Special of the Day

by Elaine Fox

  “No matter, no matter,” M. Girmond boomed, waving him in with a substantial hand. “You are the bartender, no? I saw you, through the window the other day.” He indicated the front window with his head.

  “Did you?” Steve strode across the room and shook the man’s hand. “Steve Serrano. Good to meet you.”

  “Marcel Girmond, at your service.” He spread his arms to encompass a table full of plates containing appetizers and laughed. “We are just now beginning. Roxanne said we are not to wait for stragglers, but now we are down to just one missing. Oui?”

  “Yeah.” Rita turned to send Steve a wink. “Just George now. Then our motley crew will be complete.”

  Steve took off his coat and laid it over a chair back, ignoring Sir Nigel’s glare. He went to stand next to Rita.

  “Lookin’ good, darlin’,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

  “I know.” She looked down at herself with a pleased grin. “I’m a real professional now.”

  Steve smiled at her. He wasn’t often surprised by people—last night notwithstanding—but he wouldn’t have expected this from Rita. He thought she’d fight the fussy nature of this restaurant every step of the way, just as he had planned to. But now…well, now he had bigger fish to fry.

  He was just settling comfortably in to the instructional nature of the program, listening to Monsieur Girmond’s lilting accent, when Roxanne emerged from the kitchen. She too wore chef’s whites with the black-and-white checkered pants, but with her hair in a bun and the memory of last night so fresh, Steve felt sucker-punched.

  She was gorgeous no matter what she put on, and knowing what was under that primly buttoned jacket raised his blood to an instant boil. Their eyes met and as stupid as it sounded even to himself, he felt a bolt of electricity pass between them. The sensation was so strong, he colored as if the rest of the group might have perceived it.

  “Steve,” she said coolly. The control queen was back. “So glad you could make it.”

  She held a towel on which she was wiping her hands, and her eyes, after branding him with their heat, moved to the table of food Monsieur Girmond presided over.

  Rita glanced up at him, a long look through her pale lashes.

  Had she seen it?

  To Steve’s surprise, the presentation of the food was actually interesting. Girmond was so enthralled by his topic, so enthusiastic about his productions, that it was impossible not to be drawn in. Indeed, most of the staff seemed taken with the food—even George, who had shown up in time for the last bite of the appetizers.

  Roxanne’s desserts were likewise a big hit and she looked gratified by the effusiveness of the reactions.

  As the group broke up, and Steve’s eyes kept track of Roxanne as she answered questions from Rita and Pat, Sir Nigel glided over to him.

  “I trust you will be appropriately attired for tomorrow’s opening,” he said in a voice coated with British pomposity.

  “Why Nigel, I didn’t know you cared,” Steve said. He was thinking he should make his way over to Roxanne, figure out a way to ask her when they could see each other. Without, of course, seeming like he was worried about it. He hadn’t quite worked that part out yet.

  “Mr. Serrano, you don’t seem to have grasped that I am your boss.”

  That got Steve’s attention. He turned a deceptively lazy expression on the man. “Congratulations. You must be very proud.”

  Sir Nigel regarded him a long moment, his eyes flat, like a shark’s. “You might want to think harder about the situation. I make decisions regarding your future employment here. No matter what edge you think you can gain by…” He stopped, cleared his throat delicately, and let his eyes drift pointedly to Roxanne. “…pursuing alternate means of job security. Whatever else our new owner may be, she is not one to be deeply affected by a fleeting bit of charm.”

  10

  Bar Special

  Third Rail—Danger! Touch it and it might just kill you

  Dry vermouth, sweet vermouth, rum, orange juice

  “Roxanne, baby. Glad you called.” P.B.’s voice seemed too loud on the line and she pulled the phone receiver a couple inches away from her ear. “Listen, just got some news about a possible match on some fingerprints from your break-in.”

  “Oh. But I thought it was just the squirrel.” She tapped a pencil eraser on the counter in front of her. Her kitchen was bright from the morning sun. The hard light of a new day, she thought. She rocked the sole of a clog on one of the bottom rungs of a stool by her kitchen island.

