Harry stopped moving, his hand still holding the pencil lead against the wall. Then he looked over his shoulder. “Don’t start screwing with me,” he said. “It’s not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” said Britt. “Cook a meal if you really mean it. Let me see what you’re doing.”
“Of course I’ll cook,” Harry said. “You free tomorrow? Is Leo? I can get a lot done before then, even though obviously I’d have a different prep done when I have more time. I didn’t think you guys would want to.”
“Well, I don’t know about Leo,” Britt said. “I just meant me. If you want just me,” he added. “You maybe wanted both.”
“No no no no no,” said Harry. “I misunderstood, that’s all. Obviously I want you both. I want you too. All incestuous-sounding implications aside, I mean.” But he looked away. He was getting very energetic about straightening up the bar top.
“Because I’ve been doing this for ten years now, you know,” Britt was saying. “I know Leo’s got, like, fifteen, but still.”
Harry was shaking his head and wiping off the bar with great sweeps of his bar cloth. He began dealing out pieces of paper like playing cards, jotting down titles at the top as he spoke. “Here’s what I’m gonna make,” he said. “And listen, if you like it, maybe we do one big show for Leo, and maybe he likes it and maybe he doesn’t. But we go from there. You did all that PR work, you know how to find a crowd. I was in academia—I just know how to talk things to death.”
Britt laughed, slightly mollified, but he could hear the note of urgency in Harry’s voice too. The overeagerness to collude, to diminish Harry’s own experience—which, Britt was beginning to understand, had perhaps been formidable. Or at least Harry had made formidable use of his brief experience, which was more likely. For a moment Britt hesitated, thinking he had made a mistake in being even this enthusiastic. He looked around the space again, wondering suddenly if Harry needed a partner at all, or if his brother was so polite, or so desperate for capital and companionship, that he would accept even a redundant partner, even the partner he hadn’t wanted terribly much in the first place.
CHAPTER 5
CAMILLE DIDN’T WANT TO MEET HARRY for a drink, which wasn’t promising, but told him to come by her house, which was. He had been there for the first time the night before, to pick her up for dinner, but here he was, back again within twenty-four hours, almost as if it were familiar territory.
“I’m trying to get some work done,” she said. She preceded him into her kitchen, her long chestnut ponytail flipped over one shoulder. The table was set with a number of open jam jars, spoons beside them, and a laptop and paper and pen. “You can help me taste.”
“Well, I do owe you,” he said, his voice coming out a little more enthusiastic than he’d meant it to. He was feeling slightly giddy.
“After last night?” she said. “Please. I haven’t eaten all day.”
Their introduction had been yet another gift from Amanda, who seemed to know someone useful in every city. So far Camille had walked him through the basics of protecting himself financially, forming an LLC, and writing up his agreements with the landlord and even his parents (who had gotten very crisp and professional when he presented them with the finalized papers, both of them setting down their coffee cups and whipping out reading glasses).
Harry had sometimes feared that Camille had helped him only out of pity or because of some debt she owed to Amanda, and that in fact she had some dreadful comprehension of his financial picture—his whole concept—that she was too tactful to tell him. But tonight he was feeling right with the world.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you about,” he said, but she was taking a handful of spoons from a drawer and handing them to him, telling him to try each jar.
“Do these taste Amish to you?” she said.
He took a bite of peach and ginger jam. It was tooth-achingly sweet, or maybe he too just couldn’t eat yet. “I have no idea. The labels look Amish.”
Camille was standing beside him, arms crossed, staring at the jars’ ivory labels with their navy-blue script. Her feet were bare, her blue jeans aged as soft as suede, and she wore a long-sleeved T-shirt so tissue-thin that he could practically make out the ridges in the strap of her bra through the fabric. Sunday Camille was somehow more alluring to him than Saturday night Camille. Her daily self was so crisp and stylish that jeans and bare feet were more intimate than a low-cut dress.
“These are just prototypes. They’re going for purity and homemade but not grannyish,” she said. “I can’t quite put my finger on how to help them capitalize on homespun without actually being dowdy.”
