Bread and Butter (16 page)

“Nope.” Thea let him handle the jalapeños while she shaved off a few thin slices of cheese, a mild cheddar the cooks kept on hand for baking into cornbread or slicing onto burgers at staff meal. It was just the sort of thing she would have been moved to eat if she’d been by herself, except she would have just toasted it on bread or eaten it cold on crackers, meditating on the ring of toothmarks she left in each slice as she chewed. Leo swirled his pan, tilting it to let the last soft rivulets of egg hit the hot pan, and then wordlessly reached one hand back toward her. Thea set the sliced cheese in his palm, realizing as she did that she was a little more buzzed than she’d intended to be, because she placed the cheddar on Leo’s warm skin as delicately as if it were a piece of jewelry, a hollowed, painted eggshell. He laid the cheese over the eggs, then scattered a thick layer of chorizo coins over the cheese, and finally a handful of fresh sliced jalapeño.

“And we’re done,” Leo said. He paused, looking around frantically until Thea realized that he had forgotten where the plates were kept. She reached beneath the prep counter and handed him two.

“Thanks,” he said. He ran a spatula down the center of the eggs and lifted a golden orange pillow onto each plate, dropping yet more paprika-stained oil onto the stove and the counter. He put several crisped slices of bread onto each plate and handed her one. “Don’t think for a second I won’t clean this up,” Leo said, “but first let’s eat,” and Thea finally relaxed
. T
hey had jars of tasting spoons on the line but no forks, yet Leo just shrugged and handed her a spoon, keeping one for himself
. T
hey spooned up egg and cheese and pepper, the cheese dripping off in strings, and ate them atop the croutons, standing side by side against the prep counter, facing the stove and chewing silently
. T
hea had to slow herself from gobbling
. T
he cool incendiary crunch of the chile peppers was the only thing that held her back from tipping her plate and its savory, oily contents straight into her mouth. Leo set down his plate and poured two glasses of water, one of which Thea drank thirstily.

“Tell your daughter I apologize for trying to kill you with a single meal,” Leo said after a time.

Thea sighed, running a piece of bread around the edge of her plate. The meal had filled that buzzed, pleasingly hollow core in her belly and now she was good and sober again, warm and sleepy. “She can never know,” she said. “If I make this for her, I might as well buy her some crack.” Leo looked hurt. “Oh no,” she said, “I mean because it’s delicious. And because it’ll kill us both. Do you eat this way every night?”

He shook his head. “I forget what I eat most nights, to be honest. Whatever’s served at staff meal. If I’m off, I just have something simple.”

“Yeah, like what?”

Leo looked embarrassed. “I really mean simple. Like once a week I make a big batch of oatmeal and then I heat up a dish at a time with some milk.”

“That’s not a bad breakfast.”

“A lot of times it’s dinner.”

“Oh.”

“And then I like sardines. I keep a lot of sardines in olive oil around and eat ’em on toast.”

“Leo. You don’t even like food, do you?”

He laughed. “I do, but I’m not passionate about it in my own life. When people get all sententious about flours and shit, I just want to laugh. It’s a steak, it’s not a cure for cancer, you know? But”—he raised his empty plate in Thea’s direction to emphasize the point—“I’m not here to do this
badly
. In here, I care tremendously that we do it right, but I’d care the same way if I were running a tattoo parlor.”

Thea nodded, trying not to show her surprise. The strange part was, she respected Leo even a little more now. It was easy to be exacting about your passion. But Leo’s mania for correctness and his questing, constantly expanding business intelligence were both more innate and more cunningly applied than she had realized. He hadn’t been predisposed or groomed to be a success in restaurants; he had made himself one.

Leo raised an eyebrow at her. She realized she was gazing at him. She looked away and said, “Well, if I’d known you were eating oatmeal every night, I would have had Jason cook you something really decadent for dinner.”

“No way,” said Leo. “I won’t even joke about giving up that meal.”

“Was it so good?” Maybe there was more to phlegmatic, corpse-pallored Jason than she’d thought; perhaps he’d wisely taken the opportunity to impress Leo. “What’d he do?”

“He just did it carefully,” Leo said. “He did more for a staff meal than he had to. It wasn’t super-innovative or anything. It was just what I needed, that’s all
. T
hank you.”

