The Elperns stood by table twenty gazing out at the water. Lucy Elpern rested her hands on her belly. Harry Henderson gave them a moment to enjoy the view, then he gently led Lucy Elpern up the two steps and through the bar area.
“This is a blue granite bar,” Harry said.
Lucy eyed her husband. “We could keep that.”
“Of course!” Harry said. “And there’s a state-of-the-art wine room and, naturally, an industrial kitchen.”
“Can we see the kitchen?” Lucy asked.
“Of course!” Harry boomed. He looked to Adrienne for confirmation.
“I didn’t tell anyone you were coming,” Adrienne said.
“We’ll just poke our heads in,” Harry said. “Is Fiona back there?”
“No,” Adrienne said.
“Too bad,” Harry said to the Elperns. “You could have gotten a glimpse of the most famous chef on the island.” He led Scott Elpern to the kitchen door.
“I have to use the ladies’ room,” Lucy Elpern said to Adrienne. “This baby is sitting on my bladder.”
Adrienne pointed to the bathroom door.
Lucy rubbed her belly. Her fingers were swollen; the diamond wedding band she wore cut into her flesh. Her ankles looked soft and squishy, like water balloons. She had on a pair of turquoise flip-flops, the plastic kind you could buy at the five-and-dime. “I have to go every five minutes,” she said.
Once Harry and Scott disappeared into the kitchen and Lucy closed the door of the restroom, Adrienne dialed Thatcher’s number. Voice mail. She hung up. She heard water in the bathroom and a second later, Lucy emerged. Instead of heading into the kitchen, she wandered over to the podium, where Adrienne was pretending to review the reconfirmation list.
“You’ve worked here a long time?” Lucy asked.
“Not really,” Adrienne said. “Only about six weeks.”
“Harry told us that most of the staff has been here for years.”
“Most of the staff has.”
“But not you?”
“Not me.”
Lucy Elpern inhaled. “This place has good karma.”
“Are you in the restaurant business?” Adrienne said.
“No,” Lucy said, and she laughed. “We’re going to demolish and build a real house. But it would be nice if there were things we could keep. The bar, for example. We could put it in our family room, maybe.”
“In your family room?”
“And then we could say this is the bar that used to be in a famous restaurant.” She picked a pack of matches out of the bowl. “The Blue Bistro.”
“You’ve never eaten here?” Adrienne asked.
“No. We’ve only been on Nantucket for a week. But we really want a second home on the beach. We live on Beacon Street in Boston. Nice, but very urban.”
Adrienne checked her reservation sheet. There were 232 on the books for tonight, but she did have a couple of deuces left during first seating.
“Why don’t you come in tonight on the house?” Adrienne said. “Around six?”
Lucy smiled, then ran a hand through her unwashed hair. “You’re a doll to offer. That way we’d know what it might feel like to eat… in our new dining room. Let me ask Scott.” She waddled to the kitchen door and with great effort, pushed it open.
Adrienne stared at the phone. She wanted to tell Thatcher that some people were here who wanted to demolish his restaurant but salvage the blue granite bar to put on display in their family room like a museum piece from a country they had never visited. She heard a noise and looked out the window. JZ was pulling out of the parking lot. Don’t go! Adrienne thought. The feeling of abandonment returned and she picked up the phone to call Thatcher, but at that minute, Harry Henderson and the Elperns emerged from the kitchen.
“They weren’t very friendly back there,” Harry said.
Adrienne tried not to smile. She wondered if Hector had shared his seventeen words for copulation. “You support the wrong baseball team,” Adrienne said, nodding at Scott’s hat. “They’re White Sox fans.”
Scott shrugged. “Nice refrigerator,” he said.
“We’d like to come to dinner tonight,” Lucy said.
“And I’ll join them,” Harry Henderson said. “Amanda, you’re a genius.”
At five o’clock, Adrienne still hadn’t heard from Thatcher. She led a very brief menu meeting, keeping her voice stern so that no one would be brave enough to mention the elephant in the room: Thatcher is absent from class again today.
It was Friday night and the first people in the door were the Parrishes. Earlier that afternoon, Adrienne had done the unthinkable: She had called the Parrishes to ask if they would give up table twenty.
“Just for tonight,” Adrienne said. In a stroke of what she thought would be bad luck, she’d gotten Grayson on the phone, and hearing his gruff voice, she’d almost chickened out. “I can’t tell you the reason, but believe me, I would never ask you to move if it wasn’t critical.”
Grayson had chuckled. “Sweetheart, Darla and I don’t give a rat’s ass where we sit. For the last twelve years we’ve had everyone thinking we’re more important than we are. Put us wherever you want.”
“Oh, thank you,” Adrienne said. “Thank you, thank you.”
Now she led Darla and Grayson to table eleven under the awning. It was a very warm night so she felt they would be happiest here.
Darla took her seat and looked around in amazement. “I feel like I’m in a whole other restaurant. And look! You’ve changed the flowers!”
Adrienne sent Bruno over and told him to comp the Parrishes’ first round of drinks though she doubted they would care. Grayson never checked his bill. Once the Parrishes were squared away, Adrienne relaxed a wee bit. She had called Thatcher’s cell phone four times over the course of the afternoon but she hadn’t left a message. Too much to say.
Adrienne sat guests, handed out menus, opened the white burgundy for the Parrishes, delivered their chips and dip, and helped Christo rearrange seating to accommodate a hundred-year-old woman in a wheelchair. Then Adrienne spotted Harry Henderson’s florid face at the podium and she hurried over. The Elperns stood behind him. Lucy’s hair was damp and she had changed into a clean muumuu. Scott had thrown a white dress shirt over his gray T-shirt and traded in his jeans for khakis. Lucy was visibly dazzled.
“Look at this place,” she said. “It is glam-or-ous.” Rex was playing Frank Sinatra. “Can we keep the piano?” she asked.
Adrienne led the party to table twenty and Harry stopped along the way to shake hands with two gentlemen at table eight.
“Amanda,” he said when she handed him his menu, “this was a really smart move on your part.”
He sounded absolutely giddy. And why not? Adrienne thought. He was sitting down to a free dinner with a potential six-figure commission at the best table in the restaurant.
“My name,” she said, “is Adrienne.”
Harry smiled. He had no idea what she meant.
“My name is Adrienne, not Amanda.”
“Like Adrienne Rich, the poet,” Lucy said.
“Yes. Thank you,” Adrienne said. “Now what can I get everyone to drink?”
Adrienne did a kamikaze shot at the bar before she delivered the Elperns’ drinks. Unprofessional, possibly even unethical, but her stress level was so high that champagne wasn’t going to cut through it and she told Duncan so and he put the kamikaze shot in front of her. It tasted like a bad night in college, though once she chased it with the Laurent-Perrier she regained her sense of humor. She went into the kitchen to put in a VIP order for the Elperns.
The restaurant can run itself. Joe walked by carrying two quesadilla specials. They looked delicious. Antonio was expediting with his usual avuncular charm, calling everyone baby. Everything was going to be fine.
Back in the dining room, Caren grabbed Adrienne’s forearm. “Table twenty wanted the fondue. I told them no.”
Adrienne peeked at twenty. Lucy Elpern had ordered a glass of Laurent-Perrier and from the looks of things, it had gone straight to her head. She was waving her champagne flute in the air, calling out to anyone who looked her way, “This bread is baked!”