  She’d come up from the kitchen downstairs to make this call, the obligation weighing too heavily to put it off any longer. She was already nervous about tonight’s opening of the restaurant. She didn’t need the prospect of this conversation taking up any more mental space too. So while her dough rested, she made a temporary escape to lower the boom on P.B.

  “Sure, it probably was.” P.B.’s voice was unconcerned. “But we ran the prints anyway. For all you know, you’ve got someone working for you with a record.”

  “I really doubt that.”

  “I know you do, honey. But it’s my job to protect you, isn’t it?”

  Something about P.B.’s tone irked her. Was it in the nature of cops to think everyone else around them was a criminal? And did he mean he was supposed to protect her, in particular, as in the “little woman”?

  She gritted her teeth. “A possible match. What does that mean? Do you know whose fingerprints they are?”

  Her palms were sweating and she dropped the pencil.

  “Not yet. Maybe later today. I thought I’d drop by your place tonight. Let you know the details.”

  “P.B., I’m opening the restaurant tonight. This is our first night.”

  Didn’t he know this? It was all she’d talked about for weeks with anyone.

  “It’ll probably be slow,” she added. “But I’ll be busy at least until midnight anyway.”

  Papers shuffled in the background. “Oh yeah. The opening. That’s tonight?”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll just stop by the restaurant then.”

  Roxanne pictured P.B. coming into Chez Soi with his “Roxanne-baby’s” and his “honeys” in front of Steve and knew she could not handle the juxtaposition. She was torn enough as it was over the strange turn her dealings with Steve had taken. She didn’t need to add to what was already an awkward threesome by having them all together in one spot.

  “By the way”—P.B. covered the mouthpiece and said something to someone nearby, she could only hear muffled murmurings—“yeah, sorry. Uh, by the way, I got the symphony tickets you wanted. Hope you don’t mind balcony seats.”

  She wanted?

  She took a deep breath. First things first. “Listen, P.B., I really don’t think tonight’s going to be a good time to come by. Opening night, as I said. We could be busy working out kinks in the service. I know I won’t have time to talk.”

  “Oh, well.” He paused. She hoped he was digesting this as a possible rejection. “No problem. I can talk to you later. But you can always use another customer, right? I’ll just shoot the shit with Steve. Maybe grab a bite to eat at the bar.”

  Roxanne closed her eyes, picturing the scene perfectly. P.B.’s blustering candor bumping right into Steve’s quiet perception. No doubt—no doubt—P.B. would mention the symphony date. No doubt Steve would put together his own theory on how that had come about. No doubt she would end up looking even worse than she already did.

  “P.B., I just don’t think—”

  “Babe, listen, sorry, I gotta go.” She could hear someone talking in the background and P.B.’s answering “uh-huhs.” He came back on. “Really, sorry. I’ll come by tonight, let you know what’s going on.”

  She gave it one last shot. “Not tonight, please, Peter. Let’s have lunch sometime this week, okay?”

  “Uh-huh. Right. Gotcha.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief until she realized he was talking to
whoever was with him.

  “Okay, Rox, see ya later,” he said to her.

  “Bye,” she said dispiritedly, but he was already gone. She took the phone from her ear and slowly pressed the OFF button.

  She just wouldn’t come out of the kitchen, that was all. He could talk to Steve all he wanted and she wouldn’t show. Come to think of that, though, he and Steve probably had already talked, on the phone or whatever. They were friends. Maybe Steve had told him what had happened the other night. But no, P.B. wouldn’t have been so casually proprietary with her as he was just now. He probably wouldn’t have been so easy about “babe”-ing her either. And he certainly wouldn’t have been interested in “shooting the shit” with Steve. Not after being upstaged by him.

  She got up off the stool and headed back downstairs. Realistically, it would probably be slow tonight. They had done very little advertising, just enough to let the neighborhood know they were opening up, so they’d be lucky to turn tables even once. Which meant that there would be plenty of time for her to be expected to socialize with P.B.

