Stick a Fork In It

by Robin Allen

  “Good,” I said.

  “And the Johns’s? Are you happy over there?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Great!”

  She released me to look at herself in the mirror. Ursula did not look comfortable. She looked radiant, her face lit up from within, and she moved with a lightness and ease that I imagined angels did as they bounced from cloud to cloud on their way to meet up for a cappuccino.

  “Did you get a Michelin star?” I asked.

  The tinkle of her laughter seemed to flutter the air in the bathroom. She turned and pulled me to her again. This time I hugged her back.

  “Oh, Poppy!”

  “Wait,” I said, drawing back. “Did Mitch send you in here to put me in a good mood?”

  She looked like I had crushed her wings. “No. Why would he?”

  He wouldn’t. He knows how I feel about Ursula. She would triple my agitation, so maybe Mitch had sent her to tump me off balance so I would be discomposed and docile when I saw Drew and wouldn’t give him what-for afterward.

  “What’s with all the hugs and the Poppys?” I asked. “Why are you talking in exclamation points?”

  She threw her hands into the air. “I’m free!” Then she lassoed me again. “Thanks to you.”

  “Oh, that,” I said into her shoulder. “You would have gotten out eventually.”

  She hugged me tighter, then gave me a kiss on the cheek. Not a faux air kiss like she gives Nina, but a loud smack. “I’m out now! And I have an offer to write a cookbook!”

  She released me, and I stepped out of grasping range. “An offer from who?”

  “Évariste’s publisher. I’m going to be famous!”

  “Isn’t that kind of…never mind.” Why should that surprise me?

  She wetted a paper towel and wiped her face. “Have you seen the new GM?”

  There were so many ways to answer that question. “Yes,” I said, “I’ve seen him.”

  “He’s going to be perfect,” she said, then floated out the door.

  Unless I took holy orders and became a nun, I would have to talk to Drew eventually, so it may as well be now. I pulled out my ponytail and finger-combed my hair. I wasn’t wearing any makeup and didn’t have any with me, so I pinched my cheeks and bit my lips to draw color. Then I washed my hands with lavender soap and dried them on my shirt and pants, hoping the fragrance would overpower my eau de highway exhaust.

  I took one final look in the mirror, then went to say hello to the former love of my life.

  x x x

  “You won’t believe our food costs from the grand opening,” Mitch said. I found him sitting in the manager’s office, shuffling through a pile of papers. Alone. He resumed crooning, “‘Like the fella once said, ain’t that a kick in the head.’”

  “Where’s Drew?” I said.

  “I sent him to the bank.”

  I dropped into a chair across from my father and gave him a look that would have made anyone else stand and salute me.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” he said.

  “That not even Benedict Arnold would have done this to his own daughter?”

  “We need him, honey.”

  After an argument a couple of weeks ago that preceded my father’s collapse, I had promised myself I wouldn’t be so quick to anger with him, but I couldn’t keep my promise. Not after Drew Cooper.

  “I don’t need him,” I said. “What kind of drugs did they give you in the hospital? Don’t you remember what he did to us? How he disappeared? No notice, no explanation?”

  Mitch leaned back in his chair. “I’m under doctor’s orders to take it easy for a while. I need a manager I can—”

  I shot out of my chair. “You can’t swing a bullwhip in Austin without lashing a thousand restaurant managers. Why Drew Cooper?”

  “He knows Markham’s, and he’s good. He can start with almost no training.”

  “You and Nina had to cut your honeymoon short when he left!”

  “Are you going to come back and manage the restaurant?”

  “This isn’t employee stuff, Daddy. This is daughter stuff.”

  He looked down at the desk and sighed. He can be so bad at the daughter stuff.

  I wiped a sneaky tear that had started down my cheek. “You should have told me.”

  “Nina said the same thing. I tried to call you.” He came around the desk and gave me a hug. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  Yes, my father was wrong, but the boss was right. Drew has a gift for managing restaurants and could be trusted to run the front of the house. He could hire and schedule the wait staff, hostesses, and bartenders, deal with customers, pay bills, lock up after midnight. With Ursula back in the kitchen, Mitch could rest easier and focus on getting stronger. This was father stuff, too.

  Mitch leaned against the desk. “Can I count on you to help him if he needs it?”

  “I’d sooner be friends with Nina,” I said, crossing my arms and putting some extra poutiness into my words.

  Mitch patted my shoulder, then returned to his chair. We were okay.

  “Did Drew tell you why he deserted us?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I think you should hear it from him.”

  “It won’t matter. The damage has been done. To me, at least.”

  “I believe you’ll feel differently once you hear his story.”

  “I doubt it.” I took a step toward the door, then turned back. “Daddy?”

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Don’t hold me to being friends with Nina.”

  x x x

  You wouldn’t know it from seeing my own house, but cleaning soothes me. Doing any mindless activity, really, which was what this ambush called for. When I worked in the kitchen and needed to occupy my hands, I would prep vegetables. Never mind we didn’t need them. They would eventually find their way into a soup or a lunch special. In fact, some of my more creative dishes sprang from having three pounds of diced tomatoes or a garden’s worth of chopped tarragon in the walk-in.

