The Blue Bistro (28 page)

“You did?”

“Yeah. Guy on the boat told me.”

“She hasn’t called,” Adrienne said. She flipped a page in the reservation book. “I hope she calls soon. We’re almost full.”

As JZ pushed into the kitchen, Hector popped out. Of all the Subiacos, Hector was Adrienne’s least favorite. He used the foulest language and was merciless when he teased his brothers and cousins. Adrienne was not excited to see his tall, lanky frame loping toward her.

“Hey, bitch!” he said.

Adrienne rolled her eyes. “What do you want, Hector?”

“Special delivery,” he said. He palmed a fax on top of the reservation book. “It’s our lucky day.”

Tam Vinidin was coming to eat at the Blue Bistro! She wanted table twenty at seven thirty and she wanted it for the night. She would allow one photographer, a woman almost as famous as she was, to take her picture while she ate. She was on the Atkins diet. She wanted Fiona to make her a plate of avocado wrapped in prosciutto and Medjool dates stuffed with peanut butter. She would drink Dom Pérignon.

Adrienne checked the book. Tuesday nights the Parrishes ate at table twenty first seating, and one of Mario’s friends from the CIA was coming in with his wife at nine. Adrienne would have to bump them both for Tam Vinidin. She wondered about the photographer. Would she need a table, too? And what about the Dom Pérignon? The bistro didn’t carry it. Adrienne called Thatcher on his cell phone. Since he was with a wine rep, he could order a case. Her call went to voice mail. “Thatch, it’s me,” Adrienne said. She was so excited, she could barely keep from screaming. “Tam Vinidin is coming in tomorrow night at seven thirty. We need a case of DP. Call me!”

Adrienne loved Tam Vinidin with a passion. She was sexier than JLo and prettier than Jennifer Aniston. And she was eating at the Bistro! Adrienne would get to meet her, open her champagne, deliver her chips and dip. She reread the fax. She had to e-mail her father.

Adrienne took the fax into the kitchen. Hector was drizzling olive oil over a hotel pan of fresh figs, and Paco was shredding cabbage for the coleslaw.

“Where’s Fiona?” Adrienne asked.

Hector nodded at the office. The door was closed. Adrienne knocked.

“Come in!”

Adrienne opened the door. Fiona was sitting at Thatcher’s desk filling out order forms. She had plastic tubes up her nose; she was attached to an oxygen tank.

“Oh, sorry,” Adrienne said.

Fiona looked up. “What is it?”

Adrienne tried not to stare at the tubes. “Tam Vinidin is coming in tomorrow night.”

Fiona blinked. “Who?”

“Tam Vinidin, the actress?”

Fiona shook her head. “Never heard of her.”

Never heard of her? She must be kidding.
“You must be kidding,” Adrienne said.

Fiona took a deep breath, then coughed. “What can I do for you, Adrienne?”

“This is a fax from her manager,” Adrienne said. “She
wants all this . . . stuff. She wants—Here, you can see.” Adrienne let the fax flutter onto the desk.

Fiona read. “She can’t have twenty tomorrow night and certainly not at seven thirty. It’s Tuesday. She can’t have a photographer. She can’t have DP and I’m not making that ridiculous food.” Fiona handed the fax back to Adrienne. “If she wants to sit at table eight and drink Laurent-Perrier and eat off the menu like everybody else, then fine. Otherwise, send her to the Summer House.”

“Wait a minute,” Adrienne said. “This is Tam Vinidin, Fiona. You don’t know who this person is.”

“That’s right,” Fiona said. “Thank you, Adrienne.”

Adrienne appealed to Thatcher when he returned from his meeting, but he backed up Fiona.

“She’s right,” he said. “We might be able to slide Mario’s buddy to table twenty-one, but we can’t move the Parrishes.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re the Parrishes.”

“But this is Tam Vinidin.”

“I didn’t order DP and Fiona won’t make special dishes.” He checked the fax. “Medjool dates? Is she kidding? And as for the photographer—Do I really need to go on?”

“No.”

“She’ll be happier at the Summer House,” Thatcher said. “Sorry. Do you want to call her manager or do you want me to do it?”

“You do it,” Adrienne said. “I’m going home.”

