Bread and Butter

by Michelle Wildgen

  Britt sat down on a barstool. “Is this really how you do things?” he said. “We had a problem tonight that should have been totally run-of-the-mill. You can’t go around this town alienating people we work with. It never occurred to me that I had to say that.”

  “Would it have killed you to back me up on this?” Harry said. Britt could see the wetness of Harry’s eyes in the faint light from the kitchen. His brother smelled of beer, cooking grease, and something sharp and adrenaline-heavy, like ozone. “You can take a buyout whenever you feel like it and go back to serving foie gras and trolling the dining room for women. I have no other place. This is all on me.”

  “Why the hell am I here if that’s how you see it? Why was it so crucial to have me on board that you could never just shut the fuck up about it?”

  “Oh, please.” Harry turned away and began chucking pans into a bus tub, shaking his head in disgust.

  “All summer long!” Britt said. He was all pulse; his body was surging with an unbearable electricity. He jumped off the stool and began stalking in circles as he ranted. “‘Oh, wouldn’t it be perfect if we worked together, don’t we all need to be in this together?’ No matter what we said, you never listened.”

  “So why’d you buy in, for chrissake?” Harry said. “To placate me?”

  “I thought you knew what you were doing. I thought I’d underestimated you. I was under the misapprehension that you wanted my help, probably because you badgered me for months—”

  Harry hollered at the ceiling, “I wanted Leo’s help!”

  Britt stopped moving. Harry fixed his gaze on the wall just beyond his brother’s head, shaking his own head.

  “You little shit,” Britt said. He breathed deeply, waiting fruitlessly for his heart to stop knocking in his chest, and then he got up and walked out.

  CAMILLE WAS WAITING AT HIS HOUSE when Britt arrived. It was too hard to go from that aggression to the calmest sight on earth, which was Camille’s sleeping profile.

  She stirred when he got into bed. “You’re late tonight,” she said. She nestled against his rib cage.

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t a good night,” Britt said. “The dishwasher broke and Harry got all Cro-Magnon on the repair guy. I never know when he’ll act like a normal person and when he’ll Travis Bickle on someone.”

  Camille blinked, frowning. “Weren’t you going to talk with him about this?”

  “When did we talk about me talking to him?” Britt directed this toward the ceiling, but Camille detached herself from beneath his arm and leaned over him, making him look her in the eye. He lay there like a pinned insect.

  “When he wouldn’t let me come to the friends-and-family,” she said. “I asked you to calm him down. Or maybe I just asked you to go easy on him.”

  She sat up and crossed her legs beneath the sheets, but Britt remained prone, hoping she would take the hint and lie back down. When she didn’t, he finally sat up too and said, “You try talking to him and see how well it goes. It’s like there’s a language barrier or something. He makes it all about me backing him up or not.”

  “Well, are you?” Camille asked. “Backing him up, I mean?”

  “Of course not!” Britt said. “How am I supposed to back up behavior like that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know he admires you and he may need a little extra from you right now.”

  “Maybe,” Britt said. How could he possibly tell her that Harry had settled for him? It was too humiliating to admit. Camille leveled her exacting vision on everything from her earrings to the dish of apples on her coffee table to the lighting of a restaurant, and that had made it so satisfying to have her admiration. He felt he’d been selected for a prize.

  Now Britt watched her face, that unknowable oval, and wondered if he’d been preening all along while she held her opinions in check. He felt a flash of empathy for Harry, asking Camille to wait till Stray was perfect. At the time Britt had thought it ludicrous. Maybe Harry had told Camille months ago that he’d ended up with the lesser partner.

  Camille looked at the clock. She seemed to make a decision, and in a lighter tone brought up a trade show she was attending the following week, but Britt was in no mood to be placated now.

  “Do I not get to be pissed at Harry in front of you?” he said. “Am I talking to my girlfriend or my brother’s friend? Because I just want to know for the future.”

  “I knew you couldn’t get over it,” she said. Britt went cold. She sat back against the headboard and crossed her arms.

  “You said there was never anything to worry about.”

  “It hardly seemed worth getting into it. But now you’re acting like I’m so unfair to you just because I don’t instantly agree that you’re right. I get it—Harry’s being annoying. He’s your brother. Don’t you care why he’s acting like this?”

  “I don’t think there’s any big reason. He’s stressed and taking it out on everyone else.” This wasn’t entirely what Britt believed—in truth he had never seen Harry behave quite so badly as in these last few weeks, but he had no intention of admitting this to Camille, not now. “All I want is to be able to talk about my business and my brother without you thinking you have to automatically play devil’s advocate every time he comes up.”

  Camille said, “I hate to tell you this, but I actually disagree with you.” She bent over the bed and fumbled around the floor, then sat up and began tugging on a pair of jeans. “And for the record, you’ve been talking about nothing but your business and your brother.”