  Well, so what, she told herself. She was the boss and P.B. was someone she’d been out with once. She didn’t owe him anything. For that matter she didn’t owe Steve anything either.

  Let ’em talk, she thought cavalierly. That’s what a man would think and do.

  Not any man she’d want to be with, however.

  They were slammed.

  From the moment Sir Nigel opened the doors that night, people streamed in. Apparently word had gotten out that the three-star chef from New York’s La Finesse had come to Alexandria and all the Washingtonian foodies pounced on it, exclaiming to each other how lucky and/or prescient they were to have gotten a jump on the culinary scene by being there the first night.

  They were standing two deep at the bar as Steve’s gaze raked the crowd, searching for the tiny blonde woman who had ordered the Amaretto sour.

  “Amaretto?” a dark-suited, power-tied man of about fifty called.

  Steve caught his eye and held up the drink. The man nodded, indicating the top of a blonde head at his side, hidden by the crowd.

  “Seven twenty,” Steve said, over the head of the white-haired gentleman on a barstool in front of him.

  Without batting an eye, the suited man handed him a fifty.

  Considering nobody was supposed to know the restaurant even existed yet, Steve was amazed by the sheer numbers of people here, not to mention amused by their ease with the high prices of the drinks. At Charters it had taken several hours of drinking for people to get so free with their credit cards. Here they didn’t bat an eye at paying nine bucks for a martini.

  And still they kept coming through the door. Even the unflappable Sir Nigel looked a little hot under the collar. Steve caught him glancing out the door to the street at one point as if there might be a bus unloading somewhere nearby.

  Rita, George and Pat, expecting an easy opening night, were flying wild-eyed through the double doors from the kitchen with plates of exquisitely presented food, looking as if they were having to negotiate an obstacle course with their mother’s best china on their heads.

  Steve himself was kept hopping by such orders as Pink Ladies and Green Turtles, drinks he’d almost never gotten orders for at Charters that now he had to wrack his brain to remember how to make. He’d even had to look surreptitiously at the dusty bartender’s manual under the register at one point to figure out what the hell a Queen’s Park Swizzle was.

  Catering to an older crowd was definitely different from the burger-and-beer stuff he’d been doing for Charters. Back then, the most complicated drinks he’d had to produce were six different kinds of margaritas and the latest craze in shooters, neither of which required much presentation.

  Mixed in with all the crazy drink drinkers were also a host of fine-wine fanciers. Each wanted to know the years and varietals of every offering they had by the glass, not to mention “how it was.” Full-bodied? Fruity? Lots of tannins?

  Steve started out saying things like “robust” and “oak-y,” and eventually branched out into “a little floral” for the cheaper labels to a “hint of blackberry”—or lingonberry or chocolate or whatever—for the more expensive ones.

  It seemed to be working. Everyone liked what they were drinking and nobody had looked at him yet and repeated, “Lingonberry!”

  About half past nine, P.B. pushed his way through the crowd. As usual, he was visible from the moment he walked in the door and audible shortly thereafter.

  “Steve!” he called, raising a hand high. His grin was expansive and all-encompassing, benevolent to the masses around him. That, and the casual way he brushed by Sir Nigel at the door, spoke volumes about how close he thought he was to being lord of the manner.

  “Hey, Peeb.” Steve glanced at him as he filled a pint glass with Stella Artois, a Belgian beer they now carried. “What’s up?”

  P.B. shouldered between two men in suits who had their backs to each other to secure a standing spot at the bar. “I promised Rox I’d stop by. She here?”

  Rox?

  Steve couldn’t help it, he scowled. “Of course she’s here, Peeb, she’s the owner, for Chrissake.”

  He moved down the bar to deliver the Stella, irritation crawling along his nerves like bugs. It wasn’t P.B.’s fault. In fact, if there was fault involved it was all Steve’s. Not P.B.’s, not Roxanne’s. Steve’s. He was the one who’d initiated things with Roxanne and pushed them beyond what either of them had expected.

