Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

The busboys were Tyler, son of the health inspector, whom Adrienne had already met, and Roy and Gage. Roy had just finished his junior year at Notre Dame. He called Thatcher for a job after reading about the restaurant in Notre Dame magazine, an article Adrienne had missed at the public library. She made a mental note to go back and read it. Gage was older, with long hair in a ponytail and a face that looked like it had been stamped by too much loud music, too many cigarettes, and too little sleep. He said he’d met Thatcher at an AA meeting.

It was a lot of names but Adrienne was good with names. And although she was mostly worried about the front of the house, she decided to ask Joe about the kitchen staff.

“Eight guys work back there,” he said. “They’re all cousins. Last name Subiaco, they’re from Chicago, they’re Cuban-Italian and proud of it. Most importantly, they’re White Sox fans. Mario brought the whole gang here in ’ninety-three when the place opened. He knew Fee from culinary school.”

“Mario, the pastry chef?”

“He’s a lady slayer,” Joe said. “He calls himself King of the Sweet Ending and he doesn’t mean desserts.”

Adrienne blushed. “Well, I’m not writing that down.”

“You asked,” Joe said.

It was ten minutes before service, and Adrienne returned to the podium. Her notebook had some actual information in it now.

“Champagne,” Thatcher said.

Adrienne sighed. Duncan was wiping down the bar. She felt strange knowing that under his seersucker shirt and Liberty of London tie was the black cord and the key. She walked over. He saw her, and with a quick flourish of his wrist, Adrienne heard the new sound of we mean business : a cork popping.

We mean business . The tablecloths were white and crisp, the irises fresh, the glasses polished, the candles lit. The waiters lined up for inspection, a band of angels. Rex played “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Cars pulled into the parking lot. The well-dressed, sweet-smelling guests cooed at Thatcher and some of them at Adrienne. She received four compliments on her shoes. Cocktails were ordered and two glasses of Laurent-Perrier and then a bottle. The pretzel bread went out. The doughnuts. The sun began its descent toward the water, and the guests watched it with the anticipation of the ball dropping in Times Square. It was New Year’s Eve here every night.

A man at table twelve beckoned Adrienne over with an impatient finger wagging in the air, and immediately the spell was broken. Didn’t he notice her dress, her shoes, her champagne? She was the hostess here, not his bitch.

“Yes, sir, can I help you?”

He held up the basket of doughnuts. “What are these ? If I’d wanted to eat at Krispy Kreme, I would have stayed in New York.”

Adrienne stepped back. The man had very close cut ginger-colored hair and so many freckles that they gave him patches of disconcertingly brown skin. He wore strange yellow-lensed glasses.

Adrienne glanced at the basket but did not take it from the man. Table twelve: she tried to remember if he was a VIP.

“Have you tasted the doughnuts?” she asked. “They’re not sweet-they’re onion and herb doughnuts. If I do say so, they’re delicious.”

The woman to the man’s left had very short black hair and the same funny glasses with lavender lenses. “I’ll try one, Dana.”

The man named Dana thrust the basket at Adrienne’s nose. “We don’t want doughnuts.”

“But you haven’t tried them. I assure you, if…”

“We don’t want doughnuts.”

Adrienne took the basket, but the man, Dana, was holding on tighter than she expected so the exchange took on the appearance of a struggle. The basket zinged into Adrienne’s chest. There was a smattering of applause and both Adrienne and the man named Dana pivoted to face the rest of the room. The applause was for the sun, which had just set.

“Would you like bread and butter, sir?” Adrienne asked. “Or we have pretzel bread. That’s served with the chef’s homemade mustard.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’ll get you bread and butter, then.”

“Yes,” Dana said. “Do that.”

Adrienne walked away thinking Asshole, asshole, asshole! What could she do to get back at him? Order the chips and dip for all the tables surrounding his? Run her tongue across the top of his perfect cake of sweet butter?

She searched for a busboy, but they were all humping-pouring water, delivering doughnuts-so that now the worst thing about the ugly freckled man who looked at the world through urine-colored glasses was that he was forcing Adrienne into the kitchen.

She pushed through the door. Hot, bright, quiet. Eddie wolf-whistled and Adrienne felt all eyes on her. Including Fiona’s.

“Did you get those avocados?” Fiona asked.

Adrienne had spent a good part of her day at the beach wondering how to get Fiona to like her. But now, thanks to a man named Dana, she was in no mood to be joked to or about. “No, chef.”

“What are you doing in here, then? It will be at least another six minutes for the chips. Right, Paco?”

Pfft, pfft, pfft. “Right, chef.”

Adrienne put the doughnuts on the counter in a way that indicated slamming without actually slamming.

“If table twelve wanted to eat at Krispy Kreme, he would have stayed in New York.”

“The salient phrase there is ‘stayed in New York,’ ” Fiona said. “And people wonder why I don’t come out of the kitchen.”

“Is there bread, chef?”

“Of course.”

“Where?”

“We went over this last night, did we not? The bread is where the bread is kept.”

“I don’t know where that is,” Adrienne said. “You never told me. So, please. Chef.”

Fiona eyeballed her for a long time, long enough to indicate a showdown. Fire me, Adrienne thought. Fire me for asking for bread for a man who looks like one of the villains in a Batman comic. But instead of yelling, Fiona smiled and she became someone else completely. She went from being a little fucking Napoleon to a china doll. She reminded Adrienne of her favorite friend from Camp Hideaway, where she had been shipped the summer her mother was dying. In the second that Adrienne was thinking of this other girl-her name was Pammy Ipp; she was the only girl at camp that Adrienne had told the truth-Fiona left and reappeared with a basket of rolls and the butter. So Adrienne still had not learned where the bread was kept.

“I told him how good the doughnuts were,” Adrienne said.

Fiona rolled her blue eyes. “Get out of here,” she said.

Table twelve was turning out to be a real problem. Adrienne delivered the bread and butter with a smile, but a few minutes later she saw Spillman engaged in a heated conversation with the man named Dana over what appeared to be his bottle of wine. Spillman tasted the wine himself then carried the bottle, gingerly, like it was an infant, over to Thatcher at the podium. Adrienne was chatting with an older couple at table five-neighbors of the Parrishes as it turned out-but when she saw this happening, she excused herself. She wanted to know what was going on.

“What’s going on?” she asked Spillman.

“The guy’s a menace,” Spillman whispered. “He ordered a 1983 Chevalier-Montrachet at four hundred dollars a bottle and he claims it’s bad. I tasted it and it tastes like fucking heaven in a glass. But Menace says he has a cellar full of this wine at home and he knows how it’s supposed to taste, which is not like this. I asked him if he wanted me to decant it because the wine’s been in that bottle for over twenty years, it could probably do with a little elbow room, and he just said, ‘Take it away.’ He said they’re going to stick with cocktails. He orders the most expensive bottle on the list and now suddenly he wants vodka. Plus, he harassed me about the apps. He insisted he wanted the foie gras cooked through. Fiona said it would taste like a rubber tire. I hope it does.”