Chasing Chaos: A Novel (6 page)

She
turned back to her book, ending the conversation.

“You
didn’t read the article?”

“If
you want to know why I know a lot of words, you can just ask me to tell you the
story.”

He
hadn’t asked her to tell him the story. Instead, he’d tossed his magazine to
the floor along with her novel and fucked her silly.

God
they always had great sex. Outstanding sex. Surely she still agreed with him on
that.

Only
one way to find out.

“Are
you going to miss it?” he asked her. Her eyes met his over the top of her
laptop screen.

“Which
part?”

“The
fucking.”

She
rolled her eyes. “I won’t miss the way you talk about it.”

“There
are the words, and then there is the deed. Answer the question.”

“You
and I were very compatible in bed.”

He
noticed she still hadn’t answered his question, although her admission
mollified him somewhat.

He
had a decision to make: Was he going to try to win her back?

She’d
started typing again, her hands flying over the keyboard so quickly it didn’t
even sound like she was making sense. But he knew she was. Daphne worked fast.
She was a thoroughbred. Until yesterday, she’d been his thoroughbred.

Could
he let her go?

He
thought of another man’s hands on her slender hips, on her slender thighs. Of
her delicate arms wrapping around another man’s chest while she rode him. He
started seeing black spots over his vision.

Yes.
He could let her go.