  And he was the one who had not yet spoken to his friend about it. P.B., in this instance, was just an innocent bystander to his, Steve’s, lack of control.

  He moved back toward P.B., taking a deep breath and marshalling his annoyance.

  “What can I get for you?” he asked his friend.

  P.B. grinned. “Roxanne, straight up, slightly warmed.”

  Steve almost laughed—cynically—at how ironic that was. She’d been warmed all right.

  “Man, you shoulda seen the looks I got at Murphy’s the other night,” P.B. continued, laughing. “Walking in with her. Christ, I couldn’t have done better if I’d brought in all the MTV Spring Break girls together. Don Flannery about pissed his pants when he saw she was with me.”

  “That’s great,” Steve said. He could just imagine P.B.’s cronies talking about her.

  “You know it. My stock went up, brother, let me tell you.” He laughed again, pounding his palm on the bar with glee. “She’s by far the hottest chick I’ve ever brought in there—they all said so—and you know I’ve brought some hot ones in. She takes the cake, though.”

  “So? You get to see her bedroom like you predicted?” Maybe it was mean, since he knew full well the answer to the question, but P.B.’s cockiness set him off.

  P.B. chuckled. “It’s just a matter of time, buddy. Just a matter of time.”

  Steve looked at him, wishing, hopelessly, that P.B. would hear how he sounded and shut the hell up. He’d always treated his women like trophies and it seemed Roxanne was to be no exception.

  “So where is she, huh?” P.B. looked around, apparently oblivious to what a crowd this size would mean to a chef. “I gotta tell her she’s a star at the pub.”

  “She’s in the back. Cooking,” he said pointedly.

  P.B. shrugged. “Tell her it’s break time.”

  Steve scoffed. “I don’t think so. Look around you, P.B., she’s probably up to her eyeballs in orders right now.” He glanced over the heads of the people at the bar into the bustling dining room. “We turned section one over an hour ago, so there’re probably a bunch of desserts on order right now.”

  In fact Steve himself had seen her only a couple of times that evening, once when she’d run out of rum for something she was doing, and once when she’d come to refill the pitcher of ice water she kept back there. Both times she’d looked both elated and shell-shocked. All she could do was stare wide-eyed at Steve and shake her head in wonder.

  Steve had
laughed and said, “Looks like you’re on your way.”

  To which she’d shaken her head again and said, “We all are.”

  But it wasn’t just the amazing crowd that stuck in his mind at the moment. Like an adolescent schoolboy, what he kept running over and over in his thoughts was the moment when he’d handed her the pitcher and their hands had touched on the handle. For a second they had both frozen, prolonging the contact and looking at each other with such heat that Steve could feel it deep in his gut.

  Or had it been just him?

  He exhaled and wiped down the counter.

  “I’ll just hang out here for a while then,” P.B. said. “I told her I’d be coming by, so she’ll probably be out before too long looking for me.”

  Steve figured they’d just see about that. He threw the bar towel down on the cold chest and took an order from the woman next to P.B. for a Cosmopolitan.

  P.B. looked down the bar, then back at the shelf of liquors. “Think I’ll have one of those,” he added, pointing to the Queen’s Park Swizzle as Steve mixed the Cosmopolitan. “What’s in that?”

  “Roxanne knew you were coming by?” Steve asked, unable to help himself as he slid the Cosmo to the woman.

  Had Roxanne made a date with P.B.? Maybe an after-work thing? He himself had done that plenty of times, with plenty of women, but it galled him to think of Roxanne being so casual about seeing both him and P.B. Not to mention seeing them both in the same place at the same time.

  “Yeah.” P.B. shed his jacket and hung it over the seat back behind him. They had tall bar stools now, with cushioned seats and backs, and Steve had to admit the whole place felt more comfortable. “I was going to tell her about the fingerprint results, from the break-in.”

  Steve raised a skeptical brow. “Squirrels have fingerprints?”

  “No, smart-ass, people do. Thought we’d gotten a live one—maybe someone working here, one of those Ecuadorans or something—but we didn’t. Close, but no cigar.”