The Blue Bistro (33 page)

“I’ll say one thing for my cousin,” Antonio said. “He works fresh.”

No one knew where Mario was; at last report, he hadn’t checked in at the Subiaco compound. Adrienne wondered if he had flown off-island in search of another job. She wondered if she would ever see him again.

“What do you think?” Adrienne asked Thatcher at the podium as they awaited first seating.

“I stay out of the kitchen’s business.”

“Yeah, but what do you think?”

“Fee’s afraid,” he said quietly. “And fear does strange things to people.”

“It’s too bad,” Adrienne said. “They’ve been friends a long time.”

“They’re still friends,” Thatcher said. “This is just a fight.”

“So you think he’ll come back?”

“Where’s he going to go?” Thatcher said.

“I don’t know. Chicago?”

“Ha!” Thatcher gave her the laugh, and Adrienne felt better. She was smiling when the Parrishes walked in.

“Halloo,” Darla called out. She was holding a young man by the hand, pulling him along like he was Wolfie’s age. “Adrienne, this is my son, Luke Parrish. Thatcher, you remember Luke.”

Thatcher shook hands with Luke and patted him on the back. Luke smiled shyly at the floor. He was the exact opposite of what Adrienne expected a Parrish son to look like: He wore tiny frameless glasses and had long brown hair that spilled over his shoulders and down his back. He wore a blue blazer over a white T-shirt, jeans, and sandals. Between the lapels of his jacket, Adrienne could only read a single word printed on the front of his shirt:
CASTRO
.

“It’s nice to meet you, Luke,” Adrienne said. “Let me show you to your table.”

As she walked the Parrishes out to the awning, Rex launched into “Hello, Dolly!” Adrienne heard Darla behind her. “Isn’t she just lovely? Isn’t she exquisite? She used to live in Aspen. And Hawaii. Adrienne’s a real adventure girl, aren’t you, Adrienne?”

Adrienne pulled out a chair for Darla. She handed Luke and Grayson their menus. “Just to let you know, there aren’t any desserts tonight. Our pastry chef is on vacation.”

“On vacation in the middle of July?” Grayson said. He leaned closer to Luke. “That must mean they fired him.”

“So I’ll get your drinks, then,” Adrienne said. “Stoli tonic and Southern Comfort old-fashioned. Luke, what can I bring you?”

“A beer, please,” he said.

“We have Cisco Summer Brew on tap. Is that okay?”

“Perfect,” he said. “And a shot of tequila, please.”

“A beer and a shot of tequila,” Adrienne said. “I’ll be right back.”

She put in the drink order with Duncan and went back to the kitchen to give Paco the VIP order. Antonio was expediting.

“Where’s Fiona?” Adrienne asked Paco.

“Lying down,” he said. “She’s upset.”

“About Mario?”

“No,” Paco said. “Something about JZ. Eddie got the story.”

“Have you heard from Mario?” Adrienne asked.

Paco scoffed. “He’s out getting drunk somewhere. Getting drunk and looking for ladies.”

“You think?” Adrienne said. She seemed to be the only one who was worried about him. She couldn’t bear to peek around the corner and see the abandoned pastry station.

Back in the dining room, she sat tables: the local author was in; Mr. Kennedy; a real jackass named Doyle Chambers; and one of the local contractors with a party of twelve. Adrienne opened a bottle of champagne for Kennedy—his
wife, Mitzi, was now a devotee of the Laurent-Perrier—and then she swung back into the kitchen to pick up the chips for Parrish and put in two more VIP orders. She headed for the Parrishes’ table. From behind, Luke looked like a girl in men’s clothing. But that wasn’t quite right; his hair wasn’t feminine so much as biblical. He looked like the original Luke, the one who wrote the Gospel. But this Luke had inherited the Parrish demeanor. Adrienne found the three of them sitting in silence, sipping their drinks. The shot of tequila had been drained and pushed to the edge of the table. Adrienne scooped it up as she set down the chips and dip.

“Another?” she asked Luke.

“Please,” he said.

This seemed to startle Darla from her reverie. “Oh, Adrienne, honey, won’t you please stay and chat with us for a second?”

“I’d love to.”

“I told Darla that arranged marriages have been out of fashion for over a hundred years,” Grayson said. “She refuses to believe me.”

Darla laughed and threw her hand in the air. “I just thought they might have something in common. Luke loves to travel. After Amherst, he spent a year in Egypt.”