“You could never be dowdy,” he said.
She knocked her hip against his. “Not me, the jam.”
“The jam either, then,” Harry said, reaching for her hand. “Hey,” he said. “I have some news. I think I have a partner after all.”
She glanced down at his hand holding hers but didn’t pull away. Instead she grinned at him. “No kidding. Who? When did this happen?”
“Today,” he said. “I don’t think I’d have gotten this far without your help.”
“Of course you would have,” she said. “All I did was go over a few things with you.”
“Well, that was enough, I guess, because I’m cooking for him tomorrow and we’ll see if he’s in. I didn’t think I cared anymore, but it turns out I’m pretty excited.”
“You deserve it,” Camille said, and she hugged him.
It was then that Harry did what every man does at some point in his life, which worked half the time and was a crashing failure the rest: he turned the hug into a kiss. He figured the odds were as close to being in his favor as they had ever been, and he was hoping that their friendly goodnight kiss after dinner the night before had been just for openers, that even if Britt seemed to have a thing for her, she might not have one for him. And for a second, a second in which the nape of her neck felt amazingly fragile and satiny beneath his palm and their mouths tasted of cooked sugar, he thought he had it. But then—there was no other way to describe it—the feel of her lips became thoughtful, as if he could feel her mind shifting in some other direction just by the change in pressure beneath his mouth.
He stepped back. Camille said nothing for a moment, then, “It’s not quite right.”
“No,” he said, “I guess not.” He was befuddled and slightly relieved, because she was correct, but there had been that glimmer. He wasn’t sure where it had gone.
She took out a bottle of wine and poured a couple of glasses. She looked slightly embarrassed as she handed him one, seeming about to speak, but then she made a little face to suggest that she wasn’t sure what to say and simply took a drink of her wine.
Harry understood that Camille was waiting to see if he was going to be hurt, if they could even stay friends. She was probably a veteran of ill-advised kisses and no longer wasted too much time trying to console their perpetrators. He decided the best course of action, one that would prevent them from drowning in awkwardness, was the simplest one.
“Listen,” he said, “I still want to tell you about the restaurant. Let’s not let one kiss distract you from the fact that I’ve done something pretty impressive.”
Camille laughed, her relief obvious enough to hurt Harry. “Oh yeah?” she said. “How so?” She moved aside the jam jars and gestured for him to sit down at the table with her. She concentrated a touch too much on placing the jars just so, and he knew he sounded a little too vehemently casual, but he felt okay. He felt like they’d tried and it was, maybe, no one’s fault.
“I saw my brother again this morning, and he came over to see the space. He hasn’t been there in weeks. And he was really impressed. I didn’t think they’d ever come around.”
“I knew they should,” she said loyally. “Which one? Leo?”
“No, Britt,” Harry said, and Camille blushed.
Harry was used to girlfriends having a certain level of interest in Britt. Catheri
ne had loved him, perhaps a shade too much, and flirted with him by detailing the less seemly elements of British monarchical history. Shelley, on the other hand, bore an energetic antipathy spurred on by Britt’s clothes, his well-clipped hair, and—Harry believed—his undisguised lack of interest in her. So was it really so surprising that the trip to Winesap would backfire in the end? He had intended it to be a grand seductive display, and instead the evening had felt more like being treated to dinner by his big brother.
Well, Harry wasn’t going to let Britt sabotage the friendship too. He stayed at Camille’s kitchen table and kept talking as if he hadn’t perceived a thing, and she listened attentively. He was almost touched by their determination. They’d talk and drink and he would go home; they would barrel through this moment until they’d come as close to forgetting that kiss as they ever would.
