Wish Upon a Star (26 page)

I shooed the calico into my kitchen and opened up a can of cat food—the smelly stuff that looked like shredded high-end tuna. Tabitha was purring up a storm by the time I put her bowl onto the floor. She started to push it around with her nose like a pro.

I could have watched her for hours. When she was through eating, we could play with a real fur mousie, one of the toys Dani had provided. Or I could brush her! Any cat deserved to be brushed after a traumatizing walk around town!

There was more of that avoidance behavior. Like it or not, I had to track down Timothy. I wasn’t an idiot.

Leaving Tabitha’s face still buried in Tuna Supreme, I marched myself down to Garden Variety. The street outside the Bentley was deserted; all of New York City had evacuated for the long Independence Day weekend, lured to beaches and mountain cabins. All of New York City, that was, except for us hardworking actor types.

Timothy’s courtyard was as deserted as the street. When I turned the doorknob to enter the restaurant, it was locked.

Well, I’d tried. That was good enough. It wasn’t like I was obligated to break down the door, to force my way inside. If Timothy had wanted company, if he’d planned on being open for the holiday, he certainly would have left the door open. No need for me to stand around, waiting to have one of the most awkward conversations of my life. No need for me to apologize, after all.

But that was ridiculous. It was barely nine in the morning. Timothy had no reason to open the restaurant this early in the day. He was probably in the back, cooking up whatever treats he planned on bringing to our midmorning rehearsal. I forced myself to knock against the glass windowpane. I was surprised by how loud my rapping sounded, echoing off the flagstones.

Nothing.

He wasn’t there. He was probably at his home, wherever
that
was. He was sleeping in on this holiday morning. He might even skip catering for our rehearsal; who knew what arrangements he’d made with Ken?

Almost convincing myself that I’d done all I could, I started to turn away. And that was when I heard the lock turn. I whirled back, excuses and apologies on my lips.

“You look terrible!” I gasped. I was so surprised by Timothy’s appearance that I forgot to be nervous. I forgot to be shy. I forgot to have a mindless, Master Plan–unapproved crush.

“And good morning to you,” he said wryly.

He opened the door far enough for me to enter, and I slid past him, silently kicking myself for my exclamation. All of the lights were off in the dining room. The tables looked ghostly, huddling beneath their shrouds of butcher paper. The mismatched plates and silverware seemed drab, almost dusty in the dark.

“I was working in the kitchen,” Timothy said, extending a hand by way of invitation. I followed, without saying a word.

I felt like I was being allowed backstage in a theater. Stainless-steel refrigerators and freezers lined one wall. I was facing a huge, deep sink. A deep fryer sat beside a massive ten-burner stove.

A center island occupied the middle of the room. Its surface was covered with papers, a snowbank of pages littered with tiny black writing. “What’s all this?” I asked.

“A business plan from your sister. And supporting documentation.” I picked up a random page. It was a blueprint, a proposed redesign for the front room. I saw immediately that the massive fireplace was gone, that a half dozen more tables were crammed into the space. Timothy studied the expression on my face before he said, “She has a lot of ideas.”

“She always has,” I said.

“She included financials. And architects’ drawings. And all the statutes and regulations about running a restaurant in New York City. It took me all night to read through this stuff.”

Well, that explained the pallor of his cheeks, his bloodshot eyes. Now I understood the hopeless set to his shoulders and the subdued way that he set his words between us. Hell, Amy’s advice had been stressful for
me
over the years, and I was used to her bossiness. She’d never backed up her sisterly recommendations with a library’s worth of documentation, though.

Timothy huddled on his high stool, staring at the tumble of papers as if every page might sprout wings and take flight. He barely managed to hide a sudden yawn behind his fist.

Poor guy. At least exhaustion was something I could fix. Or camouflage, anyway. I crossed the kitchen to the triple-pot coffeemaker and went through the motions of brewing up some fresh, hot caffeine. Timothy started to protest. “That thing’s tricky—”

“Yeah, the switch is hidden at the back,” I said. At his curious glance, I shrugged. “I used to work catering, remember? I’ve handled my share of tricky coffeemakers.”

