Elin Hilderbrand - The Blue Bistro

One night at the Brant Point Grill, a very quiet Monday night, Adrienne drinks too much. She received an e-mail from her father about his wedding, less than three weeks away, and she realizes she has to make a decision. Her lease at the cottage ends the day after Columbus Day. What is she still doing here? She’s passing the time, filling up hours, waiting. The thought of not waiting, of going to Maryland or St. Bart’s or some other place panics her. So she drinks her vodkas steadily and evenly, with purpose. She forgets to order food. It’s the regular bartender’s night off, and there’s a young brunette woman in his stead. This girl pours with a smile so fake that Adrienne orders more often just to study her insincerity.

Next thing she knows, she’s in the bartender’s arms, inhaling the wholesome Aveda scent of her hair.

“Here we go,” the bartender directs. “Toward the door.”

Adrienne stares down at her feet (she is wearing a pair of red suede driving moccasins, a holdover from Aspen). She’s doing some kind of dance step-stumbling, weaving, buckling.

“We’re almost there,” the bartender says. “I called you a cab, though you might need an ambulance.” This is said with concern, probably more for her job than for Adrienne’s well-being, though maybe not. The bartender’s arms are strong and she handles Adrienne firmly but carefully, like she’s a child.

“Do you have children?” Adrienne hears herself ask.

The bartender nods. “Three.”

Adrienne tries to say something about how she hardly looks old enough but her words come out slurred and mangled and there isn’t time to start the thought over because a cab whips into the circular driveway. The cabbie, who looks familiar somehow, accepts Adrienne from the bartender and pours her into the backseat of the cab.

She wakes up at four in the morning with her face stuck to the linoleum floor of the kitchen, but she’s powerless to move. At seven thirty, when the sun comes up, she crawls to the phone and calls Mack.

Not coming in today, she says. Too sick to work.

Two days later, she agrees to work a double as penance. Tiny, the night desk person, wants a break, and Adrienne volunteers to cover for her. In addition to getting Adrienne out of the doghouse with Mack, it will keep her away from the bars. She has promised herself she will never drink again, and she wonders how long it will be until she wants to.

Adrienne has never worked the night desk before and she finds that she likes it. Between six and seven o’clock, the hotel guests meet cabs out front or walk into town for dinner. All the other great places are still open: Club Car, Boarding House, 21 Federal, American Seasons, Company of the Cauldron, Le Languedoc, Blue Fin, 56 Union, the Pearl, Cinco. Then, when most of the guests have wandered out, Adrienne puts on some opera and makes herself a cup of tea and enjoys the fire.

She is a person with a broken heart. That hardly makes her special. It happens to everyone. She herself broke Michael Sullivan’s heart less than three years earlier. How does she think he felt banging around Chatham after she fled for Hawaii? He probably felt like she does now. Adrienne considers calling him up to apologize. Then she thinks about calling Pammy Ipp.

St. Michael’s might not be so bad, she thinks. It’s another charming resort town that probably needs help through Christmas. She can attend her father’s wedding and simply stay with him and Mavis in their new home. In January, she can try St. Bart’s, maybe, if she feels up to it. Then in the spring she might join Kyra and the landscape painter in Carmel. So there it is: An entire year of possibility. Adrienne feels better than she has since Fiona’s collapse. She feels clean and right-headed and warm, in her new sweater in front of the fire. Her heart is broken, but it will heal. That’s what hearts do.

And then, she feels a blast of cold air. The door opens and Mario walks in.

At first, Adrienne mistakes him for a late check-in: a handsome, dark-haired man in a black silk shirt, jeans, tweed blazer. Her newfound optimism blooms, because maybe what she needs is a mild flirtation to carry her even farther from her sadness. But as the man approaches, Adrienne’s mind whispers, Mario. Is it him? No. Yes, it is. No. It is so. It’s him.

She stands perfectly still, her left hand wrapped around the now-cold mug of tea. She wonders if he’s heard about her poor showing at the Brant Point Grill. (She finally figured out that the cabbie who drove her home that night was the same one who had picked her up from the Subiacos’ first party, because she didn’t remember giving him her address, and yet she arrived home safely.) Maybe Mario is here to suggest AA. Or maybe he’s come to declare his love for her, and how will Adrienne feel about that? Will she be able, in the face of all her pain and rejection, to turn him down? She takes a shallow breath. Maybe he’s here to ask her again about working at his new restaurant, or to show her the piece that has finally been run in Vanity Fair (Adrienne has the issue at home but can’t bring herself to read it). Or maybe he’s just here to catch up because they had, after all, been friends. But his stride is purposeful and his black eyes are intent and Adrienne is petrified. She clenches the mug. He doesn’t try to kiss her or hug her; he doesn’t even greet her. But he does, with two swift words, cut the rope that ties Adrienne to the heavy load of her uncertainty. She’s finished waiting.

Mario’s voice is low and husky, barely audible over the crackling fire and the Andrea Bocelli.

“Thatcher’s back,” he says.

Fiona hasn’t been off the vent for more than an hour at a time since they got to the hospital, and when she does come off, the nurses have warned her not to talk-talking uses up too much oxygen. The corners of Fiona’s mouth are cracked and bleeding from all the times she’s been intubated. Her O 2sats are very low, the new drug has failed; Fiona won’t be getting any better. The doctors suggested Thatcher call Fiona’s parents. They’re on their way. This is it-Thatcher knows it and Fiona knows it and yet neither of them can speak.

All along, Thatcher has had a plan: Marry her. He’s talked about it with Father Ott. For months, they’ve gone over the sticky emotional territory. Fiona yearns to be married, and what she really wanted was to marry JZ. But JZ is already married; he had a chance to make things right with Fiona and he blew it. So that leaves Thatcher, who wants to make a pledge of his devotion to this person-his friend, his partner, his first love. She is more his family than his own family. He has planned to marry her all along and she agreed to it only by saying, “At the very end. If nobody else wants us.”

How ironic, and awful, that this was the summer Thatcher fell in love. He didn’t think it was possible-at age thirty-five, as solitary as he liked to be, as devoted to his business and Fiona, as impermeable to romance-and yet, one morning, just as he was wondering where he was going to find the kind of help that would enable him to make it through the summer, there she was. Adrienne Dealey. Beautiful, yes, but he loves Adrienne not because she is beautiful but because she is different. He has never known a woman so free from conceit, vanity, ambition, and pretense. He has never known a woman so willing to show the world that she is a human being. He has never known a woman with such an appetite-a literal appetite, but also an appetite for adventure-the places she’s been, unafraid, all by herself. Thatcher loves her in a huge, mature, adult way. He loves her the right way. Now he has to hope that God grants her patience and understanding and faith. Whenever he prays these days, he prays for Adrienne, too.