  I found a clean grill towel in the wait station and started with the coffee maker. I turned off the burner, which is exactly what it does—burn coffee—and violated health code by pouring the stinky brown liquid into the hand sink. Then I filled the coffee pot with soda water, salt, and lemons, and set it on the counter.

  “Well, well, well,” said a man’s voice behind me.

  My stomach had plunged at the first “well,” thinking Drew had returned from the bank, but then I recognized the drawl.

  “Hey, Trevor,” I said uneasily, turning to face him.

  Trevor had been one of my suspects in Évariste’s murder, and I hadn’t seen him since the last time I questioned him. He’d had several days to work up a nice harangue heavily weighted with “How could you” and “I told you so.”

  Trevor leaned against the reach-in and crossed his arms, his left forearm wrapped in gauze and clear plastic. He smiled slowly, and I dropped my eyes to the floor, glad that I wouldn’t have to take my medicine in front of an audience.

  “You just poured out my lunch,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I said, which is what I was going to say at the end of his reprimand.

  “It’s time to switch to the good stuff anyway.” He reached under the counter for a glass, then filled it with the official drink of people under thirty—Dr. Pepper.

  “I suppose that would be part of your last meal request,” I said.

  “With about a hundred of Ursula’s salmon cakes.”

  “That’s my recipe, you know,” I said. “And dessert?”

  He lifted his glass. “More of this.”

  “That stuff will wreck your taste buds,” I said. “What happened to your arm?”

  �
��New ink.” He held eye contact with me as he took an extra big gulp of his drink.

  Like most people who are really into tattoos—a group that specifically excludes girls who put a quarter-sized rose on their shoulder or guys who think that a barcode on the back of their neck is clever—Trevor has illustrated his body with words and images of personal significance: a paw print to honor his favorite puppy, a man riding a tricycle along a path of six stars in memory of his father’s death when Trevor was six years old.

  “What’s the subject?” I asked.

  “It’s a commemoration of recent events in my life.”

  “Can I see?”

  He unwrapped the plastic and pulled the gauze back to reveal the words non coupable in the shape of a knife healing on the tender inside of his forearm. “It’s French for ‘not guilty,’” he said.

  “Is that a poppy flower on the tip?”

  He smiled.

  “You never actually said you didn’t do it,” I said.

  “You never actually asked me if I did.”

  “It was my first murder investigation. I went with the evidence I had.” I looked up at him. “I’m really sorry, Trevor.”

  “Two apologies in one day. Lucky me.” He topped off his soda, then said, “And for the record, I didn’t kill Troy Sharpe.”

  Ursula came through the swinging doors holding a spatula and looking like a red-headed Tinkerbell. “Oh, hi, Poppy,” she said, then to Trevor, “I didn’t realize you were busy. Can you please come talk to me about the specials when you’re finished here?”

  “Sure thing, babe,” he said.

  Ursula backed through the doors and Trevor looked at me, grinning like Alexander the Great after he cut the Gordian knot.

  “So it’s not just me because I got her out of jail.”

  “Check this out.” He leaned over the counter so he could see through the pass into the kitchen. “Hey, babe,” he called, “I thought your marinade could use some extra garlic, so I added about ten cloves.”

  “Thank you!”

  “You two must be on again,” I said.

  “Like that ever gave me privileges with her food.”

  “True.” Simply expressing an opinion other than “perfect” about one of Ursula’s recipes would be a death sentence even for Trevor, regardless of relationship status.

  “Plus, she’s not thrilled about me and Belize,” he said, reproaching me with a raised eyebrow.

  I had been the one to tell Ursula about his secret affair with the waitress, but only because of my investigation. “That makes a hat trick of apologies I owe you.”

  “She’s almost over it,” he said, rewrapping his arm. “I’m pretty irresistible when I want to be.”

  “I know she’s excited about the cookbook, but that doesn’t explain why she’s channeling Mary Poppins. The pressure should make her sourer, not sweeter.”

  He glanced through the pass into the kitchen, then lowered his voice. “Care to wager on when she’ll turn?” He pulled a piece of paper from the front pocket of his chef’s coat and showed me a list of names, each followed by a date. “Your ten will take the Diva Pot to two hundred. My money’s on June sixth.”

  As Ursula’s sometimes boyfriend, Trevor has inside information and knew that June 6 is her birthday. No doubt he was counting on the big three-five to trigger a meltdown. I’d already cruised past that mile marker and knew something Trevor, at twenty-five, couldn’t know. The day after is when you wake up and realize that you’re halfway to the town of Elderly.

  “Put me down for the seventh and an IOU.”

  x x x

  Talking to Trevor had injected some sunshine into my disposition, and I no longer felt compelled to clean the wait station. It had also reminded me why I had come to Markham’s in the first place.

  I went to the bar to work on Trevor’s drink. Mitch wouldn’t care what I came up with, but I wanted the drink to be a singular tribute. I already didn’t like the name I had proposed. Trevor’s Treat was a drink for someone who parted his brown hair on the side and drove a hybrid, not a blue-eyed, sinewy flirt who wore his long blond hair in a ponytail and rode a motorcycle.