“Egypt?” Adrienne said. “I’ve always wanted to see that part of the world. I had a boyfriend once who offered to take me to Morocco, and at times I regret not going.”

Luke tented his fingers. He was looking at Adrienne longingly, she thought, but then she realized that he was eyeing the empty shot glass in her hands. He wanted his tequila.

“How old are you, Adrienne?” Darla asked.

“Twenty-eight.”

“And Luke is twenty-nine!” Darla said. “He’s our youngest.”

“And our nuttiest,” Grayson piped in. “It was a hard lesson but I finally learned that our three boys were not mined from the same quarry. This guy”—and here he pounded Luke on the shoulder—“is a free spirit.”

“Josh and Timmy are more traditional,” Darla said.

“They’re into wearing suits and paying alimony,” Luke said.

“Okay, well,” Adrienne said. “I’ll get you another tequila. Darla, Grayson, can I bring you anything else right now?”

“Just yourself, when you have a minute,” Darla said.

Adrienne stopped at the bar to order another tequila and then met Thatcher at the podium. Everyone from first was down.

“I think Darla is trying to set me up with her son,” Adrienne said.

“Oh, I know she is,” Thatcher said. “For years she’s been wondering if he’s gay. She told me on Tuesday that it was her intention to introduce him to you.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Good luck. I hear she’s very picky.’ ”

Adrienne swatted him. “Not picky enough.”

“I want to have a meeting after closing tonight,” Thatcher said.

“A meeting?”

“On the beach outside my office.”

“Because of Mario?”

“Morale booster,” he said. “It’s mandatory. Please spread the word.”

No one on the staff expressed enthusiasm about a mandatory meeting at one o’clock in the morning. Joe looked at Adrienne cross-eyed; Spillman claimed he had a date with his wife at Cioppino’s.

“Morale booster?” he said. “What are we going to do—have a sing-along around the campfire?”

Caren, who was standing right there, said, “Thatch likes to give a little speech when the first person burns out.” She nudged Spillman. “Last year, remember, when Bruno lost his shit on that woman with the alligator shoes, Thatch gave us the talk and we all got a raise?”

“True,” Spillman said.

Tyler Lefroy asked if there would be beer. Adrienne was too afraid to tell anyone in the kitchen about the meeting; she would make Thatcher handle that.

Between their appetizer and entrée, Adrienne visited the Parrishes again. She had to admit, Luke Parrish fascinated her, not because of anything he said or did, but because he was so different from Darla and Grayson. He was a revolutionary. He’d ordered the mixed green salad with beets, and the ravioli; he was a vegetarian. And now, after two beers and three shots of tequila, Adrienne could tell he was getting drunk. His posture was falling apart. He was slumped in his seat.

“How’s everyone doing here?” Adrienne asked. Again, the empty glass of tequila had been pushed to the edge of the table, and Adrienne picked it up and held it discreetly at her side. “Would you like another?” she asked Luke.

“No more tequila,” Grayson said.

Luke sank a little lower in his chair. Adrienne was afraid he might slip under the table. Darla, for the first time ever, seemed distressed. She looked at Luke imploringly, as though she wanted him to speak. He was not picking up whatever signal she was trying to send. She laughed.

“Well, I suppose I might as well say it. Adrienne, Luke would like to take you out to dinner on your night off. He’d like to take you to Cinco.”

Luke put both his hands on the table and Adrienne noticed he was wearing a silver pinkie ring. What to say? That she didn’t normally go out with men who had their mothers ask? Luke pushed himself out of the chair. “I have to piss,” he said, and he propelled himself toward the men’s room.

Darla pretended not to have heard this last declaration. She smiled at Adrienne. “I hear Cinco has wonderful tapas.”

Adrienne glanced around the dining room. There were no emergencies calling her name, and there was no one available to save her. She lowered herself into Luke’s vacant seat.

“Thank you for thinking of me,” she said. “But I’m already seeing someone.”

Darla put her hand to her throat. She looked stunned. “Who?”

Adrienne took another look around. She felt the way a criminal must feel just before breaking the law. She was going to tell Darla and Grayson the truth—tell them because she wanted to—even though she could feel indiscretion coating her tongue like a film.

“Thatcher.”

“No!” This came from Grayson.

“Thatcher?” Darla said. “You and Thatcher?”

“That’s a dead-end street, my girl,” Grayson said. “A dead . . . end . . . street.” He picked up his wineglass and swirled his white burgundy aggressively. “Let me ask you a question. Why would someone as beautiful and smart and
charming
as yourself pick someone like Thatcher? Don’t you want stability? A house? Children? Don’t you want, someday, to be one of these soccer moms with everything in its place?”