  It occurred to him that she really would leave, and this frightened him, both because she wanted to be away from him more than with him and because it meant he’d never get his side of things across. Unsure which point to address first, Britt chose the easiest one. “Hey, come on. Camille. Look, I’m sorry I forgot to ask how you are,” he said. “I was just looking forward to venting a little.”

  “This is not how you’re supposed to be waking me up,” she said, but she stopped moving and stood beside the bed, her white camisole bunched over her jeans. “Not with a diatribe, and without at least a perfunctory ‘How’s your day?’ I had a day. I did things besides wait here like the interchangeable woman to see how yours went.” Her voice had lost a tiny bit of its edge.

  Britt leaned across the bed and grabbed her wrist. “I’m sorry.” He felt drained of his anger and shocked at hers; till now they’d barely disagreed over what to have for lunch. “Stay.”

  “I don’t want to commiserate with you about Harry,” she said softly. “I’m still his friend.”

  “Okay,” Britt said, though it wasn’t. But he saw the chance to get their equilibrium back and he needed it. He and Camille were still too new to be addressing any deep wounds; there shouldn’t even be any. His confidence was rattled, and right now he just wanted to make the whole night go away.

  She watched him for a second, then pulled off her jeans, folded them neatly, and turned away to lay them on the chair. When she got back into bed, she seemed uncertain how close to come, and he pulled her to him, holding her narrow, fine-boned face between his palms.

  He could not stop himself from insisting, “You know I’m not really worried about you and Harry, right?”

  “I guess not,” she said, and, pathetically, he decided to pretend that she had reassured him. “Okay,” he said, and kissed her, hoping to dispel whatever had just sprung up between them.

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN BRITT ARRIVED AT THE RESTAURANT the next morning, Harry was at the range, shaking a pan over a high flame. The two looked at each other for a beat, and then Harry said, “Have a seat. I’m trying something here.” His tone was neutral but certainly not apologetic. Britt sat down at the bar, readying himself.

  He had been too discombobulated to sleep soundly, and Camille had been restless all night before rising at six. At least she had kissed him before she’d gone, and it seemed right. Nevertheless, now he felt surly and uncommunicative, disinclined to offe
r a word.

  Harry added several spoonfuls of an orange-red sauce to the pan and then a handful of scallion and tossed it all with a few deft movements before transferring it to a plate. He sprinkled sesame seeds over the top and set the plate before Britt, then handed him a fork and kept one for himself.

  “This is kind of the traditional way of doing the rice sticks,” Harry said, cutting a soft white square. “I woke up feeling hungover even though I didn’t drink enough to be. Anyway, I was craving it. I figured I’d at least eat the real thing for once, or as close as I can make it, before we yank it.”

  Britt tried a steaming bite. The dish looked as if it would be fiery, but the chile sauce was surprisingly rounded and unvinegary. “They don’t sell,” he said.

  Harry shrugged. “Off it goes.” He took another bite and chewed, gazing out the front window. “I’m sorry,” he said. He spoke so conversationally that for a moment Britt misunderstood him. He thought Harry was apologizing for the failure of the dish.

  “For what?” Britt asked, and he could see that Harry understood that he meant not You did nothing wrong but For which offense?

  “I went overboard on the dishwasher guy,” Harry said. “And with Jenelle. And I didn’t mean it about Leo.”

  “Yes, you did,” Britt said. “You did. Let’s not sit here and bullshit each other.”

  “I wanted Leo in on this,” Harry admitted. “I wanted all three of us in on it. And to be honest, I still don’t know what the fuck Leo wanted that he didn’t see here.”

  Britt shrugged.

  “Leo has the most experience of any of us. He was in the business before you joined up. That’s what I meant.”

  “I gave you a chance to tell me if you didn’t want to partner up,” Britt said. That was the worst part—how stupid he felt, having spent months sharing all his hard-won wisdom and guiding his little brother, now knowing what Harry must have thought all along.

  “I wasn’t sure how it’d work at first, with just the two of us,” Harry said. “But it was working really well.”

  “You think so?” Britt said. Harry looked startled. “I never know what you’re going to do when things go wrong,” Britt continued. “Something always will—crises happen all the time. You have to thrive on that, not lose it.”

  Harry said, “I know. Last night was a bad night.”

  Britt didn’t know what to say. Harry seemed to feel that a bad night still justified him.

  “I kind of miss the school year,” Harry said. “You work your way through the first chunk of fall, then it’s midterms, then the next chunk, then it’s finals. Time goes a lot faster.”

  Britt said, “It’s been a long time since school, Harry.”

  Harry colored slightly but didn’t look at him. “Well, sure,” he said. “It’s just something I was thinking about today.”

