The Blue Bistro (12 page)

She went over to check with Duncan; Thatcher was MIA. “Is the bar open?”

This was possibly the dumbest question of all time—why would tonight be called first night of bar if the bar wasn’t open? But Duncan simply straightened his tie, squared his shoulders, punched a button on the CD player—R.E.M.’s “I Am Superman”—and said, “I’m as ready as I’ll never be.”

It was nearing eleven o’clock. The four boys shook hands with Duncan, claimed the bar stools with a whoop, and ordered Triple Eight and tonics. Adrienne returned to the podium. A couple on a date came in followed by a group of six women who called themselves the Winers, followed by two older men who informed Adrienne of her loveliness and told her they’d just finished an exquisite meal at Company of the Cauldron and wanted a nightcap. More women—a bachelorette party. The return of the local author and her entourage. By ten after eleven, Adrienne couldn’t even see Duncan through the throng of people. He’d turned up the stereo and the floorboards vibrated under Adrienne’s shoes. Headlights continued to pull into the parking lot.

Where, exactly, was Thatcher?

Caren and Spillman still had tables out in the sand finishing dessert, but the other waiters would be cashing out. Adrienne found Thatcher doling out tips from the cash box at a small deuce in the far corner of the restaurant.

“People keep pulling in,” Adrienne said. “Where’s the bouncer?”

“I was kidding about the bouncer,” Thatcher said. “Go back up front. When Duncan gives you the ‘cutthroat’ sign, start your line. And then it’s one for one. One person goes out, one person comes in.”

Adrienne rubbed her forehead—really, could the man irritate her more?—and headed back by the bar.

“Adrienne!”

It was Duncan, holding aloft a glass of Laurent-Perrier. Only two days earlier, good French champagne had been her favorite indulgence, but now it held all the appeal of a glass of hemlock. Still, the guests at the bar parted for her like she was someone important, thus she felt compelled to take the glass and shout, “Thank you!” over the strains of an old Yaz tune.

Duncan smiled and gave her the “cutthroat” sign.

She carried her champagne to the podium just as two women stepped through the door. They were wearing black dresses and high heels, one woman was blond, the other brunette. They looked to be in their forties. Divorced, Adrienne guessed. Out on the prowl.

“I’m sorry?” Adrienne said.

The brunette flicked her eyes at Adrienne but didn’t acknowledge her. The women kept walking.

“Excuse me!” Adrienne called. She put her glass down and took a few strides toward the women until she was able to reach out and touch the middle of the brunette’s bare back. That did it—the brunette spun around.

“What?”

How predictable was this?
I was kidding about the bouncer.
What Thatcher meant was,
You, Adrienne, are the bouncer.

“The bar’s full,” Adrienne said. “You’ll have to wait by the door until someone leaves.”

The brunette might have been beautiful at one time but it looked like she’d gotten in a lot of afternoons at the beach over the years without sunscreen—that and something else. When her brow creased at Adrienne’s words, she looked like a witch. It was probably the face she used to scare her children.

“We’re friends of Cat,” she said.

Friends of Cat, the electrician. Cat, who was the most important VIP in the unlikely event of a blackout.

“Okay,” Adrienne said, but she didn’t smile because she wasn’t that much of a pushover.

A minute later, Caren appeared. “Duncan’s pissed.”

Adrienne blinked. Duncan had every right to be pissed—he’d given her the “cutthroat” sign and not thirty seconds later she let in more people—but Adrienne did not like being confronted by Caren in her new capacity as Duncan’s girlfriend.

“They said they were friends of Cat’s.”

“Everyone on the island is friends with Cat,” Caren said. “If that bar gets any heavier, it’s going to sink into the sand. But more importantly, if you let any more people in, you’re going to ruin it for the people who are already here.”

“I understand that,” Adrienne said tersely. “Thatcher just
left
me here to bounce.”

Caren shrugged and reached for her hair. With the release of one pin, it all came tumbling down.

“Are you going home?” Adrienne asked.

“And miss first night of bar?” Caren said. “No way.”

“Do you want to help me keep the masses at bay?”

“No,” Caren said, “I’m going to change.”

As she left, more headlights materialized. Adrienne tightened the muscles in her face. Nobody else was getting past.

