The Blue Bistro (8 page)

Adrienne stared at the faint blue lines of her legal pad. She desperately wanted to set the record straight about her mother—although her mother
had been
a good cook, she had also been dead for sixteen years. But Adrienne didn’t have the energy. She was tired. And he was right that she went to the beach without lotion and didn’t know how to walk in these shoes. Her legs hurt, her face hurt. She wanted to sit down.

“Let’s just do this,” she said.

“We have a lot of Realtors coming in tonight,” he said. “Hopefully one of them will help me sell this place. The president of the bank is coming. The electrician is coming with her husband, her sister and brother-in-law. I don’t need to tell you how important the contractors are, right? Ernie the plumber and Cat the electrician. They are the
most
important. Because if one of the toilets overflows or an oven quits in the middle of service on a Saturday night, we need to be able to call that person’s cell phone and have them show up in
minutes.
Let’s see . . . we have a famous CEO coming with a party of ten—I’ll let you be surprised. No other celebrities, really—a couple of local painters and writers. They drink a lot. Where is your champagne? We didn’t sell a single glass of Laurent-Perrier first seating.”

“Sorry,” Adrienne said. She felt oddly culpable, like maybe she wasn’t enticing enough, or worthy of emulation. She headed over to the bar and when Duncan saw her he whipped a clean flute off the shelf.

“This is your third glass,” Duncan said. “How many did Thatch say you could have?”

“Three, if it’s busy.”

“It’s going to be busy in a few minutes,” he said. He poured a glass and slid it across the bar. “You’d better nurse this, though. I’ll pour you however much you want after service.”

“Thanks,” Adrienne said. “But after service, I’m going home to bed.”

“Maybe you should have an espresso,” Duncan said. “Do you want me to order you an espresso?”

“No, thanks.” But since it was nice of him to offer, she said, “I met your sister. She’s cute.”

Duncan rolled his eyes, wiped down the blue granite with a rag, and checked the level of his cranberry juice. “She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.”

Adrienne twirled her flute by the stem. “That makes two of us.”

Caren appeared with two espressos. “Let’s do a shot,” she said to Duncan. They both threw back the coffee. Caren pointed at Adrienne’s champagne. “Better watch it. That stuff will kill you.”

Adrienne wandered back toward the front door as headlights started to pull into the parking lot. The piano player returned, smelling like cigarettes. The two new waiters had also been out on the beach smoking. The guy with the hoop earrings—name?—offered bushy hair—name?—an Altoid. The piano player—name?—glissando-ed into “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

Somehow Adrienne caught a second wind. The people who arrived for second seating were younger and better looking. In fact, they all looked like models. Cat, the electrician, was a six-foot blonde in a pair of Manolo Blahniks. She was one of the most attractive women Adrienne had ever seen and she was the electrician. Welcome to Nantucket! When Thatcher introduced Adrienne, Cat’s eyes went first to Adrienne’s shoes, then to her glass.

“You’re drinking pink champagne,” she said. “That’s what I want. Pink champagne. Let’s get a bottle. No, a magnum.”

Adrienne smirked at Thatcher. Redeemed! Thatcher led Cat’s party to table twenty while Adrienne sat a husband and wife Realtor team with a party of six. When she returned to the podium, Holt Millman—a CEO who was famous for being not only obscenely rich but legitimately so—was heading up a party of ten.

In her mind, Adrienne dashed a one-line e-mail to her father.
Holt Millman looks just like his picture on the cover of
Fortune
!
Thatcher sat the Millman party and left Adrienne to handle a party of six women, wives of the owners of other restaurants in town. Thatcher had told Adrienne that this table was super-VIP. “Because we want them to return the favor when we go out on the town.”

One of these women—again, gorgeous, red hair, fabulous shoes—said, “You’re new.”

“I’m Adrienne Dealey.”

The redhead shook Adrienne’s hand and squeezed it. “I’ve been telling Thatcher for years that he should have a woman up front. Don’t let Fiona give you a hard time.”

This caught Adrienne off-guard.
How did you know Fiona would give me a hard time?
she wanted to ask.
What does everybody on this island know about Fiona that I don’t?

“I won’t,” Adrienne assured her. She felt not only redeemed, but validated. Fiona was famous for giving people a hard time. So there. Adrienne handed out menus to the women and summoned enough courage to say, “I’ve been drinking Laurent-Perrier rosé champagne. Can I interest you ladies in a bottle?”

“Sure,” the redhead said. “Sounds great.”

