Лори Касс - Lending А Paw

“What?” She’d put her hands to her sleek hair. “I can’t do that! How can I be closed four months out of the year?”

“Okay, close after New Year’s, open on April Fools’ Day.”

“How can I be closed three months of the year?”

“Who’s going to eat there in February?” I’d asked. “Besides me and Aunt Frances, I mean. The snowbirds are all gone after the holidays and we’re too far from most of the ski resorts to be a destination.”

“I can’t be closed three months of the year,” she’d said, but it was almost a question.

“Why not? Lots of restaurants around here are closed in winter.” I ran roughshod over the objections she was starting to think up. “Interview the people you want to hire and tell them right off what you’re thinking. If they shy away, well, maybe you’ll have to stay open to keep your core staff. Why not at least try? But this way you’ll only need to come up with menus from three seasons.”

By then she was starting to think about it. “Three seasons,” she’d said. “I can do three, easy.”

Thus the restaurant’s name was born. The location, after weeks of searching for a perfect place that I was convinced existed only in Kristen’s head, was locked in when a rambling bed-and-breakfast that had once been a family cottage went on the market. “Cottage” being a loose term, since in this case it referred to a mammoth five-thousand-square-foot structure.

Kristen’s bank had kicked loose the loan when she barged into the bank president’s office and served him chicken piccata, asparagus with morel mushrooms, and an apple tart. Four months later the restaurant opened to great acclaim.

This Sunday evening, I walked in through the back door, simultaneously greeting and staying out of the way of the sous chef. I nodded at various staff members and wound my way through the pantry to Kristen’s office, where she was working away at her computer.

“Hey.” I sat in the chair opposite her desk. Now that the time had come to tell her all about Friday, I didn’t know how to begin. “How’s the new chef working out? He’s been here two or three weeks now, right?”

Kristen kept clicking keyboard keys. “Why can’t I get a steady supply of strawberries? It’s June, for crying out loud.” She ranted on about her supplier, calling dire threats upon his head, his children’s heads, and his children’s children’s heads.

When she took a breath before making a new threat, I asked again. “New chef?”

She squinted at the computer, then pushed herself away from it. “The jury is still out, but I think he’ll be fine.”

“How was the cheese?” I asked. “Wasn’t that why you went down to Traverse City?”

Sighing, she shook her head. “Why is it so hard to find exactly what I want?”

I’d been Kristen’s personal search engine for years due to her need to use both hands while cooking, but this wasn’t a question that took any research. “Because you’re a prima donna restaurateur who is so persnickety that you can’t be satisfied with anything less than the absolute best?”

She considered my question. “Sure, that could be it.”

“Or it could be that you’re a persnickety grouch who won’t be satisfied with anything, even if it is the best.”

This, too, she considered. Then she grinned. “Nah. I don’t see it.”

“And I don’t see why anyone would want to run a restaurant.”

“No?” Still smiling, she picked up her phone. “Hey, Harvey, bring me a couple of specials.” She shut down her laptop and crossed her arms. “Before we eat, I want to clear up one or two small points. And get that puzzled look off your face. You know what I’m talking about.”

I hung my head. “Yes, I do, and I don’t know what came over me, but I promise never to eat processed cheese ever again.”

She smothered a laugh. “Do it one more time and I’ll feed you goat cheese for a month.” A real look of terror must have shown on my face because she laughed outright, then said, “Small points. Are we or are we not best friends?”

“We are.” Kristen had grown up in Chilson and I’d been a regular summer visitor as soon as I’d been old enough to be put on a bus headed north. Since my mom’s job as a guide at Dearborn’s Greenfield Village was busiest in the summer, it hadn’t taken much whining to get sent up to Aunt Frances. Kristen and I had discovered each other at the city beach the summer I’d turned twelve and we’d been friends ever since.

“Okay, then.” She leaned back and draped her long legs over the corner of her garage sale desk. “Do we or do we not share all the important events in our lives?”

“No.”

She sat up a little, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“You never did tell me about what happened between you and Danny Stevens behind the high school gym.”

“And I never will. Larger point. Are you planning to tell me about finding Stan Larabee before hell freezes over, or after? You’ve been here five minutes already, Minnie. Start talking.”

“I . . . don’t know how.” There were no words, no way to express what I needed to say, nothing that would help, nothing that would change what had happened, nothing that would change the pictures in my head. Oh, Stan . . .

“Minnie,” she said gently. “Talk to me.”

A large silence dropped down between us. I watched it expand and grow to fill all the space in the room, to take up all the air. I was starting to struggle for breath when the office door opened and Harvey, the sous chef, bustled in with a plate in each hand.

“Ladies,” he said. Behind him rushed a waiter carrying a small table. The table went down next to me. The waiter, who’d had a white tablecloth over one arm, flung it out and over the table. Out of one apron pocket came linen napkins; out of the other came flatware. He backed away and Harvey set the plates on the table gently, turning the entrée so it would be closest to the edge of the table. He whisked a small vase of flowers out of his back pocket and centered it on the tablecloth. “Is there anything else I can get you?” He looked expectant.

“No, thanks. That’s it.” After hovering a moment, Harvey shuffled out, and Kristen pushed her rolling chair back from her desk and came around to a stop in front of the other plate.

I’d already bellied up to the table. “That guy is so in love with you he can hardly see straight.” I stuck my fork into the lightly browned lake trout.

“Huh. Does that explain why he dropped a tray of dinner rolls the other night?”

I stuffed my mouth full. “Oh, man, do you know how good this is?”

“It’s my creation, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but . . .” I waved my empty fork in the air before I plunged it once again into the entrée. “But you get jaded, eating this kind of stuff every day. It’s only people like me, who only get to eat like this on rare occasions, who can truly appreciate it.”

“It wouldn’t be rare if you’d let me feed you more often.”

“Let’s not go there,” I said.

“You can eat here every day for free. Twice a day. Three times, if we had breakfast.” She put her arms flat on the table and looked at me hard. “I know how much I owe you, don’t think I don’t.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” I said in a low voice.

“Yes, I do.” Kristen banged the table with her fist, making the flatware bounce and the plates rattle. “You’re the only one who believed in me. My parents didn’t, my former fiancé didn’t, and for sure my former evil corporate employer thought I was nuts. Only you believed. Not only that, but you did all the research on—”

I cut her off. “You don’t owe me a thing. You’re my friend. That’s what friends do.”