He turned to look at her, and Thea felt a flush rise through her cheeks. She thought of Fiona with a burst of compassion for her constant, visible shyness. Suddenly Thea was sure she had oil all over her chin. She swiped discreetly at her mouth, brushed crumbs from her sweater.

“Well, sure,” she said. “Our cooks ought to be able to sauté a chicken, right?”

Leo paused and looked away, then took her plate. “Right,” he said. “I’m going to clean up, okay? Give me five and I’ll walk you to your car. It’s late.”

E
VEN AFTER BRITT HAD GIVEN UP
on her, Camille—rather uncooperatively—continued to dine at the restaurant. She showed up with a couple in their late thirties, the woman heavily pregnant and so bejeweled that, next to her, Camille’s elongated form in camel boots and ice-colored dress seemed as pure and cool as a blade of grass, a frosted twig. Britt issued a solemn cheek press and hand clasp accompanied with a faint smile. He told himself he was established, he owned two restaurants, an apartment, good scotch glasses, and real furniture. He would not vie with his little brother, not even for Camille. Besides, if she was intrigued by Harry, she must find Britt boring and staid.

“New business?” he asked
. T
he couple had gone ahead to the table.

“College roommate.” She looked him over. “Are you okay? You seem a little melancholy.”

“Probably just winter,” Britt said, gratified. He
did
feel a certain pleasurable martyrdom in giving up the idea of her, the possibilities of her wide mouth and long limbs. He was conscious of looking at her with a new gravity.

“Ah,” she said. “I like to have a good cry when I feel that way. See if that helps.” And she patted him on the arm.

HE SPENT THE NEXT DAY IN
a trance of caffeine and exhaustion, interviewing servers and inventorying and rejiggering kitchen equipment with Harry before heading over to Winesap. Shelley’s suggestions about the kitchen setup had turned out to be useful, even if Harry did keep texting her about the details when he thought Britt wasn’t paying attention.

He was in the habit of expecting a gap of weeks or even a month between Camille’s visits to the restaurant, but there she was at the Winesap bar less than twenty-four hours after she’d last been there, her hair in a loose knot and her chin propped thoughtfully in one hand
. A
glass of bourbon with an ice cube sat before her. Britt was tired enough and off guard enough to wonder if he was simply wrong about what day it was.

He shouldn’t go to her. She left him feeling harried and sweaty every time, but he also knew he would not just smile and keep walking. He never quite knew what she would say to him, and he could never pass up the chance to find out.

When she saw him, she smiled and began putting on her coat. By the time Britt reached her, she was setting a bill on the bar. She didn’t wait for Britt to say anything, just reached over and clasped his wrist as if she did this all the time, and said, “Can you step away for a minute?”

“Of course. Are you already done?” She had never just touched him, not outside their established ritual of a greeting or farewell, and the directness of it was a shock. His skin where she was touching him seemed hypersensitive, as if he could perceive the whorls of her fingertips, each curve in the smooth pocket of her palm.

“Oh, I’m not eating,” she said. She slid off her barstool, so close that he was newly aware of her height, the way her eyes and mouth were on the same level as his own. “Come with me.”

He left his coat though they were headed for the door, because he didn’t want to stop the momentum of whatever she was doing. Maybe she simply wanted an escort to her car. There were people coming up the walk as they went out the front door, and she paused and waited for the door to close again before she spoke. Britt glanced behind them and realized he never saw the restaurant this way, the glow of its façade in the cold night air, the constant motion behind its lighted windows.

“Say we kept walking,” she said. “How long before you ask where we’re going?”

“Not long,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’d stop.”

“That’s good to know.” She looked around them at the building and the cars, the quiet row of houses and shops down the street. He’d never seen her in the cool silver light of the moon and the streetlamps, in which her eyes seemed leonine and deep. Britt took a step closer, glad they were not standing before a window but before an opaque wooden door. “I want to know if it feels the same way,” she said. “I needed to see you outside the restaurant—even right outside—at least once.”

Something thrummed straight through him. Apparently he had never known what she was thinking. Even now she managed to be disarmingly straightforward without revealing much at all. He felt the dullness and exhaustion of the past few weeks slough off him like a layer of cloth.