On Tuesday, Tam Vinidin’s visit to Nantucket rated a front-page story in the
Cape Cod Times
and the
Inquirer and Mirror,
and there was a two-column article in
USA Today
written by Drew Amman-Keller describing the house she rented (on Squam Road), naming all the shops where she dropped bundles of cash (Dessert, Gypsy, Hepburn), and disclosing where she ate (the Nantucket Golf Club, 56 Union, the Summer House). Mr. Amman-Keller made a point of noting that Ms. Vinidin’s trip to the Blue Bistro had
been cancelled because Chef Fiona Kemp “would not accommodate her strict adherence to Dr. Atkins’s diet.” One of the Subiacos had clipped Drew Amman-Keller’s article out of the paper and taped it to the wall next to the reach-in. Under the picture of Tam Vinidin (sitting on the bench outside Congdon & Coleman Insurance in cut-off jean shorts) someone had written: “Feed me fondue.”

Wednesday was Adrienne’s day off, and she forgot about Tam Vinidin. Wednesday night, Thatcher took Adrienne to Company of the Cauldron for dinner and he ate every bite. After dinner they went back to Thatcher’s house—a cottage behind one of the big houses in town. His cottage was only large enough to accommodate a bed and a dresser, and on top of the dresser, a TV for watching college football in the fall. There was a bathroom and a rudimentary kitchen. Not exactly impressive digs, but Adrienne was honored to be in his private space. She studied the pictures of his brothers, she flipped through his high school yearbook. In the back, on the “Best Friends” page, she found a picture of Thatcher, with a bad haircut and acne on his nose, and Fiona, who looked exactly the same as she did now, twenty years later.

Adrienne and Thatcher spent the entire next day together. They drove Thatcher’s pickup to Coatue, where they found a deserted cove and fell asleep in the sun. Thatcher skipped rocks and built Adrienne a sand castle. At four o’clock, he’d dropped her at home so she could shower and change. She caught a ride to work with Caren, who informed Adrienne that she and Duncan were back together, though Duncan was on probation.

“One more fuckup and it’s over,” Caren said.

Adrienne tried to listen seriously, but she couldn’t stop smiling. The sand castle Thatcher built had been as beautiful as a wedding cake.

There were 229 covers on the book. Family meal was grilled cheeseburgers and the first corn on the cob of the season. Thatcher was late, but all Adrienne could think of was how happy she was going to be when he came walking through the door.

The phone rang, the private line. It was Thatcher. “Is everyone there?” he said. Adrienne turned around to survey the dining room.

“Everyone except Elliott,” she said. “It’s his night off.”

“Okay,” he said. “Listen. I need you to listen. Are you listening?”

She heard the normal sounds of the restaurant—the swinging kitchen door, the chatter of the waitstaff, the first notes of the piano—but none of that could overtake the high-pitched ringing in her ears. She could tell he was about to say something awful.

“Yes,” she said.

“Fiona isn’t doing well. Her doctor wants her to go to Boston for at least three days. And I’m going with her.”

Adrienne stared at the kitchen door. She hadn’t realized Fiona wasn’t in.

“You’ll be in Boston for three days?” she said.

“At least three days,” Thatcher said. “Antonio knows, and he’s told the kitchen staff. They’re used to it, okay? For them, this is no big deal. And you’re going to cover for me.” He paused. “Adrienne?”

“What?”

“You do a terrific job. On the floor, on the phone. Everything. The waitstaff knows how to tip out, so all you have to do at the end of the night is add up the receipts and make a deposit of the cash in the morning. The restaurant can run itself.”

“What about reservations?”

“Just do the best you can.”

“Can I call you? You’re taking your cell?”

“Absolutely. I have a room at the Boston Harbor Hotel. You should call me there before you lock up at night. And I’ll need you in at ten to do reconfirmations and answer the phone.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“You don’t have to
pay
me,” Adrienne said. She felt like a tidal wave was crashing over the perfect sand castle of her life. Thatcher gone for three days. Fiona sick enough for a
hospital. Adrienne left in charge of the restaurant in the height of the season. It was impossible, wasn’t it, what he was asking of her? As though he had told her she had to land an airplane or dock an ocean liner. “You can pay me, but I’m not worried about money. I’m worried about you. And Fiona. Is she going to be all right?”

“I’ll know more tomorrow,” Thatcher said. “She has a lot of anxiety. Father Ott is sitting with her right now.”

“Father Ott?”

“She’s afraid she’s going to hell,” Thatcher said. He cleared his throat. “Listen, I have to go. Call me before you close, okay?”

“Okay,” Adrienne said.

He hung up.