The next people to approach were another couple on a date. The girl wore a cute sequined dress that Adrienne had seen at Gypsy but couldn’t afford. “Sorry,” Adrienne told them, and she did, to her own ears, sound genuinely sorry. “You’ll have to wait.” Like magic, they obeyed, staying right in front of the podium. Turned out, the couple was used to standing in line here. And once this couple formed a willing start to the line, everyone who came after had no choice but to follow suit. In ten minutes, Adrienne had a line a dozen people long. She felt a brand-new emotion: the surge of pure power. She was the gatekeeper.

At one point, a man with wet-looking black hair and a chain with a gold marijuana leaf dangling from it swaggered toward her, nudging aside the couple on a date.

“I’m a friend of Duncan’s,” he said.

“Everyone’s a friend of Duncan’s,” she said, and she sent him to the end of the line.

Finally, Thatcher came sauntering up with the cash box under his arm and a wad of paper-clipped receipts.

“How’s everything going?” he asked.

“Fine,” Adrienne said.

“Is the line moving?”

“No.”

“No,” he said. “It never does.”

“So some people stay in this line until closing?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. He smiled at the adorable couple on their date and Adrienne could tell he recognized them but didn’t remember their names.

“Eat,” she said. She felt wonderful saying this. She knew better than to count on him!

It was midnight; only one hour left of this madness. As Thatcher walked into the kitchen, JZ emerged. They exchanged a few quiet words. Adrienne was so keenly interested in what they were saying that it took her a moment to notice the author and her entourage on their way out.

“We’re going to the Chicken Box,” the author said. “Want me to count off eight heads for you?”

“Please,” Adrienne said.

So her line was less by eight—Adrienne was happy to see the young couple make it in—but there were still a dozen people in her line and now the person at the front was the wet-haired “friend” of Duncan. He glared at Adrienne in such an overtly malicious way that she considered asking him why he was wearing a marijuana leaf around his neck. Did he want people to know he smoked pot? Did he think it would encourage interest from the right kind of women? Her thoughts were interrupted when JZ handed her a basket of crackers.

“Thank you,” Adrienne said. “Thank you, thank you.”

“I’m JZ,” he said.

Adrienne held out her hand. “Adrienne Dealey. The new assistant manager.”

“I know. Fiona told me.”

Adrienne tasted a cracker. They were a different kind tonight—cheddar with sesame seeds. Scrumptious. Wet Hair watched her eat the cracker with envy and Adrienne hoped he was hungry. She hoped that all he’d had for dinner were fries from Stubbys on the strip by Steamboat Wharf.

“What did Fiona say?” Adrienne asked JZ.

“That the gorgeous brunette by the front door was Adrienne Dealey, the new assistant manager.”

At this point, Wet Hair, who had been eavesdropping, felt entitled to join the conversation. “I had a feeling you were new,” he said. “Otherwise you would have let me in.”

Adrienne ignored him. “Did Fiona actually call me a gorgeous brunette?”

“No,” JZ said. “I did.” He pointed to the basket of crackers. “Please, help yourself. I have to make the rounds with these, then get out of here. I have a buddy at the airport waiting to fly me home.”

“Fly you home?”

“I live on the Cape. Normally I take the boat back and forth every day.”

“That’s quite a commute.”

“Lots of people do it,” he said. “I sleep on the boat. And it pays the bills. Listen, it was nice meeting you.”

Adrienne was so crestfallen he was leaving that even the pile of crackers didn’t cheer her. She stacked them on the podium like so many gold coins. She watched JZ pass the basket to Delilah, the busboys, and Joe, who was left with a single cracker. Then JZ said good-bye to a bunch of people at the bar and headed for the door.

He waved to Adrienne on his way out.

“Bye,” she said.

Wet Hair roused Adrienne from her reverie by tapping her arm. “He left, right? So I can go in?”

“No,” she said.

Somehow, she got drunk. To avoid further conversation with Wet Hair, Adrienne concentrated on her crackers and her crackers made her thirsty so she drank her champagne.
Someone in the bachelorette party decided to buy every woman in the restaurant a shot called prairie fire, which was a lethal combination of tequila and Tabasco. This same woman convinced Duncan to play “It’s Raining Men” at top decibel and further convinced him to allow the bride-to-be to dance on the blue granite in her bare feet. Adrienne watched all this from the safety of the podium, thinking about how much more she would enjoy these shenanigans if she didn’t have Wet Hair breathing into the side of her face. Then Caren appeared, wearing a black halter top that showed off her perfectly flat, perfectly tanned stomach, and a pair of low-slung white jeans. She was dressed like a twenty-year-old but she looked better than any twenty-year-old could ever hope to. Adrienne suddenly felt dowdy; here she was in Chloe and Dolce & Gabbana in an attempt to get away from the kid stuff.