“Why’s that?”

“You know how the second you step out of your usual playing field, everything feels clearer? In there, it’s your domain. And I was thinking maybe you’re just a good host,” she said. “Maybe you aren’t interested at all—you’re just polite.”

“I’m not that polite,” he said. “And you haven’t taken me very far.”

She smiled, a slow frank smile that seemed a reply to every part of him. “We’re just getting started,” she said. “You can go anywhere you want.”

SOMEHOW BRITT HAD NEVER STOPPED
to consider the problems of dinner—that was what a date was, a shared meal, for God’s sake. His entire living was based on it
. Y
et the moment she’d said, “Where shall we go?” Britt had frozen
. W
here
should
they go? He knew all too well every restaurant within an hour’s drive, and the prospect of actually relaxing in one of them seemed remote
. W
hat place had not recently gotten a halfhearted review that would lower their morale or a too-glowing one that would ensure a mob scene? What trendy new places had settled into a reliable but energetic groove, and what old stalwarts weren’t lazy, boring, or under investigation for tax evasion, which had a way of distracting from quality control? Who wasn’t doing blow with the waitresses and hadn’t paid the staff in three weeks and the purveyors in five? Who hadn’t gotten fined by safety inspectors and been forced to take a remedial HACCP class?

Camille cut off his deliberations and said she’d surprise him, freeing Britt and also leaving him adrift
. W
here had he taken his last few girlfriends? He almost called Leo, thinking to have a backup in mind in case Camille wanted to go someplace beset by hovering Makaskis or other enervating issues. Leo usually thought of some offbeat place, which was part of why Britt thought about asking him, but he had been so prickly lately. Leo was trying not to show it, but he could barely bring himself to look Britt in the eye when both were at Winesap.

And in the end Britt did not call Leo, and it did not matter. Camille delivered to him a brisk, sunny e-mail with a time and an address in a neighboring city
. T
he address of the restaurant was unfamiliar. Britt walked up and down the street twice, marveling at how a city right next door to his hometown could contain these odd little triangles and alleyways that he’d never even come across
. T
o reach the restaurant he’d passed a street filled with Middle Eastern groceries, Indian restaurants, and Irish pubs that pumped a miasma of beer, frying oil, and burgers into the air. On his third try he finally realized that the flat, unmarked black door must be the restaurant. He gave it a tentative push and peered into a cool dark-green hallway, empty but for a stone bowl with a rounded loaf of agate in its center, water flowing continuously over it
. A
doorway opposite the fountain bore a Japanese character on it and nothing else.

Inside was a narrow room painted a cool stone gray, with long polished wooden tables. Running water was audible, but he didn’t see a source
. T
here were tables to the right and a sushi bar to the left, where Camille was already seated, in jeans and a black sleeveless top, talking with the bartender. Before her was an earthenware cup and a tiny sake bottle in a bowl. For a moment he fully expected to hear her conversing in fluent Japanese.

“I was just thinking I should come outside and wait for you,” she said
. W
hen he kissed her cheek, her skin seemed warmer, softer, than he remembered
. A
flush bloomed over her cheeks, as if she’d jogged here. “You want the bar or a table?”

The tables were half full, and another couple was at the other end of the bar. Behind the glass case housing the fish and shellfish, a man dressed in white was slicing from a great, blood-pink length of tuna. “Oh, the bar,” Britt said. “Let’s watch him work.” Not an Asian man but a white guy in his midthirties, with unnervingly pale eyes and close-cropped dark hair beneath a white cap. He nodded in Britt’s direction. So this was the toro place, the one Harry had been so excited about, with its unmarked door and its relentlessly focused menu. Britt watched with new interest as the chef chose a slab of silver-skinned fish from the case and set about slicing a fine sheet from one end with a long, even stroke
. T
he resulting square was a translucent pearl color of perfectly consistent thickness. Next to him, Camille murmured in appreciation
. T
he chef didn’t acknowledge any of his observers. He set about dressing the fish with scallion and nori and placed it before the couple a few seats away, never saying a word.

The restaurant was austere and beautiful, just as Harry had said, like the polished interior of a carved box.

