Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

“No more tequila,” Grayson said.

Luke sank a little lower in his chair. Adrienne was afraid he might slip under the table. Darla, for the first time ever, seemed distressed. She looked at Luke imploringly, as though she wanted him to speak. He was not picking up whatever signal she was trying to send. She laughed.

“Well, I suppose I might as well say it. Adrienne, Luke would like to take you out to dinner on your night off. He’d like to take you to Cinco.”

Luke put both his hands on the table and Adrienne noticed he was wearing a silver pinkie ring. What to say? That she didn’t normally go out with men who had their mothers ask? Luke pushed himself out of the chair. “I have to piss,” he said, and he propelled himself toward the men’s room.

Darla pretended not to have heard this last declaration. She smiled at Adrienne. “I hear Cinco has wonderful tapas.”

Adrienne glanced around the dining room. There were no emergencies calling her name, and there was no one available to save her. She lowered herself into Luke’s vacant seat.

“Thank you for thinking of me,” she said. “But I’m already seeing someone.”

Darla put her hand to her throat. She looked stunned. “Who?”

Adrienne took another look around. She felt the way a criminal must feel just before breaking the law. She was going to tell Darla and Grayson the truth-tell them because she wanted to-even though she could feel indiscretion coating her tongue like a film.

“Thatcher.”

“No!” This came from Grayson.

“Thatcher?” Darla said. “You and Thatcher?”

“That’s a dead-end street, my girl,” Grayson said. “A dead… end… street.” He picked up his wineglass and swirled his white burgundy aggressively. “Let me ask you a question. Why would someone as beautiful and smart and charming as yourself pick someone like Thatcher? Don’t you want stability? A house? Children? Don’t you want, someday, to be one of these soccer moms with everything in its place?”

“I thought you liked Thatcher,” Adrienne said. “I thought you loved him.”

Darla put her hand on top of Adrienne’s hand. “Thatcher is a dear, sweet fellow and one of our very favorites. But he’s a restaurant person.”

Adrienne felt her temper rear up, though she knew they had arrived at this place in the conversation because of her own stupidity. “So am I.”

“Why, one of the first things you told us is that you’ve never worked in restaurants. You said this was just another adventure. You aren’t like the other people who work here. You aren’t like them at all.”

“Restaurants are as risky as the theater,” Grayson said. “They’re as derelict as television. It’s a volatile and transient life. It’s goddamned make-believe.”

“Honey, now you’re being dramatic,” Darla said.

“Am I?” Grayson pitched forward in his chair. “What do your parents think of this?”

“My parents?” Adrienne panicked. She didn’t want to answer a question about her parents. She wanted to defend restaurant people and restaurant life and all the exciting, diverse, and enriching aspects of it. She wanted to tell them that she was as happy as she’d ever been in her life because of this restaurant. But instead, Adrienne did what any good restaurant person would have done. She salvaged the moment.

“I really love you two,” she said. She flashed them her biggest, toothiest smile. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. And if I ever come across a good prospect for Luke, I’ll let you know.” She stood up and touched Darla’s shoulder. “Your dinners will be out shortly.”

Adrienne dropped off the empty glass at the bar, picked up her flute of Laurent-Perrier, and returned to the podium. The podium was her home.

At twelve thirty that night, Thatcher slipped through the throng at the bar holding the cash box and wad of receipts close to his chest.

“I’m going to eat,” he said.

Adrienne had just finished a stack of crackers. Hector had brought them out to her, along with the news that Mario was still MIA.

“No news is good news,” Hector said. “They find him in his Durango at the bottom of Gibbs Pond, that’s bad news.”

Forty minutes later, Duncan rang the hand bell. The decibel level in the bar increased; the frenzy for one more drink looked like the scenes shown on TV of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Guests’ hands shot in the air, waving money. In her change purse, Adrienne had four hundred dollars in tips. Two hundred of it had been palmed to her by Grayson Parrish, possibly as an apology for his tirade, but more likely an apology for Luke’s bizarre and ultimately miserable behavior. He hadn’t returned from the men’s room for a long time and Grayson was forced to check on him. Luke had vomited and was trying to clean up the mess with toilet paper. Adrienne sent Tyler Lefroy into the men’s room with the mop (why did he get all the foul jobs, he wanted to know) and Grayson led Luke back to the table, where he stared down his ravioli but didn’t eat a bite. This is who you want me to go out with? Adrienne thought. This is your idea of stability?

After last call, the bar crowd thinned and eventually disappeared. Duncan cashed out, tipped his sister, and poured drinks for the waitstaff and Eddie and Hector, who were waiting around for the meeting to begin. Eddie filled Adrienne in on the story circulating about JZ and Jamie: Jamie had found out from a Realtor friend on the island that the house JZ rented on Liberty Street went for three thousand dollars a week. In furious revenge, Jamie had bought a hot tub from Sears. Meanwhile, the director of Shaughnessy’s summer camp called threatening to send Shaughnessy home because her tuition had yet to be paid. JZ was, in Eddie’s words, “wickedly screwed” because Fiona had paid for the house on Liberty Street but JZ didn’t want to admit that to Jamie, and Jamie had spent Shaughnessy’s camp money on the hot tub. JZ had gone home to straighten out the mess and in the end, Fiona had paid the summer camp.

“Because she’s cool like that,” Eddie said. “She’s the coolest.”

Adrienne checked her watch. It was twenty of two. Her feet hurt. “Okay, people, let’s go,” she said. “Beach outside Thatcher’s office.”

They exited through the dining room and walked around the restaurant to the back door of the office. There they found Thatcher and Fiona eating Popsicles at a plastic resin picnic table. Fiona was wearing jean shorts and her chef’s jacket. Her hair was down-it was lovely and wavy released from its braid-but her face looked drawn.

Adrienne and the rest of the staff plopped down in the sand and Thatcher called for the remaining kitchen staff-Antonio, Henry, Paco, Jojo. When everyone was seated in the sand, he did a strange thing. He lifted Fiona up out of her chair and carried her toward the water.

“Follow me,” he said.

The staff followed, including Adrienne, who couldn’t help feeling stupidly jealous that Thatcher was carrying Fiona. Fiona screamed in protest, her head thrown back, her hair streaming in the breeze. It was a beautiful night, moonless, still. The staff trudged to the water’s edge but Thatcher plunged right in until he was up past his knees. He let Fiona go and she splashed into the water and the water lit up around her like a force field.

“Whoa-ho,” said Paco. (Adrienne knew he and Louis had been smoking dope back in pastry.) “That’s cool.”

Delilah was the next one in because she was young and unabashed about swimming in her clothes. She dove under, and again, the water illuminated around her.

Soon the whole staff, including Adrienne, was in the ocean, marveling at the way the water sparkled and glowed around their arms and legs.