LEO SAT AT THE BACK OF the dining room at Winesap, staring balefully at an individual chocolate cake in a pool of crème anglaise. It was the most boring dessert on the face of the earth, even though when it had debuted in the eighties it had felt like a revelation, all warm, sexy, oozing pools of chocolate. The trick was not simply to underbake a cake; the kitchen liked to place a truffle in the center that would melt during baking. But it had been years since the dessert was new, and whether restaurants called it mi-cuit or chocolate lava or whatever cute name they chose, it didn’t change the fact that this little round cake now crushed Leo with a mighty ennui, nor that Winesap sold as many of them as the kitchen could make.
“Is it even worth asking candidates to update this?” he said to Thea, who was sitting beside him with a pen behind each ear and a cup of coffee and a laptop before her. “I don’t know if we’ll even be allowed to tweak it, much less ditch it.”
Thea unfolded her arms. “Can’t hurt to try,” she said. She opened several résumés and shifted the screen toward Leo. “I want to try these guys. If we don’t feel it from this batch either, I have a few more backups in mind.”
“How many backups can there be at this point?” Leo said. “I thought we’d seen every pastry chef in the state. How’s Dennis been doing on it, anyway? Are you thinking about keeping him on?” Dennis had been filling in since Hector’s departure, as had another prep cook hoping to be given more hours. Neither was really up to Hector’s past dishes, and so during the search the dessert menu was less innovative than ever: the chocolate cake, tarte Tatin, even a few crisps and homemade ice creams.
“Leo, if we go ahead and put Dennis on it permanently, what was the point in giving ourselves time to do the search right? He’s supposed to be a stopgap. Besides, he wants to move up to the line, not over to pastry.”
“Good point. You line cooks are such snobs.”
Thea shrugged. It was true; no line cook apologized for that.
“Well, listen, schedule the next round of meetings and I’ll be there.”
“Okay. Be hungry.” Thea closed the laptop and stood up. She always seemed energized for her next task the moment she’d concluded the first, a trait Leo envied. Thea never seemed tired, bored, or beaten down by the weight of routine, afflictions that hit everyone else in the place sooner or later. Come to think of it, this reminded him a little of Harry, of Harry in high school darting from theater to basketball with equal intensity, or of the way he could often be found sitting on the couch, hunched alertly over a book and frowning at the pages. Britt liked to tease him for it, but really Britt was just as bad. He simply hid it behind insouciance and fine linen shirts.
Leo gazed up at Thea for a second, the blue pens on either side of her pale face, the green flare of her eyes. Leo was amazed they’d ever run Winesap without her—sometimes he even forgot where she’d come from, so ensconced was she here. But if Hector’s departure had reminded him of anything, it was of how transient this business really was.
“Hey, how’s your daughter?” he said. He felt the urge to convey to Thea her value, that she was more to the restaurant than just a sifter of résumés.
Thea turned back toward him, surprised. “My daughter?”
“Yeah. She’ll start school this year?”
“Preschool,” Thea said.
Leo nodded. He didn’t know what else to ask. “Ex-husband good?”
Thea looked mystified but shrugged. “He’s fine,” she said. “He’ll be done with his master’s soon.”
“Oh good.” Embarrassed, Leo rose as well, picking up the cake plate and Thea’s coffee cup. “Well, that’s good. Just checking in.”
“Okay.” She frowned.
“All right.” There was a pause, and then Helene appeared from the kitchen with an armful of flowers and both Thea and Leo seized on the chance to depart.
HARRY COULD REALLY COOK. Britt hadn’t expected that, somehow. Harry’s description of his work on the island had convinced him that Harry had learned to make bacon and bread and ricotta, but cooking on a line was a whole other ball game. Britt had thought perhaps his flirtation with this new place was like one with a gorgeous but unsuitable girl, just a moment’s excitement, and the morning after he and Harry had talked about the menu and about Hector’s defection, he’d left the new space trying to look forward to Winesap that night, its elegant systems and its balletic servers and Thea’s stern profile overseeing the line.
