My Darling Husband

by Kimberly Belle

  “Shut up.”

  “For real, man. And though I appreciate you coming all the way here to tell me the joyous news in person, what kind of idiot do you think I am? An arsonist would have to be really incompetent to give his former boss a six-month warning. I mean, come on. You and I both know I’m not that stupid.”

  “It was four and a half. March 24.”

  “Aww, you remembered our anniversary.”

  I roll my eyes. “You know what? Forget it. I’m out of here.” I turn and march for the gate.

  “Wait. Where you going? Who are you going to accuse next—Drew?”

  The name slams me in the back, and I stop, my soles sinking into the grass. Drew is a fellow chef, a former employee who I lured to the Lasky brand with the promise of him running his own restaurant. One of the three chefs I fired in an ugly dispute last year because his food wasn’t good enough to fill the tables.

  “Drew signed a contract, dickhead. Same as you.”

  A contract that multiple attorneys on both sides agreed was legit. No hidden clauses, nothing sneaky or underhanded buried in legalese. The terms were spelled out in bulletproof, easy-to-understand black and white. I even cut Drew some slack, gave him some extra time to fine tune the menu to appeal to the Perimeter Mall crowd, but I couldn’t keep bailing him out when sales were already slipping. A couple more months and we’d be laying off waitstaff, slashing food quality, defaulting on bills. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to do it, but it was Drew or the restaurant, that’s essentially what it came down to.

  So yeah. Drew might have lost his job, but I’m the one who almost lost his shirt. The one who had to pump in a buttload of my own cash and energy to fix Drew’s mistakes, who had to work harder and longer to patch up the holes his bad management blew in the place.

  But George is not wrong. It’s not like Drew wouldn’t be more than happy to strike a match to the Bolling Way shop, too. And so would—

  “What about Fred and Kelly? Have you been to see them yet? Because they hate your guts as much as Drew and I do.”

  Fred and Kelly. Once upon a time, chefs at the West Side and Inman Park shops, until sales at those restaurants started sliding, too. Just because you’re a chef doesn’t mean you should be running your own shop. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.

  “And what was the name of that line cook up at the Forum? The one you fired when his wife was about to get deported because he was spending too much time on the phone with his lawyer. Simon or Christian or something. Oh, and remember that mixologist you brought down from New York City to revamp the cocktail menu, only to send him packing as soon as he was done? Last I heard, he was slinging gin and tonics at the Dunwoody Country Club up the road. Any one of them would love to see Bolling Way blow up in smoke. Any one of them would have a reason to want revenge.”

  “You’re a real asshole, do you know that?”

  “You gotta admit I have a point. You really are your own worst enemy, aren’t you? And assuming all those people didn’t actually light the match...” He points a stubby finger at my face. “You know what they’d say about the fire, right?”

  I shake my head and take off for the gate, not because I don’t know but because I do. I know exactly what they’ll say about the fire, just like a tiny part of me wonders if they might be right.

  George’s answer chases me out of the yard: “They’d say it’s karma.”

  T H E I N T E R V I E W

  Juanita: One of the articles that went viral after the home invasion was an anonymous piece on Medium, accusing Jade of being a gold digger.

  Cam: Right, and the fact that no one was willing to attach their name to such trash should have told the public all they needed to know.

  Juanita: So it’s not true?

  Cam: When Jade and I met, I was driving a ten-year-old Honda Civic with questionable brake pads and a hole in the floorboard, and my mortgage on the leaky, rickety building that housed my first restaurant was deep underwater. Every penny I made went into that money pit, which is why I was crashing on a buddy’s couch in Grant Park at the time. I couldn’t afford rent and the health inspector would have had a fit if he found me sleeping under one of my dining tables. All that goes to say, if anybody was the gold digger in this scenario, it was me.

  Juanita: How did the two of you meet?

  Cam: Jade was one of the designers pitching for the renovation of that place. She walked into my kitchen that day, and I couldn’t string two words together. She literally took my breath away. I would have hired her even if she was a talentless hack.