At
least, he was pretty sure he could.

~~~~

After
his crass question about their erstwhile sex life, Dan finally let her work in
silence. Daphne was grateful. She hit a rhythm with her work and barely noticed
the time pass except when Rebekah brought her new Americanos, one every hour. God,
she loved this place. If she and Dan had to divide up Brentwood in the breakup,
Uptown belonged to her.

Besides,
Tony didn’t have Dan’s picture hanging behind the register.

Shortly
after Rebekah dropped off Daphne’s eleven-thirty coffee, she noticed someone
nearing her table. Then, she heard a cleared throat. Daphne glanced up. Carrie
stood next to her.

“Hey,
um, Daphne,” Carrie said, unsure what to call her. Daphne admired the girl for
choosing to go with her first name instead of her last.

“Scram,
Dan,” Daphne said. “I have a lunch date with Carrie here.”

Dan
closed his notebook and dropped it and his pen into his leather satchel. He
stood.

“Dan
Morello,” he said, offering his hand to Carrie.

“Carrie
Ademola,” Carrie said, shaking his.

Daphne
watched while Dan appraised Carrie’s obvious loveliness. Any man would. And
Daphne knew plenty of couples with a greater than twenty-year age difference,
especially in Los Angeles. But there was a predatory glint to Dan’s toothy
smile that she didn’t like. She didn’t bring Carrie here to throw her in the
path of this particular wolf.

“Dan,”
Daphne said again. “Get out of here.”

“I’m
going. Jesus.” He left his dirty coffee cup on the table. “Don’t forget our
pitch meeting tonight.”

“Have
I ever forgotten a meeting?”

“Never,
babe. Never.” He bent down to kiss her cheek, and then stopped himself inches
from her skin. She could feel his warm breath on her, and then it was gone, and
he was heading toward the door.

Daphne
let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“Have
a seat, Carrie.”

Carrie
sat across from her, setting her small canvas satchel on her lap.

“That
was Dan Morello?” Carrie asked.

“In
the less-than-toned flesh.” Daphne almost felt guilty about the dig, but then
she saw the stars in Carrie’s eyes and realized she didn’t feel guilty at all.

“He
wrote my screenwriting textbook,” Carrie said, undeterred.

“A
ghostwriter wrote your screenwriting textbook,” Daphne said. “Her name is
Rachel, and she’s Dan’s ex-girlfriend. He has a way of getting people to do
stuff for him.”

Not
me, though
,
Daphne thought.
Maybe that’s why we didn’t work out.

“Enough
about Dan,” Daphne said. “I want to learn about you. If you’ve never seen Dan
at Rivet, then you can’t have worked there long.”

“Almost
two months,” Carrie said.

“And
you write in your free time.”

“Yes.”

“Are
you any good?” Daphne smiled a bit to take the edge off the question, but she
wanted to see Carrie’s reaction.

“Yes.”
Carrie gazed boldly back at Daphne.

“Let
me clear this out of your way.” Rebekah appeared at the table, sweeping away
Dan’s dirty mug.

“Would
you like something?” Daphne asked Carrie.

“Coffee.
Just regular coffee.”

“Put
it on my tab,” Daphne told Rebekah, who nodded as she headed back to the bar.

“You
don’t have to pay for me,” Carrie said stiffly.

“I
know,” Daphne said. “But I don’t mind. So you should let me.”

Rebekah
returned with a large mug of black coffee for Carrie. Just like Daphne did,
Carrie wrapped both hands around her warm mug and lifted it to her lips. They
sat, facing each other and mirrored in gesture. Daphne was acutely aware of
Carrie’s internal feeling of urgency, of her need to succeed, because she’d
once felt that way too. She’d sacrificed her friends—she’d sacrificed
herself—to get what she’d thought she wanted. It was only by luck that she’d
survived unscathed.

And,
one could argue, she wasn’t unscathed at all.

“How
did you get your job at Rivet?” Daphne asked. She knew jobs at the exclusive
restaurant were hard to come by, and new employees usually required a recommendation.

“My
cousin is friends with one of the owners.”

This
detail caught Daphne’s attention. Surely, by now, Carrie knew Daphne was
friends with Greta. And she would also have figured out that Greta and
Timmy—who was another owner—were together. There was only one owner left.

“You
must mean Sandy,” Daphne said.

“That’s
right.”

“Is
your cousin a colleague of his in the industry?”

Carrie
giggled, and she looked very young. “Hardly. He’s more like a handyman.”

“Your
cousin is Marlon.” Daphne felt a small shock speaking his name.

Carrie
nodded. “You know him?”

“Yes,
of course.”

“I
guess you guys all know each other. Kind of an in-crowd over there.”

“I
don’t know him well,” Daphne said. “He never comes to Rivet.”

“No
one knows him well. He prefers it that way.”

“Do
you know him well?” Daphne asked.

“He’s
more like my brother than my cousin.”

“How’s
that?”

“His
parents died when we were still pretty young, and he lived with us until he
turned eighteen. Our moms are, uh, were sisters.” Carrie pointed at her brown forearm.
“Our daddies looked a little different from one another.”

In
five minutes, Carrie had told Daphne more than Daphne had learned about Marlon
in the last five years. He was an orphan. He was on his own at eighteen. He had
family here in LA: Carrie, whom Daphne had taken a liking to, and Carrie’s mom
and dad, who lived in the Valley.

What
Daphne inferred: Marlon was forever anchored to a city he didn’t like at all.

Daphne
checked her watch. It was noon. She really hoped Marlon would show at three.
She had an apology to make.

“You
hungry?” Daphne asked. “They have excellent food. Tony bakes anything a human
can into a pastry.”

“People
still eat bread?” Carrie widened her eyes in surprise.

“It’s
a miracle he’s still in business.” Daphne glanced around at the packed
restaurant.

“Sure,
let’s eat,” Carrie said. “And then you can tell me why you invited me here.”

So
Daphne told her. And when lunch was over, they’d scheduled a meeting for two
weeks hence, with Daphne, Carrie and Daphne’s agent. Daphne would be at the
meeting to make sure nothing went screwy. She felt protective of Carrie, the
way she felt protective of her own younger self. She thought about when she