Some time would have been nice, a few minutes to collect herself, to wrap her mind around what this phone call meant. But it was six o’clock, the waitstaff wanted confirmation that they were perfect—they were—and Rex played the theme from
Romeo and Juliet.
The first table arrived: a male couple who was staying at the Point Breeze. Adrienne sat them at table one, handed them menus, and told them to enjoy their meals, but when she said this, it sounded like a question, and in fact, as she looked at their perplexed tan faces, she was thinking:
Fiona is afraid she’s going to hell.
Adrienne headed for the bar; she needed her drink.

“Where’s the boss man?” Duncan asked.

How much was she supposed to say? Thatcher hadn’t given her any guidelines. “He’s not coming in tonight.”

“Out last night
and
tonight?” Duncan said. “You need to take it easy on him.”

“Funny,” Adrienne said. “May I have my champagne, please?”

Duncan nodded at the door. “I’ll bring it over to you,” he said. “You have work.”

Two couples were standing by the podium. Adrienne hurried over. “Good evening,” she said. “Name?”

“You don’t remember us?” asked a man with red hair and
a red goatee. “We were in two nights ago? You talked us into a bottle of that pink champagne? We’re from Florida?”

“Boca Raton,” one of the women said.

Adrienne stared at the foursome, utterly lost. She would have sworn she had never seen them before in her life.

“You told us you used to work at the Mar-a-Lago,” the red-haired man said.

“I did?” Adrienne said. She must have. Okay, she had to get a grip. Shake off this feeling of being stranded in the Sahara without any Evian. She scanned the book, looking for a familiar name.
Cavendish? Xavier?
She smiled. “Please forgive me. I can’t remember what name the reservation is under.”

“Levy,” the man said. “But our feelings are hurt.”

Adrienne sat them at table fifteen and made a mental note to send these people, whom she still did not remember, some chips and dip. She saw Leon Cross and his wife waiting by the podium. Leon’s wife was a TV producer, a hotshot who recently tried to talk Thatcher into a reality show set at the Bistro. Initially, Adrienne had thought the Bistro would make a great setting for a reality show, but if a camera had filmed the last fifteen minutes no audience would believe it. Anxiety, death, and hell among the hardest-to-get reservations in town? Then there was Leon Cross himself, who sometimes came to the restaurant with his wife when he sat at table twenty (Adrienne led them there now), but just as often came with his mistress (who was older than his wife and a nicer woman) when he sat at table nineteen in a dark corner under the awning.

No one would believe it.

Party of eight from the Wauwinet, party of four waitresses from the Westender celebrating a birthday, party of five that was a single mom out with her two kids and their spouses. Then a series of deuces, then a four-top that was two couples celebrating the fact that they’d been friends for twenty years. The phone rang and rang. Adrienne checked each time to see if it was the private line—no. She didn’t answer. Delilah ran her a glass of champagne and Adrienne took half of it in one long gulp.

She hurried into the kitchen to put in two orders of chips. The kitchen seemed the same except that instead of Fiona, Antonio was expediting.

“Ordering sixteen,” he called out. “One foie gras, one Caesar.”

“Yes, chef,” Eddie said.

“Ordering twelve,” Antonio said. “Two chowder, one beet, one foie gras killed, Henry baby, okay?”

“Yes, chef,” Henry said.

Adrienne held up two fingers to Paco and he started slicing potatoes on his mandolin. Adrienne knew it would take six minutes and she should get back out front, but she lingered in the kitchen for a minute. Everything seemed way too normal. The Subiacos worked as though nothing was wrong. The baseball game was on. She poked her head back into pastry. Mario was pulling a tray of brownies out of the convection oven. Adrienne stared him down. They had never talked about Fiona’s illness.

“What?” he said. “You want one?”

“Thatcher and Fiona are in Boston,” Adrienne whispered. “They’re going to be gone for three days. Fiona is in the
hospital.
”

Mario squeezed Adrienne’s face to make fish lips. It hurt. “It’s okay,” he said. “This happens. They put Fiona on a vent and it clears things out. They pump her full of miracle drugs. It makes things better. Trust me. It’s no big deal.” He let Adrienne’s face go.

“Really?” Adrienne said.

“Fifteen years ago, we’re in Skills One together and the day before our practical, she goes into the hospital. Big hospital down in the city. So I know something’s wrong. As soon as I finish my test, I take the train to see her and she tells me about her thing. And I think maybe I’m gonna cry but then I realize Fee is the toughest person I know. She’s gonna survive. And, like I said, that was fifteen years ago. She goes back to school the next week, makes up her practical, scores a ninety-seven out of a hundred. I get a seventy-three. Suddenly, she’s the one who’s worried about me. And
for good reason.” Mario cut the crispy edges off the brownies. “She’ll outlive us all. You watch.”