ahhh,” Thatcher said. He pushed away his plate—half his omelet remained and Adrienne stared at it, wondering how audacious it would be to ask if she might finish it. Thatcher propped his elbows on the table and tented his fingers. Even his fingers, Adrienne noticed, were freckled. “The time has come.”

The time has come?
That was a noncommittal answer, an art form Adrienne wished she could perfect. So she, too, had asked a tricky question. In the interest of changing the subject, Adrienne offered up something else.

“I just got here last night.”

“You’ve never been to the island before?”

“Never.”

“You came straight from Aspen?”

“I did.”

“I’m intrigued by the Little Nell. They say it’s the best.”

“One of. Relais and Chateaux and all that. They gave me housing.”

“In the hotel?”

“Yes.”

“That must have been sweet.”

“It was okay,” Adrienne said. She and Doug had lived in a studio apartment with his retriever, Jax, even though pets weren’t allowed. No pets, no drugs, no stealing from the rooms!

“Did you go out at night?” Thatcher asked.

“Sometimes.”

“My bartender here, Duncan, works at the Board Room in Aspen all winter. You ever go there?”

“Sometimes.”

“So you know Duncan?”

Adrienne tried not to smile. She knew Duncan. Every single woman between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-nine who had been in Aspen for more than five minutes knew Duncan from the Board Room. There had actually been a picture of him in
Aspen
magazine making an espresso martini. Kyra had been
dying
to sleep with him, and so she dragged Adrienne to the Board Room during the week when she guessed the bar would be less crowded—but it was three deep from après ski until close. It drove Doug crazy. He not only disliked gourmet, he disliked
popular.
Still, Adrienne and Kyra went so often that Duncan began to remember their drinks—a cosmo for Kyra and a glass of champagne for Adrienne. He knew everyone’s drinks.

“He works
here
?”

“He’s the best bartender on the island,” Thatcher said. “Maybe in the whole country. All the men want to get him for golf and all the women want to get him into bed.”

“That sounds right,” said Adrienne.

“Where else have you worked?” Thatcher asked.

“All over,” she said. “The Princeville in Kauai, the Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. The Chatham Bars Inn. And I spent a year in Thailand.”

“Thailand?”

“Koh Samui,” she said, thinking of Kip Turnbull, another
one of her poor companionship choices. “Chaweng Beach. Have you ever been there?”

“I haven’t been anywhere,” he said. “But that will change. As soon as we close this place, I’m taking Fee to the Galápagos. She wants to see the funny birds.”

“Is she your wife?”

Thatcher drained his juice glass then spun it absentmindedly on the table. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Maybe it was another trick question. Or maybe it was like when her father’s patients asked Adrienne if Mavis, the hygienist, was her
mother.
Not worth answering. Adrienne noticed Thatcher wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“So you came here for a job,” he said. “But you have no restaurant experience. None? Not even Pizza Hut?”

“Not even Pizza Hut,” she said. She envisioned herself with a tray piled high with dishes and food, glasses and drinks. She would drop it. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” She had been thinking of money, of Rule One:
Become self-sufficient.
But she didn’t belong here; she belonged down the street, at the hotel. The hotel front desk was the right place for Adrienne. The pay wasn’t great, but housing was almost always included. It wasn’t loud or messy or hot. And the transience of a hotel suited her. All through high school she had worked as a receptionist in her father’s dental offices (three offices in ten years and now he was somewhere new again—the eastern shore of Maryland). She had attended two high schools and three colleges. Since her mother died, Adrienne’s life had been like a hotel. She checked in, she stayed for a while, she checked out. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. This place is lovely and the food is amazing. I’ll come back for dinner once I have some . . .”

“Money?” Thatcher said.

“Friends,” she said.

Thatcher poked the uneaten portion of his omelet with his fork. “We open next week,” he said. “We’ll be booked solid for two seatings every night in July and August. Maybe,
maybe,
on a Monday night in June you can get a
table without a reservation. By eleven o’clock every night the bar is full and I have to put someone at the door. I have to hire a bouncer,
here,
at a high-end
bistro
because there is always a line out into the parking lot. People get in fistfights over cutting in line, like they’re in fifth grade. I try to tell the people, ‘It’s just a cocktail.’ Ditto for dinner reservations. ‘It’s just a dinner. Just one night in the landscape of your
whole life.
’ But what I have grown to realize is that it’s more than just a cocktail and more than just dinner. They want to be a part of the scene. And how can I deny them that? This place . . .” He swept his arm in a circle. “Has magic.”

Adrienne might have laughed. She might have thought Thatcher Smith was full of himself, but she had been here for thirty minutes. She had eaten the best breakfast of her life and now she couldn’t even sit up, much less bring herself to leave.

“You must be good at what you do,” Adrienne said.

“Fee is good at what she does,” Thatcher said. “She’s the best. The best, best, best. And we got lucky.” He pressed his eyes closed for a long second, like he was praying. Then he collected their plates. “Fee will want these.”

“I should go,” Adrienne said. She grabbed the armrests of the wicker chair; she was positively slouching. “I have to find something today.”

Thatcher held up a palm. “Wait, please. Please wait . . . thirty seconds. I have an idea. Will you wait?”

She didn’t have to move just yet. She would wait.

“Back in thirty seconds.” He gathered every dirty dish and utensil from the table, as well as the cake of butter and the jam that had caused Adrienne to break Rule Two, and balanced them on an outstretched arm. He vanished into the kitchen. Adrienne listened. If he was talking to this Fee person, she wanted to know what he was saying. It was silent, except for the sound of the ocean. She closed her eyes. She could hear the ocean. And then Thatcher’s voice.