Within seconds, the rich aroma of coffee filled the kitchen. I reached for two mismatched mugs and asked, “Cream? Sugar?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?” he asked ruefully.

“Not this time,” I said. It felt good to be doing something for him, after all the times he’d waited on me. And it kept me from needing to talk, from needing to apologize about rehearsal, as I’d originally planned on doing. Instead, I made a much bigger production of the coffee than was strictly necessary, measuring out sugar into my cup, pouring a precise amount of heavy cream from a pitcher that I found in the refrigerator.

Timothy took his black, which didn’t really surprise me. Gave me less to do, but didn’t surprise me.

He took his first swallow, and I watched a little color return to his cheeks. Caffeine wasn’t going to implement Amy’s plans. It wouldn’t solve his landlord problems. But I no longer worried that he was going to collapse on the kitchen floor in front of me. “Okay,” I said, when I thought that he could handle more conversation. “What’s Amy’s verdict?”

He cleared his throat, looking as uncomfortable as if I’d asked him to share his sexual fantasies. He became fascinated with the handle on his coffee cup. He reached out for a stack of papers, tapping them into a single neat pile, then turning them on edge and tapping them again.

“What?” I finally said. “What did she tell you?”

He finally braved my gaze. “Look, I don’t want to drag you into the middle of this.”

“You’re not dragging me. I’m already here.”

He sighed. “Amy’s not right for this job. She doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do here. And I don’t think she ever will.”

Ouch. Amy was my sister. I had to stick up for her. “Amy is very good at what she does!” Timothy shook his head, and I couldn’t tell if he was contradicting me, or merely trying to interrupt. “She
is!
” I insisted. “She’s one of the top ten in her class! And that’s with juggling a lot of other stuff, with Justin—”

“Erin,” Timothy said. My name on his lips sounded strange, almost like it hurt him. He shook his head again. “I wasn’t criticizing her. It’s just that what she’s learning, what she’s being taught to do, none of it matches who I am. What Garden Variety is all about.”

Okay. I could understand that. Sisterly loyalty or no, I had to admit that Amy didn’t always understand. She certainly didn’t get what I was doing with
my
life. She thought that acting could be managed like any other business, like any other career. Now that I was no longer so intent on defending her, I could think about the million times I’d tried to explain to her, tried to communicate the artistry of my chosen profession.

“Give me an example,” I said.

Timothy waved a frustrated hand toward the wall of refrigerators. “I tried to explain what I’m doing with local foods, but she keeps telling me that I should buy from traditional vendors. If I just work with the regular guys, I could get my produce for half the cost.” He shook his head. “She’s right, of course. I could. But it wouldn’t be organic. And it wouldn’t support the farmers I already buy from. It wouldn’t help Dani and the Gray Guerillas.”

“Well, maybe Amy just doesn’t understand that piece of it. She’s been trying to make Derek’s tiny paycheck stretch a really long way for a long time. She has to cover tuition, and child care for Justin, and still have enough to buy groceries at the end of the week. It’s hard to value organic when you aren’t certain you can fit
anything
into your budget.”

“I know,” Timothy said. “I’m not trying to work a revolution overnight. She’s got every right to believe what she believes—that’s the way most Americans have bought groceries for decades. I just need her to see that I do things differently. That there’s a reason for what I do.”

I didn’t think they were at a permanent impasse. But something else was bothering Timothy. I could tell from the frown that ironed a crease between his eyebrows. “What else?” I asked.

“She wants me to set menus. To cook more of the same things for multiple nights, for a month at a time. She says that I can be more efficient, not only with my purchasing, but also with the time I spend cooking. And she says that very few—probably none—of my customers come in often enough that they’ll even realize.”

I could see exactly what Amy was thinking. She was used to managing meals for two, planning menus for the nights when she could barely see straight from exhaustion. She knew that most of the restaurants around her served the same fare, night after night, week after week, boring month after boring month after boring month. From a business perspective, her suggestion would make everything run more smoothly. I tried to explain her point of view. “Just the predictability would make things easier….”

