Elin Hilderbrand: The Blue Bistro

She had only asked her father for a small loan-two hundred dollars-enough to get her back east on the train and set up someplace else. But he must have sensed something in her voice, because he sent her three hundred, no questions asked.

Adrienne heard someone shout, “Hey!” She whipped around. A man was striding toward her from a silver pickup truck in the parking lot. She smiled at him, squinting in a way that she hoped conveyed her innocence. I’m not trying to rob you. I just want… a job? When he got closer, she saw he had red-gold hair and freckles-he was a man who looked like a twelve-year-old boy. His hand shot out as though he’d been expecting her.

“Thatcher Smith,” he said. “Thatch.”

“Oh. Uh.” Adrienne was so nervous, she couldn’t remember her name. The man raised his pale eyebrows expectantly, waiting for her to identify herself. “Adrienne.”

“Adrienne?”

“Dealey.”

“Adrienne Dealey.” His tone of voice said, Of course, Adrienne Dealey, like they had an appointment. “Can I help you, Adrienne?”

Adrienne opened her mouth but no sound came out. So much for knocking them dead with her confidence and charm.

Thatcher Smith laughed. A short, one-syllable “ha!” Loud and spontaneous, as if she had karate-chopped his funny bone. “Cat got your tongue?”

“I guess,” she said. “Sorry. I came for a job. Is there an application or something I can fill out?”

“Application?” He looked at her in a strange but pleasant way, as though he’d never heard the word before.

“Don’t you work here?” Adrienne asked.

“I own here.”

“Oh.” The owner ? Adrienne took another look at this guy. He was about six feet tall with sloping shoulders, strawberry blond hair, green eyes, freckles. He wore jeans, running shoes, a red fleece jacket that was almost too bright to look at in the morning sun. She couldn’t tell if he resembled Huckleberry Finn or if it was just the name, Thatcher-like Becky Thatcher-that summoned the image. He had a clean, friendly Midwestern vibe about him. He wasn’t handsome so much as wholesome looking. Adrienne corrected her posture and cleared her throat. She was so destitute it was hard to feel impressive. “Would it be okay if I filled out an application, then?”

“We don’t have any applications. It’s not that kind of place. I do all the hiring face-to-face. What kind of job are you after? Front of the house? Back of the house? Because I can tell you right now, we’re not hiring any back of the house.”

Adrienne had no idea what he was talking about. She was after money, a thick wad of twenties she could roll out like a Mafia boss.

“I thought maybe I could wait tables?”

“Do you have any experience?” Thatcher asked.

I waited tables in college, she thought. But she couldn’t make herself say it.

“None,” she said. “But I’m willing to learn. Someone told me it’s a piece of cake.”

Thatcher laughed again-“ha!” He moved past her to the door of the restaurant and took a giant ring of keys from his jacket pocket. Adrienne noticed a wooden dory by the front of the restaurant filled with fresh soil. They probably grew flowers in the dory all summer. That was a nice touch. This was a nice restaurant. Too nice for Adrienne. If she wanted to be self-sufficient, she would have to sell her laptop.

“Never mind,” Adrienne said. “Thanks for your time.”

She turned to leave, making an alternate plan of attack. Back to the road, down the street to the hotel. After she filled out an application there, she would have to surrender some of her money for breakfast.

“You understand?” Thatcher said. “I can’t exactly hire you to wait tables when you’ve had no experience.”

“I understand,” Adrienne said. “I was just checking. Someone I met on the boat told me how great your restaurant was. He also said there’s a hotel down here?”

“The Nantucket Beach Club and Hotel,” Thatcher said. “But Mack won’t hire you without experience either.”

“I have hotel experience,” Adrienne said. “I just came from Aspen. I worked at the Little Nell.”

Thatcher’s pale eyebrows shot up. “The Little Nell?”

She nodded. “You’ve heard of it?”

“Of course, yeah. What did you do there?”

“Front desk,” she said. “Concierge.”

Thatcher pointed his head at the open door. “Are you hungry?” The door of the restaurant swung open. “I was going to have an omelet. Would you like to join me?”

Adrienne glanced back at the sandy road. She should go. An omelet, though, sounded tempting. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” Thatcher said. “I hate to eat alone.” He ushered Adrienne in. The roasting meat and garlic smell was so overpowering that Adrienne nearly fell to her knees in hunger. What had she had for dinner last night on the ferry? A hotdog that had spent seven hours spinning on a rack and a cup of gluey clam chowder.

“Someone’s cooking?” she said.

“My partner,” Thatcher said. “She never sleeps. Follow me. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

When they stepped inside the front door, Adrienne was overcome with anxiety. She checked her watch, a jogging watch with an altimeter. It was just after ten o’clock; she was three feet above sea level. What was she doing? She had to find a job today. Still, she trailed Thatcher, trying to seem polite and interested. Free food, she thought. Omelet.

Thatcher stopped at an oak podium. “This is the host station, where we greet guests and make reservations. We have two public phone lines and a private line. The private line is very private, but sometimes guests get ahold of it. Don’t ask me how.”

He led her past a bar topped with a shiny slab of blue-gray stone. “Now here,” he said proudly, “is our blue granite bar. We found the stone in a quarry in northern Vermont.” The wall behind the bar was stocked with bottles on oak shelves. “We only sell call and top shelf. I don’t ever want to drink Popov and I don’t want my guests drinking it. Not in here,” Thatcher said. There were two small tables in the bar area and a black baby grand piano. “We have live music six nights a week. My guy knows everything from Rodgers and Hart to Nirvana.” Down two steps was the dining room, maybe twenty tables, all with views of the ocean. The restaurant had no walls-it was open from the waist up. In winter, Adrienne could see, they hung plastic sheeting to keep the wind and sand out. There was an awning skeleton off the back. They placed six tables under the awning on a deck, Thatcher said, and four four-tops out in the sand under the stars.

“Those are the fondue tables,” he said. “It makes a royal mess.”

They returned to the bar, where the tables were set with white tablecloths, china, silver, wineglasses. Thatcher indicated Adrienne should sit.

“Let me take your jacket,” he said.

“I’ll keep it on,” Adrienne said.

“You’re going to eat with your jacket on?” he said.

She handed him her purple Patagonia Gore-Tex that she’d bought with an employee discount from the ski shop at the Little Nell, and lowered herself daintily into a white wicker chair, as though she were accustomed to having breakfast in glamorous bistros like this all the time. Thatcher hung up her jacket then disappeared into the back, leaving Adrienne alone.

“The Blue Bistro,” she said to herself. This was the kind of place that Doug would have called, disparagingly, “gourmet”; if it wasn’t deep-fried or residing between two pieces of bread, Doug didn’t want to eat it. Prison food would suit him fine.

Adrienne took a white napkin off her plate and unfolded it on her lap. She lifted the fork; it was heavy, beautiful silver. And the charger-she flipped it over. Limoges. She replaced the plate quickly-this was the restaurant equivalent of checking someone’s medicine cabinet. Before she could inspect the pedigree of the stemware, Thatcher was back with two glasses of juice.