Adrienne was afraid that if she stopped moving, she would keel over. She led the good citizens of Nantucket to their tables, handed out menus, and delivered drinks for Caren and Bruno who she could see were getting slammed. A local author came in with a party of eight. They had been barhopping in town and as soon as the author stepped in the door, she started singing along with the piano. Another party of four stepped in, among them a woman with a luscious pink pashmina who pointed at Adrienne’s shoes.

“Great shoes!” she cried.

You can have them,
Adrienne thought.

Thatcher approached the podium. “I don’t want you to look right now,” he said. “But in a second, casually, study
the man to Holt Millman’s left. He is Public Enemy Number One.”

Instinctively, Adrienne turned.

“Don’t look,” Thatcher said. “Because he’s watching us.”

“Who is it?” Adrienne said.

“Drew Amman-Keller. Freelance journalist. He’s basically on Holt’s payroll writing pieces for
Town & Country
and
Forbes
about Holt and Holt’s friends. He’s been so aggressive in pursuing a story about Fiona that we had to ban him from the restaurant. But he’s not stupid. He comes with Holt.”

“Can I look now?”

“In a second. Let me walk away. I see table seven is drinking Laurent-Perrier.”

“I suggested it.”

“I want you to deliver the VIP order to Holt’s table,” Thatcher said. “In fact, I want you to deliver the VIP orders from now on. All summer. That will be your job.”

“But . . .”

“Go to the kitchen right now,” Thatcher said. “Don’t turn around.”

Adrienne learned that the person making the chips and dip was a kid named Paco, the assistant to the garde-manger. Paco was gangly, pimply, wearing a Chicago White Sox hat. Adrienne went right to him for pickup, sidestepping the frenetic scene that was going on between the waitstaff and Fiona and the line cooks and Fiona.

The kitchen, which had been so peaceful when Adrienne had first entered it, was now a house on fire. Fiona wasn’t actually cooking; she was standing in front of what Paco referred to as the pass, yelling out orders from the tickets.

“Ordering table eight: one crab cake, two beets, one Caesar.”

From the other side of the stoves, a cook called out, “Ordering one crab cake, chef.”

The garde-manger, whose name was Eddie, called out, “Two beets and one Caesar, chef.” Adrienne watched Eddie
reach into two giant bowls of greens to plate the salads. She was entranced by the speed and the grace of this kind of cooking. It was as amazing as watching someone blow glass or weave on a loom, and it was all the more impressive because these men were barely men. Eddie might have been legal to drink, but Paco looked about nineteen. Adrienne watched him slice potatoes on a mandolin—
pfft, pfft, pfft
—until he had a pile of potatoes in perfect coins.

“Ordering table seven: one crab cake, one chowder, one bisque, two beets, one foie gras,” Fiona said. For such a small individual, her voice was very forceful. “And where is table twenty’s chowder? That’s Cat, people,
vamos
!”

“You know,” Adrienne said to Paco, “this is going to a party of ten. Maybe we should give them extra?”

“Party of ten?” Paco said. He, too, had a Chicago accent. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” He dropped another batch of sliced potatoes into the oil. It hissed like a snake.

“Ordering table twenty-five: two foie gras, two bisque, two crab cake, one SOS,” Fiona said. A crab cake appeared in front of her and she studied it, tasted the sauce with a spoon, then wiped the edge of the plates with a towel. She tasted a bowl of shrimp bisque and sprinkled it with chives. “Where is Spillman?” she said. “Table thirty is up.” She glanced over at Adrienne, who shifted her eyes to the slabs of foie gras sizzling in the sauté pans. “Are you running for Spillman?”

“Who’s Spillman?” Adrienne asked.

Fiona huffed in a way that meant nothing good. Adrienne wanted to ride her second wind right out of the kitchen. As soon as Paco supplemented her chip plate for Holt Millman’s table, she bolted. The dining room, with its open walls, was much cooler than the kitchen. It was sparkling with candlelight and was alive with music and conversation.

“Compliments of the chef,” Adrienne said to the table at large, though her eyes landed, light as a butterfly, on the man to Holt Millman’s left.

“Ooohrrg,” she said. “Hi.” The man whom Thatcher had identified as Public Enemy Number One, Drew Amman-Keller,
was the same man Adrienne had met on the ferry, the man who was responsible for her being here in the first place. He was staring at her over the top of his Bordeaux glass, but he said nothing. Maybe he didn’t recognize her. Was that too much to hope for?

