Happiness might be contagious, but it was also fleeting, delicate, mercurial. On Day Six, Jamie called again, in the middle of second seating. The restaurant was loud, but Adrienne picked up a new tone in Jamie’s voice. She sounded manic and untethered, like someone who had pounded six shots of espresso.
“This is Jamie Zodl,” she said. “ISJZTHERE?”
“Yes,” Adrienne said. “Please hold on one minute.”
“You hold on one minute,” Jamie said.
“Excuse me?”
“I know Fiona’s sick,” Jamie said. “I know all about it.”
Adrienne said nothing. Across the room, a table burst out laughing. Rex played, “In the Mood.”
“Let me get JZ,” Adrienne said.
“I have a phone number,” Jamie said. “For a journalist who wants to write about her. He wants to talk to me about Fiona and JZ. The question is, do I want to talk to him?”
“Let me get JZ,” Adrienne said again, though she was afraid to put Jamie on hold. Bruno swung by the podium.
“I need your help on ten,” he said. “Can you pull a bottle of the Cakebread?”
Adrienne’s ears were buzzing; she felt like she had a bomb threat on the phone.
“Get JZ,” Adrienne whispered to Bruno. “His wife is on the phone.”
Bruno wasn’t listening closely-what he heard was Adrienne asking him for something in response to his asking her for something. He wagged a finger. “Honey, I’m slammed. Can you get the wine for me, please?”
Adrienne searched the dining room for Thatcher. Her eyes snagged on table ten, a deuce, a middle-aged couple, fidgeting, glancing around. They wanted their wine. Adrienne snapped back to her senses. This was a restaurant! She put Jamie Zodl on hold, zipped into the wine cave for the Cakebread, then she shouted into the kitchen, “JZ, call for you on line three!” By the time Adrienne opened the wine for table ten and made it back to the podium, the phones were quiet. Jamie had hung up.
Adrienne didn’t see JZ on Day Seven, but she gathered he had packed up and left. Fiona took a day off; when she returned, she was back to her old sarcastic, scowling self. The White Sox lost a double-header to the Mariners. Adrienne stayed out of the kitchen.
TO: kyracrenshaw@mindspring.com
FROM: Ade12177@hotmail.com
DATE: July 21, 2005, 10:35 A.M.
SUBJECT: happiness
Not sending spores. You don’t want them. Happiness is fickle. Plays favorites.
A couple of days later, Adrienne was working the phone when a man walked in dressed entirely in black. Black jeans, black shoes, black dress shirt open at the neck. Bulky black duffel bag. He was a young guy who had shaved his head to hide his baldness, so all Adrienne could see was something like a five o’clock shadow where his hair used to be. New York, Adrienne thought, and immediately her guard went up. The press. Who else dressed in black on a hot July day at the beach?
“Can I help you?” Adrienne said.
He offered her his pale hand. “Lyle Hardaway,” he said. “Vanity Fair magazine.”
Yep. Adrienne eyed her phone. If he didn’t leave when she asked, she would call the police.
“I’m sorry,” Adrienne said. “You don’t have an appointment and our owner isn’t here.”
He held up his palm. “I have a meeting scheduled with Mario Subiaco. He said he’d be working. He said I should come here.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. Mario, the pastry chef. This is the Blue Bistro?”
“It is.” Blue Bitch voice. She pointed a finger at his raised hand. “You wait right here. Don’t move. Is there a camera in that bag?”
“Yes,” he said.
“No photographs,” she said. “Understand?”
“Okay,” he said, and he smiled like maybe this tough act of hers was supposed to be funny.
Adrienne marched into the kitchen. She heard Fiona’s voice in the walk-in; she was making an order list with Antonio. Adrienne slipped into pastry. Mario was all gussied up in his houndstooth pants, washed and pressed, and his dress whites-the jacket with black piping and his name over the chest pocket. He was rolling out dough.
“You have a visitor,” Adrienne said.
He didn’t look up. “Do I?”
“Lyle somebody. From Vanity Fair.”
“Okay,” Mario said.
“He’s not coming back here,” Adrienne said.
“Yeah, he is,” Mario said. “He wants to watch me work. I’m making my own pretzels today. For chocolate-covered pretzels. It’s a special on the candy plate.”
“I thought there was no press allowed in the kitchen,” Adrienne said. “I thought that was a law.”
“This isn’t the kitchen,” Mario said. “It’s pastry.”
“Does Fiona know this guy is coming?” Adrienne asked.
“Not yet.”
Adrienne watched Mario fiddle with the pretzel dough, twisting it into nifty shapes. “What’s going on?” she said.
“They’re doing an article about me,” he said.
“Just about you?”
“Just about me. I hired a publicist.”
“You did what?”
“I hired a publicist and she sent out my picture and my CV and Vanity Fair called. They’re doing some article about sex and the kitchen. You know, sexy chefs. Rocco DiSpirito, Todd English, and me.” He raised his face from his work and mugged for her.
“Now I’ve heard it all,” Adrienne said. “You hired a publicist and you have a writer from a huge New York magazine in the bistro with a camera to take pictures of you making chocolate-covered pretzels because you’re sexy.”
“King of the Sweet Ending,” he said. “They loved the name.”
“Yeah, well, Fiona doesn’t know. And guess what? I’m not telling her.”
“No one was asking you to.”
“So you’ll tell her yourself?”
“Tell her why? It’s my business.”
“It’s not your business,” Adrienne said. “It’s her business.”
“Just send the guy back, please, Adrienne.”
As Adrienne returned to the dining room-Lyle Hard-away was right where she’d left him-the phone rang. Darla Parrish, bumping her reservation to three people. Adrienne asked cautiously, hoping, praying, “Not Wolfie?”
“No, it’s our youngest son, Luke. I can’t wait to introduce you. Oh, and Adrienne, dear, will you put us at that new table?”
“Sure thing,” Adrienne said. She made a note on her reconfirmation list. The writer was watching her every move. She hung up the phone, then said, “Follow me.”
Adrienne and Lyle Hardaway made it three steps into the kitchen before Fiona stopped them.
“Whoa,” she said. “Whoa. Who’s this? Not a wine rep back here?”
“His name is Lyle Hardaway.” Adrienne was afraid to say more.
“Is he a friend of yours?” Fiona asked.
“No,” Adrienne said.
Suddenly, Mario appeared from the back. “He’s here for me.”
“What is he, your new dance instructor?” Fiona said. She glared at Lyle Hardaway. “Who are you?”
“I’m a writer for Vanity Fair,” he said. He offered Fiona his hand. “You’re Fiona Kemp? It’s an honor to meet you.”
Fiona pointed to the door. Her cheeks were starting to splotch and she bent her head and coughed a little into her hand. Antonio spoke up from behind the pass.
“Get him out of here, Adrienne,” he said. And Adrienne thought, Yes, get him out before he sees Fiona cough.
“Fuck off, Tony,” Mario said. “He’s here for me.”
Antonio said, “What are you, crazy?”
Fiona spoke to the floor. “I have to ask you to leave,” she said. “I don’t allow press in the kitchen.”
“Come on, Fee,” Mario said in a voice that normally got him whatever he wanted. “He’s here to take pictures of my pretzels.”
“No,” Fiona said.
Lyle Hardaway held his arms in front of his face, like the words were being hurled at him. “Maybe I should wait out front while you work this out.”