He’d also surreptitiously searched through the reservations, looking for Camille’s name. An embarrassing thing to do, admittedly, but he’d had an energized feeling of possibility that only intensified once he saw her name down for a three-top a couple of weeks out. Britt closed the file, humming to himself, and realized it was time to finish it with Maren completely. When he was younger he might have overlapped things a bit, but it just wasn’t worth the hurt feelings and the deceptions. He didn’t want to be hated by every good-looking woman in the region. He’d liked Maren, who sold software and had huge black eyes and slightly winged brows that always put Britt in mind of a hawk. She’d cooked for him quite a lot, but in a showy and exhausting way that made him wonder if she secretly disliked him, thought he disliked her, or harbored dreams of cooking at the restaurant. She had cut food into disks and squares and layered it precariously; she had sifted powdered sugar through stencils to make patterns on the plate; she had done things like garnish salmon with a single peeled and seeded grape. Just for a rest, he’d started offering to make pizza and scrambled eggs. These offers were not received well.
At least her approach was rare. Almost no one wanted to cook for you if you owned a restaurant; they thought you were judging them, and they apologized for serving baked macaroni and cheese or roast chicken, the very dishes everyone wanted.
After the dinner service at Winesap, he’d returned to Harry’s restaurant space and found Harry already at work behind the zinc bar. A stack of papers sat beside a place setting, a notebook, a pen, a bottle of water, a goblet, and a wineglass. “Pour yourself a glass of that white,” Harry said over his shoulder. “It’s Sardinian.”
Britt obeyed, removing his coat and pouring half a glass of a pale, grass-yellow wine that smelled faintly, not unpleasantly, of diesel and fresh greens. He let the wine swirl on his tongue for a moment, trying to free himself of the distracting remnants of Winesap, its scents of brown butter and wheaty, fragrant pasta, the seared steaks that had been ordered like mad that night, which always happened when the temperatures dropped. He flipped through the papers on the bar, realizing that they were diagrams of dishes, labeled in Harry’s near-illegible hand. Harry had drawn the plates from a sort of side view rather than from above, with notes and exclamation points about temps and garnishes. Britt was admiring a particularly detailed rendering of a cauliflower floret when Harry set before him the same plate: a little mound of ivory cauliflower, its edges touched with brown, scattered with preserved Meyer lemon, wrinkled oil-cured black olives, and flat-leaf parsley. A drizzle of green oil ringed the plate. “Enjoy,” Harry said, and then returned to his pans.
Britt ate slowly, first this dish, then a series of fiv
e more. He took notes, eyed the composition on the plate and compared it to the drawings. At first he offered commentary on the dishes, mentioning a pleasant balance of oil and acid, the ethereal crust on a goat cheese croquette over sharp grilled radicchio, the slight fibrousness of a cache of fried ginger batons. But Harry replied only briefly, not impolitely but clearly concentrating on his cooking, and so Britt stopped bothering him and instead simply ate and watched his brother cook.
Somewhere along the way Harry had learned to move like a chef—or rather, he’d learned to cook, but he must always have had this grace, this economy of motion and lucidity of focus. You could learn all kinds of things—you could be a fine cook even if you were hulking in girth and jerky in your movements—but either you naturally moved the way Harry did or you would never learn to. That was it. Why had neither he nor Leo ever learned to cook, really learned to cook, professionally? Suddenly this failing seemed embarrassing to Britt, as if he and Leo had been merely posing as restaurant owners for years, pretending to know more than they did. He did not truly believe this—they had hired a real kitchen staff to do just that—but watching Harry, he now appreciated the brute self-sufficiency of being able to move easily from the front of the house to the back.
Harry produced the last dish with great fanfare. He drew something meaty and brown, dripping, from a braising pot and set it on a metal dish and slid it into the oven. Then he arranged some crisped root vegetables and broccoli rabe on a round white plate, placed the meat at the center, and scattered the whole thing with a blend of something golden and green and finely chopped. He placed this before Britt with the air of a cat delivering a freshly killed gopher.
It was clearly an animal part of some kind: the bones were there, interlocking like bracelet clasps through the center of the meat, and as Britt peered at the circumference of the item he saw an ivory cord running through them like a string through a necklace. “Is this a neck?” he asked, glancing at the dish plans.
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