Adrienne set the plate down in front of Mr. Millman. “Hand-cut russet potato chips with crème fraîche and beluga caviar.” Holt Millman beamed. A woman in a gray toile pill-box hat clapped her hands. Thatcher was right; even if you had all the money in the world, it was better than Christmas.

The night kept going and going. People ordered wine—and five tables ordered champagne—and Thatcher made Adrienne follow him into the wine cave, which was a room next to the bathroom that was cool and dry and filled with wine.

“This used to be a utility closet,” he said. “We had it totally reoutfitted.” The red wine rested on redwood racks and the white wine and champagne were kept in a refrigerated unit that took up a whole wall. Thatcher showed Adrienne how to identify a wine by its bin number from the wine list.

“We’re selling a lot of the Laurent-Perrier,” he said. “Get yourself another glass.”

Adrienne’s head was so loose that she was afraid it was going to unscrew completely and go flying through the dining room.

“I don’t need another glass,” she said.

“Get another glass,” he said.

She informed Duncan that this was an order from Thatcher and she was given another glass. Duncan was moving fluidly behind the bar. Everyone wanted cocktails replenished; everybody wanted wine by the glass. A handful of men had actually left their tables to talk to Duncan at the bar, so the whole time he was wiping and pouring and shooting mixers out of the gun, he was talking about his winter in Aspen and the people who were regulars at the Board Room. Elle McPherson, Ed Bradley, Kofi Annan.

Adrienne scoffed. “Kofi Annan was a regular at the Board Room?”

A bead of sweat threatened to drop into Duncan’s eye. “He drinks Cutty Sark.”

“Okay,” Adrienne said. She had no interest in busting Duncan’s rap; she’d had so much to drink that she should really keep her mouth shut. She picked up her fourth glass of champagne and was about to walk away when he said, “Listen, I’m out of limes. Can you find my sister and ask her to get me more limes, pronto?”

“Sure.” Adrienne feared Delilah was in the kitchen, but then she saw her pop out of the ladies’ room. “Your brother needs limes,” Adrienne said to her. “Right away, I guess.”

Delilah flashed her a toothy smile. Her eyes were bright. “Okay!” she said. “I love this job, don’t you?”

“Hot oil!” someone called. The weak-chinned waiter. Adrienne still didn’t know anyone’s name. “Out of the way!” He had a fondue pot by the handle and the heating rack and the sterno in the other hand. A second waiter who had definitely not been at the menu meeting or family meal, a tall, heavyset black man, followed with a huge platter of seafood. He caught Adrienne’s eye. “My name is Joe,” he said. “This is going to table twenty. Would you mind running the sauces for me? They’re on the counter.”

Since he had so politely identified himself, Adrienne could hardly say no, even though his request put her back in the kitchen. She pushed through the door, narrowly missing Bruno with another fondue pot. Adrienne shrieked—to have splattered Bruno with hot oil on her first night! Fiona shot Adrienne a look of blue fire, then called out, “Ordering table fourteen: one sword, three frites—rare, medium rare, medium well, two clubs, one duck SOS, two sushi, and a lamb killed for Mr. Amman-Keller. It appears he didn’t learn anything about food over the winter. Can I help you,
Adrienne
?”

The use of her name threw her. “Sauces?” she squeaked.

“Who has time to get the girl some sauces?” Fiona said. “Eddie?”

A wicked laugh came from the garde-manger station. The rest of the cooks didn’t even deign to answer. There
were six sauté pans on the range and Adrienne watched a piece of marinated swordfish hit the grill. One of the cooks pulled a pan of steaks from the oven. Paco lowered a batch of fries into the oil.

Fiona checked the tickets hanging like they were pieces of laundry she wanted to dry. “I don’t have time for this,” she said.

“Joe said they’d be out on the counter,” Adrienne said.

“Someone else took those.”

“Can you tell me where to look?”

Fiona stormed away. Adrienne watched Eddie construct the lobster club sandwich; she was hungry again. Someone spoke up from behind the pass. “You’d better go with her, girlfriend.”

Adrienne hurried after Fiona’s braid, her slides clomping even worse in here with the cement floor. Fiona, Adrienne noticed, was wearing black clogs. They stepped into a huge refrigerator. “This is the walk-in,” Fiona said. She used the overly patient, patronizing voice of a teacher speaking to a very stupid pupil. “The sauces are parceled out and kept in here.” She handed Adrienne four bowls that comprised a lazy Susan that went around the fondue pot. “Cocktail, goddess, curry, horseradish. Please identify the sauces when you put them on the table.”