Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

Adrienne squeezed her water bottle in the middle, making a plastic crunch. This was the guy who had sent her to the Bistro in the first place. He’d set her up, maybe, hoping she’d spy on Fiona and report details back to him. But what kind of details was he after, exactly? “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

Drew Amman-Keller took his eyes off the road for a split second to look at Adrienne. She noticed something funny about the bottom half of his face. It was pink and raw-looking where he’d shaved, as though he’d stripped off a mask.

He downshifted and signaled to the left. “Here’s Cliff Road,” he said. “Is it okay if I drop you here?”

“I thought you were going to take me into town,” Adrienne said. “Are you trying to get rid of me now?”

He laughed. “I’m happy to take you to town,” he said. He pulled back onto the road and turned up the radio.

Adrienne collapsed back in the seat. “You’re happy to take me to town, but you won’t tell me what’s going on in the restaurant where I’m the assistant manager. You must think I’m pretty naïve.”

“I think no such thing.”

Despite the air-conditioning, Adrienne was hot. And thirsty. And angry.

“I went on a date with Thatcher last week,” she said. “But Fiona called at midnight and told Thatcher his dinner was ready and he left me at my front door.” Adrienne watched Drew Amman-Keller for a reaction, but he had none. She kicked his glove compartment and left a mark with her filthy shoe. The restaurant was turning her into a lunatic, the kind of person who confided in strangers and disrespected their brand-new cars. “You told me if I ever wanted to talk, I should call you. You gave me your card. I still have it at home.”

“Good,” he said. “Hold on to it.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll write an article about my date with Thatcher?”

“No,” he said.

“No,” Adrienne echoed. Girl likes boy, boy likes different girl. He’d heard it a thousand times before. Everyone had.

There were only two people in the restaurant whom Adrienne trusted, and one of those people was Mario. This might have seemed counterintuitive, as Mario’s reputation among the staff was for being exactly the opposite-untrustworthy, fickle, a scoundrel. He had dumped Delilah by kissing another woman on the dance floor of the Chicken Box while he was there on a date with Delilah. Delilah had cried for three days, and she begged Duncan to defend her honor. Duncan said, “I told you not to go near the guy in the first place.”

Mario was deadly as a lover, but as a friend he had a curiously golden touch. The afternoon of her ride with Drew Amman-Keller, Adrienne marched back into pastry.

“It looks like someone could use a Popsicle,” Mario said. He pulled a tray out of the freezer and handed Adrienne a creamy raspberry-banana Popsicle then took one for himself. They licked the Popsicles leaning side by side against the marble counter.

“They’re good, yeah?” Mario said.

“Yeah,” she said. She bit off a big piece and it gave her an ice-cream headache. She moaned. Mario rubbed the inside of her wrist.

“This is supposed to help,” he said.

“You just want to touch me,” she said.

“You got that right.”

She said, “Do you know what’s going on between Fiona and Thatcher?”

He dropped her arm. “There’s nothing going on.”

Adrienne threw her Popsicle stick into the trash. “You’re lying to me.”

“No,” Mario said. He moved down the counter to where the dough for the Portuguese rolls was proofing. He worked the dough with his hands. “I would not lie to you. There’s nothing going on the way you’re thinking.”

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“I always know what the ladies are thinking.”

“So if it’s not what I’m thinking, then what is it?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Mario said.

The other person Adrienne trusted was Caren, but only during certain times of the day: mornings after Duncan left, in the Jetta on the way to work, as they listened to Moby.

“I am not a jealous person,” Caren said, one morning after four espressos, which was enough to make even her tremble. “You haven’t known me very long, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Usually, I eat men for breakfast.”

“I can tell,” Adrienne said.

“I’m a biting bitch.”

“You’re strong.”

“Right. Except not with Duncan. I’ve known him twelve years and I’ve seen him do all kinds of outrageous things with women at the bar, and before it was always funny. But now it’s awful. They all want to sleep with him, even the married ones. He says he’s in it for the money, but I don’t know, it’s got to be an ego rush for him, right? This is driving me fucking nuts. But don’t tell anyone, okay? Promise you won’t tell.”

“I promise,” Adrienne said. She had sworn to herself that she wasn’t going to tell anyone about her ride with Drew Amman-Keller, not even Caren. But at that moment Caren seemed vulnerable-pale, sweating, shaking from her mainline of caffeine-so Adrienne said, “I know I’ve beaten this subject to death, but I really want to know what’s going on between Thatcher and Fiona.”

Caren gathered up her hair and tied it into a knot. It stayed perfect like that, without a single pin. Adrienne was both fascinated by her manipulations and driven batty by her silence. Caren was deciding how much, if anything, to divulge. “It’s a lot simpler than you think.”

“Simpler how?”

“They’re friends, like I said before. If you’re ever going to have a relationship with Thatcher Smith, you need to accept that.”

“I’m not going to have a relationship with Thatcher Smith,” Adrienne said. She needed to accept that.

On the Sunday before the official start of summer, Caren announced from her post in front of the espresso machine that she and Duncan were going sailing on Holt Millman’s yacht and that Adrienne was joining them.

“You’re not allowed to say no,” Caren said. “Holt is thrilled you’re coming. We’re leaving in thirty minutes and we’ll be back at four.”

Adrienne knew damn well that Holt Millman had no clue who she was but Caren seemed resolute and Duncan backed her up, saying, “Yep. Better get ready.”

It was something different, a welcome change from running by herself and going to the beach by herself. Once she was heading down the docks of Old North Wharf, Adrienne felt excited. It was another gorgeous day and she liked being among the boats-the sailboats, the power yachts-and the people loading up coolers of beer and bags of sandwiches, getting ready for a day on the water. She hoped Thatcher was cooped up inside, the phone stuck to his ear like a tumor.

Holt Millman’s yacht, Kelsey, was the biggest boat Adrienne had ever seen in person. It was, Duncan told her, 103 feet long with a ninety-foot main mast. It was modeled after the Shamrock, a 1930s era J-class racing yacht, but Holt’s boat was made out of Kevlar and honeycombed fiberglass. It had clean lines up top, Duncan said, but below deck it was a mansion-with china in cabinets, a Jacuzzi, a washer and dryer.

Duncan paused. “I’m going to guess that you’ve never seen anything like this.”

Adrienne had sailed on the Chesapeake when she was a child, she’d fished in blue water off the coast of Florida, hung on for dear life to a catamaran in Hawaii, and she island-hopped in an old junk during her year in Thailand. When she lived in Chatham, her boyfriend Sully had use of a seventeen-foot Boston Whaler and he’d even let her take the wheel. But none of that had prepared her for Kelsey.

They took their shoes off before they stepped onto the teak deck. Holt was standing in the cockpit talking to a man with broad shoulders who looked like the captain. Holt wore a green polo shirt with KELSEY on the pocket; he was drinking something pink and frosty in a Providence Puritans glass. (The Puritans, Duncan had informed Adrienne in the car, were an NHL expansion team that Holt had purchased the year before.) As soon as Holt saw Duncan and Caren, he raised his glass in greeting. Adrienne wished she knew something about hockey.