  Juanita: [smiling] I guess it’s a good thing she was talented, then.

  Cam: So darn talented. She nailed the design, and then she helped me execute it on a shoestring budget. Later, she pushed me to expand that first shop into a brand, one that’s timeless and recognizable, where people walk through the door and know immediately they’re in a Lasky restaurant. That’s all because of her.

  Juanita: Sounds like building your business was a team effort.

  Cam: Since day one. I mean, any decent chef can toss some meat on a grill, but Jade is the reason I went from one shop to five in the span of as many years, why I became known as Atlanta’s Steak King. I owe every bit of my success to her. And on the flip side, everything I did was for her, to make her proud.

  Juanita: And yet, according to your former general manager, Flavio Garcia, you have no plans to continue after the fire at Bolling Way. You will not be reopening there or anywhere else in the city.

  Cam: Lasky steak houses are a thing of the past. I guess you could say I’m relinquishing my crown.

  Juanita: Atlanta’s foodies will be sad to hear it.

  Cam: They’ll survive. There are plenty of other places in town that’ll charge them a hundred bucks for some meat and potatoes.

  Juanita: I don’t understand. How does shutting down honor all the work Jade did to build you up?

  Cam: How does anything I’ve done to build my brand honor her? When I got into this business, it wasn’t because I loved cooking. It was because I loved watching people respond to the food I cooked for them. Seeing their eyes roll up into their head at the first bite of the perfect truffled potato. How I could create this...cocoon of good wine and good food, where they’d sit for hours and not notice the dining room had cleared out. That was why I became a chef, to make people feel that way.

  Juanita: Why?

  Cam: Why what?

  Juanita: Why did you love eliciting those kinds of reactions to your food?

  Cam: [laughs] You really get to the heart of it, don’t you? But okay... [long pause] I liked it because it was the only time I saw my father be kind to my mother, when she cooked him a good meal.

  Juanita: That sounds...

  Cam: Tragic? It was. It is. And somewhere along the way, my reasoning got lost, or maybe it ended the way it was supposed to, the same way my parents’ marriage ended—in disaster. Because holding up the Lasky brand, running that machine day after day, sucked every bit of joy out of something that, once upon a time, I thought was my destiny.

  Juanita: Your former employees would agree. Accusations of mistreatment, claims of wage garnishment, improper management practices, firing staff for no reason other than you, and I quote, “didn’t like the look of their stupid face.” All in all, it sounds like working at Lasky Steak was pretty joyless.

  Cam: For them, and for me. Honestly, shutting down was something I should have done ages ago.

  Juanita: So why didn’t you?

  Cam: Because like me or not, all those people depended on me for a job. They depended on me for a paycheck and health care. My mother depended on me. Jade and the kids depended on me. I’m the one who put a roof over everybody’s heads and food on everybody’s table.

  Juanita: And not just any roof. Your roof covers six thousand square feet in one of th
e most desirable neighborhoods in Buckhead.

  Cam: Do you want it? Because I hear the bank’s still looking for a buyer.

  Juanita: I can’t afford it, which is exactly my point. The asking price is well into the seven figures.

  Cam: I’m sure they’ll work with you on the price. There hasn’t exactly been a run on the place after what happened upstairs. Nobody wants to live there. I certainly don’t.

  Juanita: But what happens to your employees? With five locations, the number must have been well into the hundreds. That’s a lot of waitstaff and dishwashers and bartenders out of work.

  Cam: They’re the best in the business, they’ll find another job. Most of them probably already have.

  Juanita: That sounds a bit harsh.

  Cam: Does it? I’m only saying it because it’s true. My staff were trained to serve the most demanding clientele, and any chef in town would be lucky to have them. And look, did I make mistakes? Absolutely. Are there things I wish I could go back and do differently? Hell, yes. But do you have any idea how hard it is to run a restaurant, much less a chain of them? I did what I had to to survive.

