Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

On Day Five, Adrienne was working reservations when the private line rang. By this time, Adrienne realized the private line could be anybody: Thatcher (who was at an AA meeting), Cat, Dottie Shore, Harry Henderson, Ernie Otemeyer, Leon Cross, Father Ott.

“Good morning, Blue Bistro,” Adrienne said.

A woman’s voice said, “This is Jamie Zodl. I’m looking for my husband. Have you seen him?”

Adrienne found herself at a loss. “I’m sorry? Your husband?”

“Jasper Zodl. JZ. There’s no need to play games. I know you know who he is and I know he’s there. Or if he’s not there now, he’ll be there at some point and I want to speak to him.”

Adrienne wrote JZ’s name at the top of her reconfirmation sheet. She thought of Shaughnessy at summer camp and all the things that might have gone wrong: sunburn, mosquito bites, sprained ankle, homesickness. “He normally delivers here at ten,” Adrienne said. “But he’s on vacation this week.”

“You can cut the crap,” Jamie said. “I’m not stupid. Have him call me. His wife. At his house. He knows the number.”

“Okay, if I see him-”

Jamie Zodl hung up.

Adrienne passed on the message that evening when JZ came into the bar for dinner. He was wearing a dolphin-blue button-down shirt and his face and forearms were very tan. He and Fiona had rented a Sunfish that afternoon and sailed on Coskata Pond. Adrienne delivered the bad news with his chips and dip.

“Your wife called this morning,” she said.

“Here?”

Adrienne nodded. “She wants you to call her at home.”

“It can’t be important,” he said. “Or she would have called me on my cell. I had it on all day. She probably just called to make a point. To let everyone know she knows I’m here.”

“Okay, well,” Adrienne said. “That was the message.”

Later that night as they lay in bed, Adrienne asked Thatcher what he knew about Jamie Zodl.

“She’s unhappy,” he said. “She’s one of those people who thinks the next thing is going to save her. When I first met her twelve years ago, she was desperate to marry JZ. They used to come into the restaurant all the time. He proposed to her at table twenty.”

“Oh, you’re kidding,” Adrienne said.

“After they got married, Jamie wanted to be pregnant. That didn’t happen right away and they went to Boston for fertility help and it worked, obviously, because they had Shaughnessy. But then Jamie realized how hard it was to be a mother. So to afford a live-in, she and JZ sold their house here and moved to Sandwich. Jamie had an affair with the guy who owned the gym that she joined, and JZ found out. Jamie promised to break it off, they went into counseling for a while, and JZ took a job driving for another company so he wouldn’t have to be gone every day. We didn’t see him here for two whole summers. But then he found out Jamie was back with the guy from the gym and he gave up. Got his old job back and he’s been trying to file for divorce, but Jamie won’t let him. She threatens to take Shaughnessy away and she disappears to her mother’s in Charlottesville, and once she and Shaughnessy flew to London for the weekend. The only way JZ was able to find them was by calling his credit card company. Jamie has run them into mountains of debt on top of it all. Pretty woman, gorgeous, but what a disaster.” Thatcher rubbed his eyes. “JZ used to talk to Fiona about the whole thing. It was strange because Fiona and I and the staff had watched the relationship from the beginning-the courtship, the proposal, the wedding, the child, the breakup, and the next thing I knew Fiona and JZ were in love.”

“When was that?”

“Two years ago.”

“So what do you think will happen, then?”

“What do I think will happen?” Thatcher repeated. He was lying on his back, arms folded over his chest like someone resting in a coffin. “Nothing will happen.”

“What does that mean?”

“JZ won’t leave Jamie. He’s too cowardly.”

“He’s worried about his daughter.”

“That’s what he says.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“JZ is a good guy,” Thatcher said. “But he’s not going to risk anything for Fiona. Leave his wife and lose his daughter for someone who’s going to die?” Thatcher rolled onto his side, away from Adrienne. “That would take a hero. JZ is nobody’s hero.”

Happiness might be contagious, but it was also fleeting, delicate, mercurial. On Day Six, Jamie called again, in the middle of second seating. The restaurant was loud, but Adrienne picked up a new tone in Jamie’s voice. She sounded manic and untethered, like someone who had pounded six shots of espresso.

“This is Jamie Zodl,” she said. “ISJZTHERE?”

“Yes,” Adrienne said. “Please hold on one minute.”

“You hold on one minute,” Jamie said.

“Excuse me?”

“I know Fiona’s sick,” Jamie said. “I know all about it.”

Adrienne said nothing. Across the room, a table burst out laughing. Rex played, “In the Mood.”

“Let me get JZ,” Adrienne said.

“I have a phone number,” Jamie said. “For a journalist who wants to write about her. He wants to talk to me about Fiona and JZ. The question is, do I want to talk to him?”

“Let me get JZ,” Adrienne said again, though she was afraid to put Jamie on hold. Bruno swung by the podium.

“I need your help on ten,” he said. “Can you pull a bottle of the Cakebread?”

Adrienne’s ears were buzzing; she felt like she had a bomb threat on the phone.

“Get JZ,” Adrienne whispered to Bruno. “His wife is on the phone.”

Bruno wasn’t listening closely-what he heard was Adrienne asking him for something in response to his asking her for something. He wagged a finger. “Honey, I’m slammed. Can you get the wine for me, please?”

Adrienne searched the dining room for Thatcher. Her eyes snagged on table ten, a deuce, a middle-aged couple, fidgeting, glancing around. They wanted their wine. Adrienne snapped back to her senses. This was a restaurant! She put Jamie Zodl on hold, zipped into the wine cave for the Cakebread, then she shouted into the kitchen, “JZ, call for you on line three!” By the time Adrienne opened the wine for table ten and made it back to the podium, the phones were quiet. Jamie had hung up.

Adrienne didn’t see JZ on Day Seven, but she gathered he had packed up and left. Fiona took a day off; when she returned, she was back to her old sarcastic, scowling self. The White Sox lost a double-header to the Mariners. Adrienne stayed out of the kitchen.

TO: kyracrenshaw@mindspring.com

FROM: Ade12177@hotmail.com

DATE: July 21, 2005, 10:35 A.M.

SUBJECT: happiness

Not sending spores. You don’t want them. Happiness is fickle. Plays favorites.

A couple of days later, Adrienne was working the phone when a man walked in dressed entirely in black. Black jeans, black shoes, black dress shirt open at the neck. Bulky black duffel bag. He was a young guy who had shaved his head to hide his baldness, so all Adrienne could see was something like a five o’clock shadow where his hair used to be. New York, Adrienne thought, and immediately her guard went up. The press. Who else dressed in black on a hot July day at the beach?

“Can I help you?” Adrienne said.

He offered her his pale hand. “Lyle Hardaway,” he said. “ Vanity Fair magazine.”

Yep. Adrienne eyed her phone. If he didn’t leave when she asked, she would call the police.

“I’m sorry,” Adrienne said. “You don’t have an appointment and our owner isn’t here.”

He held up his palm. “I have a meeting scheduled with Mario Subiaco. He said he’d be working. He said I should come here.”