Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

While some of the guests of the soft opening were summer people who had arrived early, most were year-round Nantucketers. Mack Peterson, the manager of the Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel, was coming with Cecily Elliott, the hotel owners’ daughter.

“Great guy,” Thatcher said. “He sends us tons of business. Good business, too-people who show up on time, drink a lot of expensive wine, et cetera.”

Adrienne wrote down their names. “Are they married?” she asked. “Mack and Cecily?”

“No,” Thatcher said. He furrowed his brow. It was funny, Adrienne thought, how Thatcher’s hair was red but his eyebrows were the palest blond. “What is your obsession with whether people are married?”

Adrienne wanted to inform him that asking if one couple was married could hardly be classified as an obsession, but then she remembered that she had also asked about him and Fiona. “I’m sorry,” she said, with as much poison in her voice as she could muster in her state of weariness.

Thatcher held up his pen. “Never mind.”

She recalled Fiona’s words. Thatcher was right about you, then. “You don’t know the first thing about me,” Adrienne said.

“Well, I know that your father is a dentist,” he said. “Your mother is a good cook. You worked in Aspen at the Little Nell, and in Thailand, Palm Beach, Hawaii, and on the Cape. You have black hair and green eyes. You’re a size six. You go to the beach without sun protection. You don’t know how to walk in slides. And”-he pointed his pen at her-“tonight is your first night of restaurant work.” He smiled. “How’d I do?”

Adrienne stared at the faint blue lines of her legal pad. She desperately wanted to set the record straight about her mother-although her mother had been a good cook, she had also been dead for sixteen years. But Adrienne didn’t have the energy. She was tired. And he was right that she went to the beach without lotion and didn’t know how to walk in these shoes. Her legs hurt, her face hurt. She wanted to sit down.

“Let’s just do this,” she said.

“We have a lot of Realtors coming in tonight,” he said. “Hopefully one of them will help me sell this place. The president of the bank is coming. The electrician is coming with her husband, her sister and brother-in-law. I don’t need to tell you how important the contractors are, right? Ernie the plumber and Cat the electrician. They are the most important. Because if one of the toilets overflows or an oven quits in the middle of service on a Saturday night, we need to be able to call that person’s cell phone and have them show up in minutes. Let’s see… we have a famous CEO coming with a party of ten-I’ll let you be surprised. No other celebrities, really-a couple of local painters and writers. They drink a lot. Where is your champagne? We didn’t sell a single glass of Laurent-Perrier first seating.”

“Sorry,” Adrienne said. She felt oddly culpable, like maybe she wasn’t enticing enough, or worthy of emulation. She headed over to the bar and when Duncan saw her he whipped a clean flute off the shelf.

“This is your third glass,” Duncan said. “How many did Thatch say you could have?”

“Three, if it’s busy.”

“It’s going to be busy in a few minutes,” he said. He poured a glass and slid it across the bar. “You’d better nurse this, though. I’ll pour you however much you want after service.”

“Thanks,” Adrienne said. “But after service, I’m going home to bed.”

“Maybe you should have an espresso,” Duncan said. “Do you want me to order you an espresso?”

“No, thanks.” But since it was nice of him to offer, she said, “I met your sister. She’s cute.”

Duncan rolled his eyes, wiped down the blue granite with a rag, and checked the level of his cranberry juice. “She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.”

Adrienne twirled her flute by the stem. “That makes two of us.”

Caren appeared with two espressos. “Let’s do a shot,” she said to Duncan. They both threw back the coffee. Caren pointed at Adrienne’s champagne. “Better watch it. That stuff will kill you.”

Adrienne wandered back toward the front door as headlights started to pull into the parking lot. The piano player returned, smelling like cigarettes. The two new waiters had also been out on the beach smoking. The guy with the hoop earrings-name?-offered bushy hair-name?-an Altoid. The piano player-name?-glissando-ed into “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

Somehow Adrienne caught a second wind. The people who arrived for second seating were younger and better looking. In fact, they all looked like models. Cat, the electrician, was a six-foot blonde in a pair of Manolo Blahniks. She was one of the most attractive women Adrienne had ever seen and she was the electrician. Welcome to Nantucket! When Thatcher introduced Adrienne, Cat’s eyes went first to Adrienne’s shoes, then to her glass.

“You’re drinking pink champagne,” she said. “That’s what I want. Pink champagne. Let’s get a bottle. No, a magnum.”

Adrienne smirked at Thatcher. Redeemed! Thatcher led Cat’s party to table twenty while Adrienne sat a husband and wife Realtor team with a party of six. When she returned to the podium, Holt Millman-a CEO who was famous for being not only obscenely rich but legitimately so-was heading up a party of ten.

In her mind, Adrienne dashed a one-line e-mail to her father. Holt Millman looks just like his picture on the cover of Fortune ! Thatcher sat the Millman party and left Adrienne to handle a party of six women, wives of the owners of other restaurants in town. Thatcher had told Adrienne that this table was super-VIP. “Because we want them to return the favor when we go out on the town.”

One of these women-again, gorgeous, red hair, fabulous shoes-said, “You’re new.”

“I’m Adrienne Dealey.”

The redhead shook Adrienne’s hand and squeezed it. “I’ve been telling Thatcher for years that he should have a woman up front. Don’t let Fiona give you a hard time.”

This caught Adrienne off-guard. How did you know Fiona would give me a hard time? she wanted to ask. What does everybody on this island know about Fiona that I don’t?

“I won’t,” Adrienne assured her. She felt not only redeemed, but validated. Fiona was famous for giving people a hard time. So there. Adrienne handed out menus to the women and summoned enough courage to say, “I’ve been drinking Laurent-Perrier rosé champagne. Can I interest you ladies in a bottle?”

“Sure,” the redhead said. “Sounds great.”

Adrienne was afraid that if she stopped moving, she would keel over. She led the good citizens of Nantucket to their tables, handed out menus, and delivered drinks for Caren and Bruno who she could see were getting slammed. A local author came in with a party of eight. They had been barhopping in town and as soon as the author stepped in the door, she started singing along with the piano. Another party of four stepped in, among them a woman with a luscious pink pashmina who pointed at Adrienne’s shoes.

“Great shoes!” she cried.

You can have them, Adrienne thought.

Thatcher approached the podium. “I don’t want you to look right now,” he said. “But in a second, casually, study the man to Holt Millman’s left. He is Public Enemy Number One.”

Instinctively, Adrienne turned.

“Don’t look,” Thatcher said. “Because he’s watching us.”

“Who is it?” Adrienne said.

“Drew Amman-Keller. Freelance journalist. He’s basically on Holt’s payroll writing pieces for Town & Country and Forbes about Holt and Holt’s friends. He’s been so aggressive in pursuing a story about Fiona that we had to ban him from the restaurant. But he’s not stupid. He comes with Holt.”