  Juanita: Did you garnish their wages?

  Cam: [smiling] Let me guess, we’re talking about George. For the record, I didn’t garnish, I subtracted the costs of the damages he inflicted during one of his infamous tantrums. Ask any of my former employees. George is known for his temper, and the last night he was with us he destroyed my kitchen. There were plenty of witnesses.

  Juanita: Okay, but what led up to him breaking those things? And what do you say to the other complaints, the ones of improper firings and questionable business practices?

  Cam: I’d say I made a ton of mistakes. I’d say I got carried away by the glitz and the fame, by the television appearances and fancy parties and people eating at a Lasky steak house just so they could get a picture with me. What’s that old saying? The higher your star, the farther it is to fall. That’s not an excuse, but I hope it’s an explanation, at least.

  Juanita: How many lawsuits are you dealing with right now?

  Cam: Enough.

  Juanita: How many, Mr. Lasky?

  Cam: Three. The fourth we settled last week.

  Juanita: So when you received the call from Jade that someone was in your home, holding your family for ransom, did you suspect any of your former employees and business partners?

  Cam: I suspected all of them.

  J A D E

  3:52 p.m.

  The asshole separated us.

  After he rushed the three of us upstairs, after he tied me to the blue chair in the guest room, he pressed a six-inch strip of silver duct tape over my mouth, took the kids by the hands and led them out the door.

  Now they are in the playroom across the hall, doing God knows what, while I am here, helpless, attached to a chair. Losing my damn mind.

  What is he doing to them?

  What is happening?

  I hold my breath and strain to hear, but I can’t pick up on anything other than a muffled murmur of their voices spilling into the hallway and my own heart banging against my ribs. From where I sit, I can see a slice of hall, one of the two double doors swung wide, but that room is like a vault. Walls soundproofed within an inch of their life, with double layers of insulated drywall lined with vinyl sheets and pockets of air so that Cam can crank the volume on his movies up to deafening, and the rest of the house doesn’t have to listen along.

  But with the doors open, I would hear if there was screaming. If God forbid there were gunshots. I think these things, and my entire world teeters on a knife-edge. I am shaking—no, convulsing with fear and frustration and fury. If he hurts them, if he so much as touches a hair on my babies’ heads, I will kill him with my bare hands.

  I thrash against my bindings, but they hold firm. Braided vinyl rope, bright yellow and scratchy, wrapped multiple times around each ankle and wrist then strapped to the brass arms and legs of this blue velvet chair. The rope is too tight to wriggle loose, the slipknot tied with a sailor’s skill. No way I can pull free without a knife.

  And I can’t scream, not with the duct tape over my mouth. Not that anybody would hear me, but still. If I could, I’d sure as hell try.

  I tell myself he’s not going to hurt the kids. That he’s not going to sit them in a chair, press his gun to their little heads and pull the trigger. That the pistol he’s been waving around is for me. I’m the one he wants to intimidate. If he was here to murder us, he would have done it the moment he stepped out of the shadows. Why go to all this trouble just to torment us? I tell myself he’s here for something. Money, probably.

  Please, God, let it be money.

  I stare at the sliver of empty hallway, and the upstairs layout flashes through my mind. Walls, doors, all the corners and blind spots. There are two ways into that playroom, through those double doors out in the hallway, or an interior door we never use, one that leads to a hidden hallway and the guest room bath behind me. We keep it shut to accommodate the furniture, a marble console table with, next to it, a potted fiddle leaf fig.

  Which means if I could somehow manage to break free, I could get to the kids from this room. Sneak through the hidden hallway, shove the door open and the furniture aside. Surprise, asshole. Mommy’s here.

  Bad odds, though, considering he’s the one with the weapon and I’m stuck to a chair.

