Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

“You haven’t talked to Thatch?”

“He’s not answering his cell. And I couldn’t reach him at the hotel.”

“That’s not good news,” JZ said. “Either her O 2sats are low or she has another infection.”

“I saw her the other day hooked up to oxygen,” Adrienne said. “But she seemed okay.”

JZ took hold of the podium as though he planned to walk away with it. “I love her,” he said. “I really fucking love her.”

“I know,” Adrienne said.

“I’m married,” he said. “My wife and I are in love with other people.”

Adrienne met this with silence. As interested as she was, she didn’t have time for a confessional this minute.

“You’re probably wondering why we don’t get divorced,” he said. “The reason is eight years old and four feet tall.”

“Shaughnessy?”

He nodded. “Jamie says if I file for divorce, she’ll take Shaughnessy away. And Jamie is just enough of a bitch that she means it. The guy she’s been screwing for the last five years is married and won’t leave his wife. And if she can’t be happy, she won’t let me be, either.”

“Oh,” Adrienne said.

JZ paced the floor in front of the restrooms. “I love Fiona but I can’t lose my daughter.”

The phone rang. The private line.

“I have to take this,” Adrienne said. “It might be Thatch.”

JZ nodded.

“Good morning,” Adrienne said. “Blue Bistro.”

“What in God’s name is going on with this truck?” Harry Henderson asked. “We’re in the parking lot and this truck is blocking the front view of the restaurant. Do you hear what I’m saying? We can’t see the front.”

“It’s deliveries,” Adrienne said.

“Well, tell him to move.” With that, Harry Henderson hung up.

Adrienne smiled at JZ apologetically. Out in the parking lot, she heard Harry Henderson honking his horn.

“They want you to move,” she said.

“They can fuck themselves.”

“I’d agree,” Adrienne said. “Except it’s the Realtor with potential buyers. They want to see the front of the restaurant.”

JZ ran a hand over his thinning hair. “Do you understand about Shaughnessy?”

“It doesn’t matter if I understand,” she said. “It only matters if…”

“I know. And she does understand. Or she claims she does. But she doesn’t have kids. It’s difficult to comprehend losing a child when you don’t have one of your own.”

Harry Henderson honked again.

“I’ll move,” JZ said. He took a Blue Bistro pencil and wrote a phone number on Adrienne’s reconfirmation list. “Here’s my cell. Will you call me if you hear anything?”

“Of course,” Adrienne said.

“They’re filthy rich.”

This was what Harry Henderson whispered in Adrienne’s ear while the prospective buyers wandered through the restaurant. Adrienne had been expecting a couple who looked filthy rich-an older couple, distinguished, like the Parrishes. Instead, Harry introduced Scott and Lucy Elpern. Scott Elpern was handsome despite his best efforts. He was tall and had a just-out-of-the-locker-room thing going in jeans, a dirty gray T-shirt, and a Red Sox cap. The wife, Lucy, wore a flowered muumuu that she must have picked up at Goodwill. She was hugely pregnant. Three days past her due date, she told Adrienne when they shook hands, as though she didn’t want anyone around her getting too comfortable. Lucy herself could not have looked less comfortable. She was swollen and perspiring, her face was red, her hair oily. She resembled one of the cherry tomatoes the kitchen roasted until the skin split and the seeds oozed out.

“Technology billionaires,” Harry Henderson said. “Nobody thinks there are technology billionaires anymore but I found two of them.”

Adrienne looked out the window by the podium. JZ had swung the truck around so that it was perpendicular to the restaurant and now he was going about his business of unloading crates of eggs and peaches and figs. He moved sluggishly, plodding like he was being asked to carry gold bullion.

The Elperns stood by table twenty gazing out at the water. Lucy Elpern rested her hands on her belly. Harry Henderson gave them a moment to enjoy the view, then he gently led Lucy Elpern up the two steps and through the bar area.

“This is a blue granite bar,” Harry said.

Lucy eyed her husband. “We could keep that.”

“Of course!” Harry said. “And there’s a state-of-the-art wine room and, naturally, an industrial kitchen.”

“Can we see the kitchen?” Lucy asked.

“Of course!” Harry boomed. He looked to Adrienne for confirmation.

“I didn’t tell anyone you were coming,” Adrienne said.

“We’ll just poke our heads in,” Harry said. “Is Fiona back there?”

“No,” Adrienne said.

“Too bad,” Harry said to the Elperns. “You could have gotten a glimpse of the most famous chef on the island.” He led Scott Elpern to the kitchen door.

“I have to use the ladies’ room,” Lucy Elpern said to Adrienne. “This baby is sitting on my bladder.”

Adrienne pointed to the bathroom door.

Lucy rubbed her belly. Her fingers were swollen; the diamond wedding band she wore cut into her flesh. Her ankles looked soft and squishy, like water balloons. She had on a pair of turquoise flip-flops, the plastic kind you could buy at the five-and-dime. “I have to go every five minutes,” she said.

Once Harry and Scott disappeared into the kitchen and Lucy closed the door of the restroom, Adrienne dialed Thatcher’s number. Voice mail. She hung up. She heard water in the bathroom and a second later, Lucy emerged. Instead of heading into the kitchen, she wandered over to the podium, where Adrienne was pretending to review the reconfirmation list.

“You’ve worked here a long time?” Lucy asked.

“Not really,” Adrienne said. “Only about six weeks.”

“Harry told us that most of the staff has been here for years.”

“Most of the staff has.”

“But not you?”

“Not me.”

Lucy Elpern inhaled. “This place has good karma.”

“Are you in the restaurant business?” Adrienne said.

“No,” Lucy said, and she laughed. “We’re going to demolish and build a real house. But it would be nice if there were things we could keep. The bar, for example. We could put it in our family room, maybe.”

“In your family room?”

“And then we could say this is the bar that used to be in a famous restaurant.” She picked a pack of matches out of the bowl. “The Blue Bistro.”

“You’ve never eaten here?” Adrienne asked.

“No. We’ve only been on Nantucket for a week. But we really want a second home on the beach. We live on Beacon Street in Boston. Nice, but very urban.”

Adrienne checked her reservation sheet. There were 232 on the books for tonight, but she did have a couple of deuces left during first seating.

“Why don’t you come in tonight on the house?” Adrienne said. “Around six?”

Lucy smiled, then ran a hand through her unwashed hair. “You’re a doll to offer. That way we’d know what it might feel like to eat… in our new dining room. Let me ask Scott.” She waddled to the kitchen door and with great effort, pushed it open.

Adrienne stared at the phone. She wanted to tell Thatcher that some people were here who wanted to demolish his restaurant but salvage the blue granite bar to put on display in their family room like a museum piece from a country they had never visited. She heard a noise and looked out the window. JZ was pulling out of the parking lot. Don’t go! Adrienne thought. The feeling of abandonment returned and she picked up the phone to call Thatcher, but at that minute, Harry Henderson and the Elperns emerged from the kitchen.