“This is the most popular restaurant on Nantucket. It has been for ten years. The food is delicious, the food is fun. It’s a fun place to eat. It is see and be seen. It is laugh and talk and sing in here every night of the summer. The Blue Bistro
is what a summer night on this island is all about, okay?” He was standing in front of the table.

“I can tell it’s a special place,” Adrienne said. “Really, I can.”

“It just so happens, I got a phone call this morning from my assistant manager who spent the winter in Manhattan. He told me he’s not coming back,” Thatcher said. “And so now I have a gaping hole in the front of the house. I need someone to answer the phone, work the book, arrange a seating chart, learn the guests, make everyone feel not just welcome, you know, but
loved.
Keep track of the waitstaff, the wine, the requests for the piano player. Stroke the VIP tables—birthdays, anniversaries, the whole shebang. I need someone to be me. I need . . . another . . . me.” He laughed again—“ha!” Like he knew what he’d just said was ludicrous. “And when you first asked, I thought,
Who in their right mind would give a
manager’s
position to someone without a day of restaurant experience?
That would be foolish. Bad business! But now I’m thinking that what I need is someone with concierge skills. I need someone who understands old-fashioned service.”

“I do understand old-fashioned service,” Adrienne said. Hadn’t she warmed towels in the dryer for guests with a newborn baby at the Princeville? Hadn’t she finagled a veterinarian appointment for a couple with a sick parrot at the Mar-a-Lago? Hadn’t she arranged for private lighthouse tours while at the Chatham Bars Inn?

“Most of my staff has been here since we opened twelve years ago. They love it here. They love it because Fee puts out the best family meal on the island and at midnight she sends out homemade crackers. Ninety-nine percent of the world think that crackers only come out of a box, and then here’s Fee sending out baskets of hot, crisp cheese crackers and after eight hours of busting their asses and raking in three, four hundred bucks, the staff gets first dibs—and that’s why they want to work here. Because of the crackers. And the money, of course.” He grinned at Adrienne. “This is our last hurrah. The end of an era. I need someone
good.
I’ve never hired a woman for this position before. I’ve never
hired someone without any restaurant background. But I’m not afraid to try. Well, to be honest, I am a little afraid.”

“Wait a second,” Adrienne said. She was confused. What was happening here? Was he offering her a job?

She glanced around the restaurant. Even through the plastic sheeting the ocean was brilliant blue. It made her head spin. That and the food smells and this man who was like nobody she’d ever met before. He was as honest and as nutty as the toast.

“Your second is up,” Thatcher said. “Do you want the job?”

Did
she want the job? It would be a huge risk, but something about that appealed to her. Not a single decision she had made in the past six years had worked out all that well, and she had promised herself on the train east that Nantucket would be different. Working here would be really different. She was so busy thinking,
Should I say yes, should I say no,
that she never actually gave Thatcher Smith an answer, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Good,” he said. His face came alive; it looked like his freckles were dancing. “You’re hired.”

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: May 24, 2005, 3:54
P.M
.

SUBJECT
: The Blue Bistro

Found a job. You’re going to freak out so close the door to your office and sit down, okay? I took a job in a restaurant. Not waiting tables! Not cooking (obviously)! I am going to be the assistant manager at a place called the Blue Bistro. It’s a French-American menu, four dollar signs, right on the beach. Owned by a very nice guy named Thatcher Smith. His partner, Fiona, is the chef and she’s famous, but she’s a recluse. Never comes out of the kitchen. I haven’t even met her—though I will, I guess, soon enough.

I’m making twenty-five an hour—can you believe that? But I don’t start for another week and I need to buy some clothes and pay my first month’s rent. Is there any chance you might wire me a
thousand dollars, please, sweet Dad? I am trying to put some structure in my life, and this time I will pay you back with interest, I promise!

I rented a room in a cottage from one of the women who waits tables at the restaurant. Her name is Caren. She’s waited tables since the place opened and she makes so much money in the summer that after Christmas she goes down to St. Bart’s for the winter and she doesn’t have to work. She said the job I have is harder to get than a seat on the space shuttle.

How do you like the eastern shore? Eaten any crab cakes? Love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: May 24, 2005, 5:09
P.M
.

SUBJECT
: You Blue Me Away

No crab cakes yet. We’re still getting settled in. The schmo in here before me made a mess of his records and the bookkeeper said she can’t untangle his billing. But we’ll figure it out. We always do.

About your new job. Mavis says restaurants are dangerous places to work. Sexual harassment and the like. Foul language in the kitchen. Alcohol. Drugs. Everybody suffering from too much cash money. These are not people who floss, honey. (And that’s a joke, but you know what I mean.) Be careful! You’re an adult and I know you like the way you live but I am growing older by the day fretting about the situations you get yourself into. Which brings me to the question of money. I won’t go on about how you’re twenty-eight years old or about how I’m not your personal bank. I will just wire you the thousand dollars as long as you promise me that one of these days you’ll pick a place and settle down. Love, love.

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: May 24, 2005, 7:22
P.M
.

SUBJECT
: none

You’re one to talk!!!

TO
: [email protected]

FROM
: [email protected]

DATE
: May 25, 2005, 8:15
A.M
.

SUBJECT
: I’m Blue without you

Just please, please be careful. Love, love, love.