  Still, I look around the room for something I could use, taking in the furniture and decor—the rosewood and brass bed, the matching nightstands, the Herman Miller dresser, all of them impractical. The closet is empty, nothing but plastic hangers and a flimsy wicker hamper, and there’s nothing useful under the bathroom sink. I consider the bedside lamps, two complicated things of metal and glass anchored to the wall. A third lamp, a floor model, weighs practically nothing.

  The vase, a couple of books, a vintage lucite bowl, a flawless Ritts from the sixties. A little bulky, maybe, but solid enough to bash in somebody’s head. I just need to get to it first.

  I struggle against the rope, but the damn thing only pulls tighter.

  Beatrix’s face. Oh my God, her face when that man tied me up. While Baxter chattered away about some stuffed gorilla he wanted to fetch from his room and the Xbox game Santa gave him for Christmas, Beatrix stared at the back of the man’s head and said nothing. Empty eyes. Slack jaw. The kind of expression she gets from watching too much TV, or on a car ride that’s taking too long. No fear. No fury. Just...nothing. Her face was like a dead zone. When this is over, she’s going to need a lot of therapy.

  Assuming we survive.

  I shove the thought aside before it can turn into a sob, force myself to think about Baxter. At least he’s doing okay. I hear his singsong voice floating on the air, no longer scared. He’s too young to understand how dangerous things are, how the man is manipulating both kids in order to manipulate me. That bullshit marshmallow trick with Baxter, the begrudging admission he pried from Beatrix—those stunts were a message to me.

  See? he might as well have said. I control your kids, which means I control you.

  That’s the kind of psycho I’m up against.

  With all my might, I heave my body backward in the chair, then lurch my weight forward, but nothing happens. The legs don’t lift from the floor. The chair doesn’t so much as wobble. I remember the first time I sat in the thing, one sunny afternoon in the Jonathan Adler showroom. I loved the weight of it, the sturdiness, the way the horizontal brass bars at the base of the legs kept the chair stable, and always flush to the ground. Now the damn thing doesn’t even budge.

  And honestly, even if I managed to tip it, then what? The legs aren’t legs but connected brass bars, a closed square holding up either side of the chair. Even if I were able to wriggle the rope down the legs, I can’t just slip it off the feet and be free. I could maybe tip this thing, but then what—crab-ru
n down the stairs with a forty-pound chair on my back? I won’t make it very far, and I’d never leave my kids.

  Shit.

  Shit.

  He knows this, of course. He knows as long as he stays with my kids, then I’m going nowhere—not without coming for them first. He knows if I did somehow escape, I’d come straight to them, which means he’ll be ready for me. I picture him sitting in a chair facing the door, tapping the gun on his knee. Waiting.

  But why? For what? What does this man want from me?

  Laughter comes from the other room, and my stomach roils in an oily wave. This is torture. He’s torturing me. SpongeBob’s voice bursts from the speakers. Is he tying them up? Turning up the volume so I won’t hear their screams?

  I stare at the doorway across the hall and my hands shake with terror. With rage.

  What is happening?

  I have no idea, because I am tied to a goddamn chair.

  * * *

  I am struggling against the ropes when I hear footsteps—big ones, coming my way. Rubber soles slapping the hardwood, the feet carrying them too big, far too heavy to belong to one of the kids.

  I stare at the door, the breath going solid in my lungs. From across the hall, the TV blares sounds from The Loud House, thumping the air in thundering bursts. I’ve always hated that show.

  He comes around the corner, a slouchy black shadow palming a gun. He sees me and stops in the doorway, feigning surprise. “There you are. The kids and I have been looking all over for you.”

  I scream into the tape, “Let me go!” It comes out as a long, frantic squeal that ignites the back of my throat.

  He steps into the room, his sneakers swishing on the vintage Moroccan shag, and settles the gun atop the dresser on the far wall. “So...how you been? What have you been up to? Been keeping yourself busy?”

  I scream into the duct tape again, the silver strip flexing a bubble that pulls like razors on the skin around my lips. I strain against the rope, the yellow strands cutting into my sweaty skin, marring ditches into the velvet armrests.