  A drink for me would be easy: something deep red, like a Manhattan, heavy on the grenadine, with a dark roasted espresso bean or splash of dark cacao in the center to complete the look. Poppy’s Red Alert or Opi-yum. Ursula’s drink would be equal parts dry vermouth and pickle juice over lots of ice with a slice of lime. The old Ursula anyway. The new Ursula would be sweet and frothy, some sort of pink spiced rum daiquiri topped with a cloud of whipped cream. Ursula’s Undone or Angel’s Parfait. Both versions were extreme and equally unpalatable.

  Trevor, however, wouldn’t be so easy. I picked up a shaker and started mixing, thinking of names—Trevor’s Truce, True Blue, Blond Adonis. After an hour, I didn’t have a drink or a name, but I had nipped enough of each contestant that I felt a little tipsy. After cleaning up behind the bar, I made myself an Americano and sat on a barstool, sipping my watered-down espresso in the cool hush of the restaurant.

  I didn’t want to think about Drew Cooper, but how could I not? The bar at Markham’s may have been upgraded, all granite and squeaky leather, but the space would always harbor the memory. Here, on March 18, in the wee hours after St. Patrick’s Day, after the restaurant had closed, Drew had added Owner’s Daughter’s Boyfriend to his curriculum vitae. Just the two of us, me behind the bar mixing margaritas, explaining how to make the perfect one, Drew sitting on one of the seasoned wooden stools, watching me with something on his mind.

  That there was a story behind Drew’s subsequent disappearance, a story that Mitch had already accepted, meant that I might have to consider an attitude other than righteous anger. Of course, my father is quick to forgive people he’s not related to. He also has a Y chromosome, which would make him more inclined to accept a story about Drew running off with another woman. But even Mitch couldn’t be so thick as to believe that such a story would smooth things over with me.

  And, aha! That’s why Mitch had asked whether Jamie and I were back together.

  Jamie.

  Drew had been four months gone by the time Jamie and I had started dating, yet he had hung over our budding relationship like a shroud. Drew is the reason Jamie had to work so hard to gain my trust in the first place, and I realized now that Drew was the reason I couldn’t easily forgive Jamie for his indiscretion.

  I heard movement in back of me and looked up at the mirror behind the bar and into the familiar hazel eyes of Drew Cooper.

  eleven

  “Hello, Sugar Pop,” Drew said.

  I cursed myself for not being ready for this, for not thinking through every possible scenario between us and preparing a reaction so I could direct the conversation. Or at least not look foolish. I did time in the Girl Scouts, but I had forgotten the most important lesson: don’t get caught with your pants down.

  “My name is Poppy,” I said. I placed my hand over my carotid artery to cover the pulse that cosmonauts at the Space Station would be able to see if they looked down.

  “What happened to your hand?” he asked.

  Nothing about Drew had changed. Three years hadn’t aged him, hadn’t fattened him up, hadn’t loosened any skin or chiseled any wrinkles. Not even a gray hair among the black waves. But there was a tired sadness in his eyes that I had never seen before.

  “Long story,” I said.

  The flaming anger I had directed at my father would have come in handy right about then because all along the target had been Drew. But the coals of my mind had cooled and wouldn’t serve me anything but clichés: How are you? It’s been a long time. Nice to see you. I slipped off the stool and behind the bar, hoping movement would spark something more scorching. It didn’t.

  “So, you’re back,” I said.
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  “Looks like it.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, it has,” he said, matching my neutrality and distance.

  From the first week Drew started at Markham’s, I suspected he was interested in me, but we worked together for months as friends. I figured he was too much of a professional to go after the owner’s daughter, but he told me that night he hadn’t wanted to rush me. He said he was waiting for me to come to him, that I was worth the wait. That he would have waited forever.

  “Are you getting the hang of things?” I asked.

  Drew looked around the bar. “Markham’s may be dressed in a fancy evening gown and pearls now, but the bones are the same. I’m already ready to send Mitch home.”

  Watching the easy way Drew held himself, the way his shoulders moved beneath his white dress shirt, I thought about what I felt the first time I saw him: nothing.

  It’s the same way most women react to him. He’s just there. Not unattractive, but nothing to make you look twice. But after a time, after you get to know him, feel his quiet steadiness and strength, you wonder how you overlooked him. You remember how you weren’t always on your best behavior around him. You start to regret all those times you had a beer with him after a long day in the kitchen and didn’t brush your hair or wash your face. You begin to ask him questions about himself, like how he spends his time when he’s not working and if he has a dog. Then, after a long, busy holiday night when you tell him that the secret to your margaritas is that they’re made with love, he knows it’s time to express his feelings for you.

  And then one day, after he has erased all doubt from your mind that he’s the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, he vanishes.

  It was my turn to say something; however, any topic not restaurant-related could be dangerous. But I was still tipsy, and when I’m tipsy, I like a little danger. “Where have you been for the past three years?”

  “It’s been thirty-five months,” he said. Always so exact. “It’s a long story, too.”

  “How long could it take to explain that you ran off with another woman?”