Caren held out a shot glass, Adrienne’s prairie fire, because she did, after all, qualify as a woman in the restaurant.

“Come on,” Caren said. “Let’s do them together.”

Adrienne accepted the shot glass. Well, it was better than espresso.

They did the shots and Caren offered Adrienne a swig from her beer as a chaser. Adrienne’s throat burned, her eyes watered. The bride-to-be was doing the twist on the bar, every man in the place looking up her Lilly Pulitzer skirt.

Then Caren screamed, “Charlie!”

She hugged the man with the wet hair. He threw Adrienne a look of enormous satisfaction and contempt over Caren’s shoulder. Adrienne felt no remorse, only distaste that Caren should actually know this person.

“This is Charlie,” Caren explained. “A friend of Duncan’s. He doesn’t have to wait.”

Adrienne was just as happy to have Wet Hair leave her proximity. “Go,” she said. The tequila and Tabasco had warmed her mood. “Enjoy.”

The new head of the line was a kid who looked about twelve. He was short and had acne around his nose.
Do I have to card?
Adrienne wondered. She wasn’t going to card.
Her job was pure mathematics—one out, one in. She heard a deep, metallic thrum; it sounded like a gong. Adrienne looked to the bar to see Duncan holding an enormous hand bell, the kind used in church choirs. “Last call!” he shouted. Last call, music to her ears. Paco wandered past the podium still in his chef’s whites, and Adrienne yelled out to him. She pulled a fifty-dollar bill out of her change purse, which was stashed inside the podium.

“You’ve been a big help,” she said. “Thank you.” She pressed the bill into Paco’s hand.

“Thank
you
!” Paco said. “You want me to get you a drink?”

“Yes,” Adrienne said, surveying the dancing, pulsing crowd. “Two.”

She should have gone home when the restaurant closed—it was very late—but Caren told her about a party at the Subiaco house in Surfside. Practically the whole staff was going and Caren felt that Adrienne should go, too.

“To prove you’re one of the gang,” she said.

Adrienne agreed to go with Caren and Duncan in Caren’s Jetta. She would stay for one drink then call a cab and be home in bed by three o’clock at the very latest. It wasn’t until Adrienne was already ensconced in the backseat of the car that she realized Wet Hair Charlie was coming with them. The opposite door opened and he climbed in. Adrienne’s enthusiasm flagged.

“I don’t know about this,” Adrienne said. “It’s getting late.”

“I figured you for a stick-in-the-mud,” Charlie said.

“Come on,” Caren said. “It’ll be fun.”

During the ride, Charlie pulled out a joint, lit up, and passed it around. Adrienne refused, then cracked her window. This was what she’d always thought the restaurant life would be like: two o’clock in the morning doing drugs on her way to a party where she would proceed to drink even more than she had drunk during her eight-hour shift. She laughed and then Charlie laughed, though he had no idea what was funny.

The Subiaco house was huge and funky. It had curved steps that led up to a grand front porch with a swing. The house had diamond-shaped windows, some panes of stained glass, and a turret. Inside, though, it was a bad marriage of down-at-the-heels beach cottage and urban bachelor pad. In the first living room Adrienne entered, the furniture was upholstered in faded, demure prints, there was a rocking chair and a few dinged tables. There was a second living room with a cracked leather sofa and a state-of-the-art entertainment system: flat-screen TV on the wall, surround sound, stereo thumping with ten-year-old rap. Adrienne couldn’t stand the noise. She headed out to the sun porch, where there was wicker furniture and an old piano. She took a seat on the piano bench. Caren appeared, bearing two bright red drinks, and she handed one to Adrienne.

“What’s this?” Adrienne asked.

“I don’t know,” Caren admitted.

Adrienne took a sip. It tasted like a mixture of Kool-Aid and lighter fluid. She put the drink down on the piano.

“Duncan didn’t make this?”

“No,” Caren said. “It was in a punch bowl on the kitchen table.”

“They’re trying to poison us so they can take our money,” Adrienne said. She had left her change purse, with three hundred dollars in it, in Caren’s car.