“How’re things shaping up?” Camille asked, turning to him. She gestured politely for an additional sake, told the bartender they’d put themselves in the chef’s hands with the omakase menu, and then poured the wine for him, a gesture that struck Britt as strangely gracious and old-fashioned. On her right wrist was a wide band of matte silver, in her ears what appeared to be liquid platinum drops that shivered when they toasted with the sake cups. He watched her full lower lip pillow against the pale green of her cup as she drank.

Britt sipped his sake, which was smooth and as light as rice paper. “It’s getting close,” he said, “but I can barely tell whether that means we’re ready or just that it’s going to happen anyway. The friends-and-family’s in a week, so I guess we’ll know then.”

She smiled. “You make it sound as if you’ve never done this before,” she said.

“I have, but it’s been years. It’s probably like bringing a baby home from the hospital—you remember the overall sensation of frenzy and exhaustion but none of the specifics
. A
nd to do it well, it’s all specifics.”

“If it helps, I’m not concerned,” she said. “I can’t wait, to be honest. Linden needs something new—something just, I don’t know, relaxed but interesting. I’m never
interested
anymore when I go out. Present company’s other establishment excepted, of course.”

Britt looked around. “I’m interested,” he said. “I’m interested in this place. How’d you choose it?” It wasn’t really fair, he knew, to try to tease out the nuances of her friendship with Harry, but he found it impossible to resist.

“Harry came upon it somehow—I think he met the chef at Mack’s
. A
nd I kept meaning to try it, but this is the first I’ve managed it. It’s not easy to think of a decent place to take another industry person, you know. I was hoping it was under the radar enough to interest you.”

“Well, good job,” he said. “It’s pretty far under. Kind of risky, them hoping to sustain it long enough to bring in people through in-the-know chatter.”

“You think that’s what they’re doing?”

“I’m just guessing. Then again, maybe they did a whole PR blitz and I just missed it. Harry and I’ve both been a little underwater for the past few weeks.”

Camille hesitated. “He seems pretty frazzled. I know it’s typical, but is Harry having a rougher go of it than most people?”

Britt said, “He does seem a little nuts, I admit. But I don’t think he’s ever had to work in quite this way before.”

“Not even on the island?”

“Yes, but not with quite the same level of responsibility.”

Now the first dishes were placed before them: translucent folds of fish, an ivory bed of rice, a gemlike cluster of caviar. They went silent as they ate. Britt chewed very slowly, thinking how heavy and oily so much food was compared to this faint salinity, this silky firmness, the succulent, dainty pop of fish eggs against the palate.

When the mouthful was gone, they sipped their sake, not looking at one another. Britt decided not to speak, just for a moment. He sensed where this evening could go, how easily he could push it in that direction, and the fact that already he was doing so. Camille’s relentless polish, the shining surface of her companionship, didn’t give him much purchase on how she truly felt about anything.

They could talk about restaurants, about where they lived and where they’d grown up, what she liked of her profession and what she hated, what Winesap was doing and how Stray was progressing, and then they would kiss on the cheek again at the end of the night and really that would be it, because there was nowhere else to go from there. The fresh clarity of the plate before them had had a bracing effect, made it all seem so dull and familiar.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to ask you out,” Camille said.

Britt looked at her, startled, and was mercifully distracted when the chef placed two fresh plates before them: a crescent of coral shrimp, a golden thread of beaten cooked egg, a spear of scallion.

“Shouldn’t I be the one apologizing?” he said.

She took a delicate bite of the shrimp from her chopsticks. “Why, because you’re a man? I spent a lot of time with Harry this fall—it was probably on me to let you know whether that meant something or not. So no, I don’t think you need to.”

“Did it mean something?” Britt asked lightly. Her eyes were more golden-brown in this room, Britt saw; the fine velvet of down along her jawline glowed in the light of the bar
. A
faint burst of lines creased at the corners of her eyes as she smiled. She was gorgeous but not flawless, her nose with its touch of a downward curve, her disproportionately full lower lip, the faint tang of alcohol on her breath from the sake
. A
nd yet at such close range she made him sweat suddenly, the fantasy of her dismissed and replaced with this woman, whose skin was olive-toned and as silky as polished wood, who was looking him frankly in the eyes, and whom he realized he did not know at all.