“I don’t want predictability!” Timothy slammed his fist down on the center island, making me jump. He must have realized that he’d startled me, because he lowered his voice and said, “I don’t want to do the same things, day in, day out. That’s why I started Garden Variety in the first place. If I wanted predictability, I could have worked at McDonald’s.”

He glanced at the papers in despair. Okay. Amy had said that he should buy conventional produce, that he should work from a conventional menu. Neither of those suggestions was enough to justify the emotional stress I was seeing. Neither was enough to keep a man awake, worried and frustrated, all night long. I pitched my voice low, as if I were trying to comfort some feral animal. “What else did Amy say? What other suggestions did she make?”

He swallowed hard and glanced at the door that led to the dining room. “She told me to get rid of the table by the kitchen. Or, more precisely, to transform it into a four-top. For paying customers. Try to turn it three times on a busy night.”

I closed my eyes. Once again, Amy’s advice made perfect business sense. Earning income from twelve diners would be much more profitable than giving away food to two or three.

But there wasn’t a chance that Timothy would give in on that. There wasn’t a possibility that he’d lose that anchor to his ideals. The table for the homeless folks was the key to what he was doing with Garden Variety. It was the root of his fight with his landlord. It was the core of his beliefs—how he cooked, how he served, how he worked in the professional culinary world.

And Amy had missed all that. She’d been blinded by textbooks, by professorial lectures. She’d been constrained by course deadlines and family obligations.

I’d been an idiot to think her counseling Timothy could ever work out. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Amy shouldn’t have called you. She shouldn’t have talked you into being her class project. Garden Variety and B-school are a lousy match.”

“She thought that she could help.” He was trying to sound gracious. He even came close to succeeding.

I shook my head, though. This was just another version of the arguments that Amy and I had tossed back and forth for years. My sister understood dollars and cents. She had, ever since that law firm bookkeeping job, the one that had convinced her to go to business school in the first place. She was born understanding business plans and return on investment.

She’d never, though, ever, in all the years I’d been struggling in New York, comprehended why I put myself out there in auditions, why anyone would dump so much time and effort and money into something so unlikely to pay off.

I reached out and touched Timothy’s arm. It was important that he hear me. Important that he understand. “Timothy, she’s wrong. Just because Amy quotes some business school case study, that doesn’t mean she knows what she’s talking about. Her class assignment was to develop a business plan for a restaurant. But she had no right to take
your
restaurant and turn it into a carbon copy of every other one that’s out there. She should have listened to you. Respected you. Built on what you’re already doing and found ways to make it better.”

“I don’t want to cause trouble for you.”

The look of concern on his face made my belly swoop. For just a moment, I was back to being tongue-tied Laura Wingfield; I couldn’t think of the next words to say, the right way to respond. But then I looked around the kitchen, at the seasoned pots and pans, at the well-scrubbed stove and sink. Honest, straightforward tools. Pointing toward an honest, straightforward conversation. “Just tell her that she’s wrong. That’s what she needs to learn, if she’s going to succeed in her class. In her career. And it’s what you need to say to your landlord, too, if you’re going to make this place work.”

For the first time that morning, a smile flirted with his lips. “And how, exactly, did you become so wise?”

I grinned back. “I’ve had a lifetime of telling Amy that she’s wrong.” And that, finally, left me with the perfect opening for the conversation that had brought me there in the first place. “Speaking of which,” I forced myself to say. “I was wrong yesterday.”

“When?” He looked mystified.

“When Martina went off on caterers. When she tried to insult me, and you got caught in the backlash.”

“Martina is a spoiled bitch who cares more about her designer shoes and her reality-show credentials than she does about any human being around her. Besides that, she can’t act her way out of a paper bag.”

My lips twitched. Of course, I couldn’t agree more. “Still. I should have called her on it.”

“You were in a tough position. You don’t want her complaining about her understudy showing her up.”