Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

Adrienne cast around for a busboy. Roy was at table twelve refilling water. Adrienne waved him down. “We need a new glass here.”

“The water is the least of our worries,” Mrs. Yannick said. “Can you get our waitress so we can place our order?”

“Certainly,” Adrienne said. She found Caren coming out of the kitchen with apps for table twenty-eight. Adrienne followed her. “Here, let me help you serve.”

Caren eyed her. “Why? What do you want?”

“Table four,” Adrienne said. “They’d like to place their order. William is restless.”

“They made their bed,” Caren said.

“So you won’t go over there?”

“When I’m good and ready.”

Adrienne heard a shriek. All the way across the dining room, she saw William, red in the face, kicking, trying to free himself from his chair. Adrienne hurried over. Mrs. Yannick was trying to read Jamberry over William’s screaming. Mr. Yannick raised his arm in a sign of distress; his ship was going down.

“Would you take our order, please?” he said.

“Certainly,” Adrienne said.

“Foie gras and the duck for me, and my wife will have the crab cake and the steak.”

“Rare,” Mrs. Yannick said.

“And a bottle of the Ponzi Pinot Noir,” Mr. Yannick said.

“Really, Carl, wine?” Mrs. Yannick said.

“You love the Ponzi.”

“You think we have time to drink a bottle of wine?”

“We’ll just drink what we can,” Mr. Yannick said. “The Ponzi.”

“Very good,” Adrienne said. William was temporarily mesmerized with a lipstick Mrs. Yannick had pulled from her purse. He took off the cap and put the lipstick in his mouth.

“For God’s sake,” Mr. Yannick said.

“At least he’s quiet,” Mrs. Yannick said.

William threw the lipstick to the ground and started to cry. Mrs. Yannick dug through her purse. “I thought I had a lollipop in here.” Adrienne headed for the kitchen. She didn’t have time for this, and yet she felt responsible. Is your restaurant child-friendly? No, it’s not. The next time, Adrienne would just come right out and say it. No children under six. Why wasn’t this a rule already? She tried to think about how to help the Yannicks. Maybe she should comp their dinner and insist they come back another night. What, she wondered, would Thatcher do? Where was he?

“Ordering table two: one bisque, one crab cake, SOS. Where’s the duck for fourteen? Louis? Get your head out of the oven, Louis! Ordering table six: one frites, medium-well, one pasta. That’s right, I said pasta, so Henry, you’re going to work tonight after all. Ordering table twenty-one…” Fiona noticed Adrienne at her elbow. The kitchen was brutally hot even with two standing fans going. “What do you want?”

“I came to put in an order for table four.”

“Who’s the server?”

“Caren, but she’s busy.”

“News flash: We’re all busy. What is it?”

“What?”

“The order!”

Adrienne thought for a second. If you gave Fiona the food in the wrong sequence, she got pissed. “Foie gras, crab cake, duck, frites rare.”

Fiona scribbled out a ticket. “Fine.”

“Can you rush it?” Adrienne said. “These people brought their two-year-old and he’s freaking out .”

“Ordering table four: one foie gras, one crab cake, pronto,” Fiona said. Then to Adrienne, she said, “What’s the kid eating?”

“He’s not eating. But they would like a plastic cup with a top. I know Caren already asked, but…”

“Sippy cup, Paco,” Fiona shouted.

Seconds later, a plastic cup with a bright blue plastic top whizzed through the air. Fiona caught it and handed it to Adrienne. “Go get him.”

“Who?”

“The kid. Go get the kid and bring him in here.”

Adrienne thought she had heard wrong. The kitchen with the grill and the fryer and four sauté pans going and the fans running was loud.

“You want me to bring William in here?”

“If you think it would help the parents enjoy the meal, then yes,” Fiona said. And-surprise!-she smiled. “I keep some toys in the back office. I love kids.”

Adrienne popped into the wine cave for a bottle of Ponzi. By the time she reached the podium, she noticed the dining room was not only cooler, but quieter. She looked at table four. Thatcher was standing by the table with William in his arms, William was chewing on the top of his fire truck. Adrienne felt a surge of tenderness and awe and whatever else it was a woman felt when she first saw her lover holding a small child. She hurried to the bar, where her champagne glass was waiting. She took a drink, then she set down the sippy cup.

“Orange juice, please,” she said.

Duncan filled it without a word, and Adrienne took the sippy cup and the wine to table four. She handed the sippy cup to Mrs. Yannick who brightened, then Adrienne presented the Ponzi to Mr. Yannick.

“Juice!” William said.

Mr. Yannick nodded at the wine, visibly relaxed. Adrienne uncorked and poured, he tasted.

“Delicious.”

“I put a rush on your order,” Adrienne said as she poured a glass of wine for Mrs. Yannick. “Your appetizers should be out any second.”

“Would it be all right if I took William into the kitchen?” Thatcher said. “I know our chef would love to see him.”

“She has some toys in the office,” Adrienne said.

“All right,” Mrs. Yannick said. “You’ll bring him back if he’s any problem?”

“This guy, a problem?” Thatcher said. William was resting his head on Thatcher’s shoulder, sucking noisily on the cup. Thatcher winked at Adrienne and vanished into the back.

Mrs. Yannick collapsed in her wicker chair. “I love this place,” she said.

Fourth of July. Two hundred and fifty covers on the books, the maximum. Prix fixe menu, sixty dollars per person. First seating was at six; the guests were to eat then move out to the rented beach chairs in the sand to watch the fireworks. Second seating was at ten; those guests would watch the fireworks first, then sit down to dinner. Duncan was working the bar outside, and Delilah took over the blue granite, her first solo flight.

Everything was different and Adrienne was anxious. Thatcher asked her to arrive early, and she was there at quarter to four, but the front of the house was deserted. When she poked her head back into the kitchen it was 182 degrees-the deep fryers were going full blast with the chicken, and Fiona had the ribs in enormous pressure cookers. Adrienne checked in pastry to find Mario up to his elbows in fruit. He wasn’t listening to music, and he didn’t smile when he saw her.

“I have fifty pounds of peaches that need to be skinned. Everybody else gets a prep cook and I get left in the shit. One hundred twenty-five peach pies I have to make. I spent all morning with the blueberries. Look at my hands.” He held up his palms. They were, of course, impeccably clean. “My nails are blue. I can tell you one thing. I’m gonna have nightmares tonight. You ever have a nightmare about stone fruit?”

“No,” Adrienne said.

“Where you have a bushel of peaches looking as gorgeous as Playboy asses and then you break one open and it’s brown and rotten inside? And the next one? And the next one? They’re all that way?”

“I never had that dream,” Adrienne said.

“Yeah, well, lucky you.”

In the kitchen, Adrienne heard Fiona yelling about deviled eggs. She wanted five hundred deviled eggs.

Adrienne retreated to the empty dining room just as a man with a clipboard walked in saying, “I got two hundred and fifty folding chairs, sweetheart. Where do you want them?”

Some help would be nice, she thought. She had never done the Fourth of July thing on Nantucket before and she didn’t know where on the beach Thatcher wanted the chairs or even which direction they should face. If she told this man the wrong thing then two hundred and fifty chairs would have to be moved. (Adrienne pictured herself slogging through the sand in her Jimmy Choo heels.) So better get it right the first time.