“I thought you liked Thatcher,” Adrienne said. “I thought you loved him.”

Darla put her hand on top of Adrienne’s hand. “Thatcher is a dear, sweet fellow and one of our very favorites. But he’s a restaurant person.”

Adrienne felt her temper rear up, though she knew they had arrived at this place in the conversation because of her own stupidity. “So am I.”

“Why, one of the first things you told us is that you’ve never worked in restaurants. You said this was just another adventure. You aren’t like the other people who work here. You aren’t like them at all.”

“Restaurants are as risky as the theater,” Grayson said. “They’re as derelict as television. It’s a volatile and transient life. It’s goddamned make-believe.”

“Honey, now you’re being dramatic,” Darla said.

“Am I?” Grayson pitched forward in his chair. “What do your parents think of this?”

“My parents?” Adrienne panicked. She didn’t want to answer
a question about her parents. She wanted to defend restaurant people and restaurant life and all the exciting, diverse, and enriching aspects of it. She wanted to tell them that she was as happy as she’d ever been in her life because of this restaurant. But instead, Adrienne did what any good restaurant person would have done. She salvaged the moment.

“I really love you two,” she said. She flashed them her biggest, toothiest smile. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. And if I ever come across a good prospect for Luke, I’ll let you know.” She stood up and touched Darla’s shoulder. “Your dinners will be out shortly.”

Adrienne dropped off the empty glass at the bar, picked up her flute of Laurent-Perrier, and returned to the podium. The podium was her home.

At twelve thirty that night, Thatcher slipped through the throng at the bar holding the cash box and wad of receipts close to his chest.

“I’m going to eat,” he said.

Adrienne had just finished a stack of crackers. Hector had brought them out to her, along with the news that Mario was still MIA.

“No news is good news,” Hector said. “They find him in his Durango at the bottom of Gibbs Pond, that’s bad news.”

Forty minutes later, Duncan rang the hand bell. The decibel level in the bar increased; the frenzy for one more drink looked like the scenes shown on TV of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Guests’ hands shot in the air, waving money. In her change purse, Adrienne had four hundred dollars in tips. Two hundred of it had been palmed to her by Grayson Parrish, possibly as an apology for his tirade, but more likely an apology for Luke’s bizarre and ultimately miserable behavior. He hadn’t returned from the men’s room for a long time and Grayson was forced to check on him. Luke had vomited and was trying to clean up the mess with toilet paper. Adrienne sent Tyler Lefroy into the men’s room with the mop (why did he get all the foul jobs, he wanted to know) and Grayson led Luke back to the table, where he
stared down his ravioli but didn’t eat a bite.
This is who you want me to go out with?
Adrienne thought.
This is your idea of stability?

After last call, the bar crowd thinned and eventually disappeared. Duncan cashed out, tipped his sister, and poured drinks for the waitstaff and Eddie and Hector, who were waiting around for the meeting to begin. Eddie filled Adrienne in on the story circulating about JZ and Jamie: Jamie had found out from a Realtor friend on the island that the house JZ rented on Liberty Street went for three thousand dollars a week. In furious revenge, Jamie had bought a hot tub from Sears. Meanwhile, the director of Shaughnessy’s summer camp called threatening to send Shaughnessy home because her tuition had yet to be paid. JZ was, in Eddie’s words, “wickedly screwed” because Fiona had paid for the house on Liberty Street but JZ didn’t want to admit that to Jamie, and Jamie had spent Shaughnessy’s camp money on the hot tub. JZ had gone home to straighten out the mess and in the end, Fiona had paid the summer camp.

“Because she’s cool like that,” Eddie said. “She’s the coolest.”

Adrienne checked her watch. It was twenty of two. Her feet hurt. “Okay, people, let’s go,” she said. “Beach outside Thatcher’s office.”

They exited through the dining room and walked around the restaurant to the back door of the office. There they found Thatcher and Fiona eating Popsicles at a plastic resin picnic table. Fiona was wearing jean shorts and her chef’s jacket. Her hair was down—it was lovely and wavy released from its braid—but her face looked drawn.

Adrienne and the rest of the staff plopped down in the sand and Thatcher called for the remaining kitchen staff—Antonio, Henry, Paco, Jojo. When everyone was seated in the sand, he did a strange thing. He lifted Fiona up out of her chair and carried her toward the water.