herself had first arrived in Los Angeles, first started trying to make her own
way, and she’d had no one to look out for her.

She
wouldn’t let anything happen to Carrie. It was a small gift she could give her.

Daphne
arrived at Rivet to meet Olivia just before three o’clock on Monday afternoon.
The valet stand was empty, but she’d expected that. At this time of day, Rivet
was closed to the public. She drove her car past the understated exterior of
the building—Rivet had been a city-owned storage building in a former life—and
parked her car in the valet lot. She strolled down the sidewalk to the
restaurant. She climbed the steps and knocked on one of the two tall wooden
doors. The pair looked like they’d been salvaged from an old French chateau.

After
a minute, she could hear a bolt turning, and then a young man leaned his head
out. Daphne gave him her winning smile.

“Hey,”
he said, opening the door farther. “Can I help you?”

“My
name is Daphne. I’m here to see Olivia.”

“I’m
Ricky.” He stood in the doorway, using his shoulder to prop open the door.
Daphne was accustomed to this sort of behavior: men forgetting what they were
supposed to be doing during a conversation with her.

“How
long have you worked at Rivet, Ricky?” Daphne asked, humoring him.

“I
just started last week.”

That
explained a few things, like his unprofessional behavior at the door and his
undesirable Monday afternoon lunch-to-dinner shift.

“How
do you like it so far?”

“It’s
incredible,” he said. “You’ll never believe who I waited on last week.”

“Hush.”
Daphne interrupted him. “You know you’re not supposed to wait-and-tell. It’s in
the rules.”

“Oh,
right.” Ricky ducked his head. “I keep forgetting.”

“Pretend
you’re a doctor, and the guests are your patients. You can’t break their
confidentiality. Not for anything.”

A
car engine churned behind her, and she looked over her shoulder to see a dark
pewter Aston Martin pull into Rivet’s driveway.

Ricky
let out a low whistle. “Sweet ride.”

Daphne
strolled down the steps to the car. Sandy rolled down his window. “Just
dropping off Marlon before I head out to an appointment,” he said.

Marlon
opened the passenger door. He stood and met her eyes over the roof of the car,
giving her a small smile.

“I’ll
keep you posted on our progress,” Daphne said. “And on your catering bill.” She
gave an exaggerated wink.

Sandy
touched the back of her hand where it rested on the car’s windowsill. “You
doing OK?”

She
felt herself grow defensive for a moment. Sandy’s question unnerved her. She
was always OK. No matter what happened to her, she came through it all right.
That was who she was.

“Sure,”
she said.

“It
seems like Greta getting married has maybe brought up some stuff for you.”

Daphne
thought about the scene she’d made at Sandy’s yesterday and felt ashamed. “I’m
sorry for how I acted at your house,” she said. “I was inexcusably rude—to you
and to Marlon.” She glanced at Marlon, who had turned his back to the car and
leaned against it, as though he’d intuited her desire for privacy. “I’ll
apologize to him as well.”

“I’ve
been around a long time, and I’ve seen some things,” Sandy said. “Like when a
person feels she has something to make up for even when she doesn’t.”

“I
just want Greta to be happy.”

“She
wants the same for you.”

Marlon
walked by her then and climbed the steps to the front door of Rivet. She
watched him speak with Ricky. Crossing her arms over her chest, she turned back
to Sandy. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “Greta and Timmy getting married
has brought up some ugly memories. But I don’t know how to make them stop.”

“If
I knew how to make the ugly memories stop, I wouldn’t be living alone in that
big house.” He smiled at her and shook his head. “Do me a favor?” he asked.

“Of
course.”

“Give
Marlon a ride home for me?”

Sandy
lived half way up Laurel Canyon. Rivet was basically in Pacific Palisades. To
give Marlon a ride home would take her past her own home in Brentwood—which was
fifteen minutes east of Rivet—and another thirty minutes east and north into
Hollywood and the hills above. In total, he was asking her to drive an hour out
of her way.

“Sure
I can,” she quickly said. Such a small favor to clear her conscience over
yesterday’s detonation in Sandy’s kitchen? She was delighted to have the
chance.

Sandy
sped off, and she watched him go, thinking of ugly memories, of a pool of blood
that wouldn’t come clean.

When
she turned back to Rivet’s entrance, Marlon and Ricky were still chatting.
Joining them, she heard Ricky mooning over Sandy’s car and over Sandy. Ricky
still hadn’t let anyone cross Rivet’s threshold, though.

“Ricky,”
Daphne said, interrupting his gushing. “We’re coming in now.”

“What?
Right. Sure.” Ricky led the way into the building.

As
she followed Ricky inside, Marlon chuckled over her shoulder. Her back
stiffened. She had trouble reading Marlon, and she could read nearly anyone.
She walked quickly, putting space between her and him.

Inside
the restaurant, servers prepared for the dinner shift, changing linens and
setting tables, engaging in all the prep work that goes on behind the scenes in
fine restaurants before the patrons arrive.

She
nodded to the bar manager, Quentin, who had worked at Rivet for almost a
decade. She put Quentin in his mid-thirties, and she’d always found him
handsome, with his black hair and bright hazel eyes. Quentin had watched the
restaurant change hands five years ago, and considering the fierce loyalty he’d
shown to the new owners, he seemed happy with Rivet’s evolution. The new owners
were far more trusting of their employees than the old ownership had been. For
a bar manager, that trust meant more responsibility and also more freedom.

“Daphne!”
Olivia came striding out of the manager’s office and gave her a hug.

When
Daphne had first moved to Los Angeles, she’d met Olivia. They’d worked together
under very different circumstances. Back then, Olivia had seemed quiet and shy.
But Olivia was also very observant. When Rivet had needed a new manager, Greta
insisted they give Olivia the job. Turned out Olivia was only quiet and shy
when she needed to act that way to survive.

“Can
you believe it?” Daphne said.

“I
cannot! But I’m so excited. Keeping it a secret from Greta is going to be
impossible, even for three days.”

“We
can do it.”

“Can
we?” Olivia nodded toward Ricky, who was rolling silverware into linen napkins
for the patio and bar place settings.

Just
then, Daphne remembered who’d come with her. She stepped to the side, revealing
Marlon.

Before
she could introduce Marlon to Olivia, he held out his hand. “It’s good to see
you again,” he said.

“You
too,” Olivia said, blushing, the pinkness spreading up to her natural blond
hairline.

Daphne
turned to Marlon. “I thought you never came to eat here.”

“I
don’t.”

“Sometimes
we cater meals at Sandy’s,” Olivia said quickly. Too quickly. The catered meals
were a truth, but they weren’t the whole truth. Olivia, it seemed, had a small
crush.

Daphne
let the matter drop and returned to the business at hand. “Speaking of
catering, what are we going to do for this wedding?”

They
sat at the bar, and Quentin made them spritzers with lime juice and some other
mysterious ingredients from unlabeled bottles. Olivia had already come up with
some ideas, and she laid out her plans on the bar. Daphne and Marlon sat on
either side of her, examining the sketches and menus.

Marlon,
despite having avoided Rivet as a patron, knew an awful lot about what kind of
food the restaurant could produce. Sandy had been right to send him. After an
hour, they were done. Marlon’s knowledge of the floor plan of Sandy’s house
allowed Olivia to design the arrangement of buffet tables and bar stations. His
knowledge of food, and Rivet’s food in particular, allowed him and Olivia to
put together a meal Daphne would be proud to serve Greta and Timmy.

She
watched Marlon, his head tilted toward Olivia’s, and she felt grateful, even
warm. She thought about what Carrie had told her, about how he’d spent his teen
years without parents, living in Carrie’s home, and she wanted to know more.

“Ready?”
She turned to him once Olivia had headed back to her office to set their plans
in motion.

“What
do you mean?”

“Sandy
didn’t tell you? He asked me to drive you home.”

“Did
he now?” Marlon looked like he would be having a conversation with Sandy when
he got home.

“I’m
happy to. Really.”

“A
bit out of your way, isn’t it?”

Daphne
checked her watch. It was a little after four. By the time she dropped off
Marlon, it would be close to five. At six, she had a pitch-meeting-dinner-thing
with Dan and a young producer she didn’t know. Dan thought the meeting would be
a great opportunity for them both to meet an up-and-comer. Dan was usually
right about these things.

The
dinner was in West Hollywood, not far at all from Sandy’s place. She could just
go early and kill time at the bar.

“Actually,
tonight it isn’t out of my way at all,” she said. “I have a thing in
Hollywood.”

“A
thing?”

“Yes.”

Marlon
chuckled again, the same sound he’d made coming into Rivet, the same unnerving
sound that made her feel as though he knew far more about her than he let on,
more than she ever wanted anyone to know except for the few people, like Greta,
whom she trusted with her entire life.

She
didn’t trust Marlon with her entire life. She didn’t even know him. Suddenly,
the same anger she’d felt toward him yesterday came roaring back. She tried her
best to stifle it.

They
walked along the road to the valet lot to retrieve her car. The afternoon sun
warmed her through her black sweater. The warmth felt good after the dark
interior of Rivet. It energized her. She eyed Marlon, who smiled slightly as
they strolled.

He
looked smug. She wanted to know why.

“I
had lunch with Carrie Ademola today,” she said, watching him closely for a
reaction. Marlon looked startled by her words. Daphne felt gratified that she
managed to knock him off-kilter.

“Why?”
he asked.

“I
met her here.” Daphne nodded at Rivet. “She and I have a lot in common.”

“Doubt
it.”

Daphne
smiled. It seemed he didn’t know her so well after all. “Carrie told me about
your parents. I’m sorry to hear they died when you were so young.”

Daphne
watched his reaction. At her words, Marlon pressed his mouth closed, the skin
around his eyes tightening.

When
they got to her car, he stopped, not opening his door. He rested his hand on
the roof, looking her dead in the eye. “You sound genuinely sympathetic.”

“I
am,” Daphne said, taken aback by his skeptical tone.

“But
we both know there’s more going on here.”

Daphne,
recognizing a worthy opponent, nodded.

“You
wouldn’t be using the death of my parents to make a power play here would you?
To try to get some sort of upper hand?”

Daphne
felt tears sting her eyes, and not just from the dust of the road or from the
late afternoon sun in her face. Of course she’d been making a play. She had
indeed wanted to get the upper hand, to let him know that as much as he might
think he knew about her, she knew things about him too. That he wasn’t so
mysterious. That he shouldn’t seem so self-satisfied.

She
wanted him to feel like she did: unsteady. So she’d been manipulative. Mean.

She
didn’t recognize the person she was around this man. She barely recognized the
person she was at all the past two days. Whoever this strange Daphne was, she
didn’t like her.

“I’m
sorry,” she said.

Marlon
relaxed, running his hands through his hair. “I think you and I need to start
fresh.”

“Yes,”
Daphne said, grateful that he’d stopped her from using her knowledge against him,
and grateful that he’d forgiven her for trying.

Sandy
was right. Something was wrong with her. She was out of control in the ways
that she was usually the most in control. It was important to Daphne that she
not cause pain to the people close to her. But that’s all she’d done the past
twenty-four hours.

She
didn’t know how to make it stop.

“Hop
in,” she said.

She
pulled out of the lot, and they headed north to Santa Monica Boulevard.

Daphne
took the roads in her normal fashion—as fast as she could until other cars
slowed her down, shifting as easily as breathing.

After
about ten minutes, Marlon spoke.