  Neither of them spoke until the rice stick was gone.

  “You hear anything about a review yet?” Harry said.

  “They’ll let us know,” Britt said. “Usually they need to take a photo. Harry, this person isn’t going to be our new mentor—it’s just going to be some reporter moonlighting from the sports desk or something, you know? It’s not the New York Times.”

  “So it doesn’t matter?” Harry said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “You’re just expecting too much from it. They’ll describe the food and say some stuff we agree with and some that feels completely random and deranged. That’s how reviews always feel.”

  “I’m just trying to be positive about it,” Harry said.

  Britt sighed. “I know you are,” he said. They seemed to have exhausted their capacity for overt conflict without actually resolving anything. The moment had slipped past them.

  Britt gazed around the restaurant space. He could hear Harry drinking water, which irritated him more than it should have. He believed the two of them could work together that night without any hostilities spilling over, but the mutedness and evasiveness of Harry’s apology left Britt feeling as if Harry hadn’t really heard half the conversation. His manner now seemed to leave no room for Britt still to be angry—and he was. Because he’d let Harry cajole him into a few moments of regular conversation, it would appear churlish to return to the problem. Apparently Harry got to decide not only when to set a fire but when it pleased him to extinguish it.

  Their reflections in the grand mahogany mirror looked hazy and distant, Britt’s face a blur set with two smeared eyes and a grim mouth. He watched the reflection of the back of Harry’s head, his bony shoulders and his wristbones like pebbles, as the image began to gather dishes. Britt had always imagined Harry’s years away from home as carefree and picaresque, but maybe they’d been darker and more violent than that. Perhaps that was how his brother had become this other man, whom Britt felt he might not really know and might not have chosen.

  “I think I was wrong about that mirror,” Britt said. “It brings the whole room down.”

  “No, I like it,” Harry said. “For a while I didn’t, but I do now.”

  CHAPTER 16

  LEO’S HOME KITCHEN WAS A DISGRACE. He’d been meaning to renovate it for years to get rid of its ancient gas range and crappy oak cabinets, the white paint left over from Frances’s first paint job, which was now a yellowed ivory. Who had time to renovate a kitchen he never cooked in? The kitchen that mattered was at Winesap.

  Thea looked all wrong in here, which was what bothered him. Her white limbs only made the older paint and appliances seem duller by comparison—the surroundings failed to elevate her. A chef like Thea should be cooking in a renovated kitchen.

  But at least it was private. Her car was parked in his garage while his was in the driveway, and he had pulled the shades down. This wasn’t a big city; who knew who might be driving past his house and see her at his stove, hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed unmistakably casually and intimately in a T-shirt of Leo’s and a pair of cut-off leggings?

  It was just after ten. Was it embarrassing that they’d left the restaurant at nine—it had been a quiet night—and had already had time to dash home to his bedroom and to start dinner? Leo tried to draw things out, but they never managed this until they’d rushed each other the first time and then settled in to luxuriate for the second. And they were always so hungry, depleted either from sex or from work or from both, a blend of exhaustion that was strangely satisfying, because it left them wallowing in pure sensation until they were tired and sated, their clothes trailing through the house.

  Thea barely tired over a ten-hour shift, thanks to running and swimming. The disparity in stamina between them had become a little embarrassing as he had started to realize that her portion sizes were half his, that in her free time she really liked great bowls of fresh vegetables and brown rice. Leo had the distinct sense that the first thing he’d cooked for her, the eggs and chorizo, had branded him. He’d only been pleasantly buzzed that night, still grateful for the dinner she’d sent up earlier and trying to impress her by doing something like rendering fat from dried chorizo instead of copping out with a drizzle of olive oil. But now he was convinced that part of the reason Thea had avoided introducing him to her daughter for several months was not just sensible maternal caution, and not just that she wasn’t sure the relationship would last, but that she thought he might drop dead at any moment.

  Leo had no idea what one did with a three-year-old, and he wasn’t entirely certain why he had been lobbying to spend time with this one, whom he had met only once, in passing, at a staff party. There was always a slight air of gamesmanship in his time with Thea, a pattern set by their working relationship and still in place in their romantic one. Maybe his desire to meet this child came about only because Thea had hesitated, and maybe she’d hesitated at least partially out of the habit of not immediately accommodating him. Or perhaps she wasn’t wild about drawing a three-year-old into an illicit relationship. You couldn’t count on a child not to spill secrets.

  Another thoug
ht occurred to Leo: maybe it simply felt sleazy to her, the rush to sex, secret lunches, separate cars.

  Leo watched Thea toss the spaghetti in tomato, olive oil, and scallions. How was it that she was so calm about it all? She was too sensible and professional to be doing what they were doing, but here she was. Leo didn’t know whether to be ecstatic that he’d managed to tempt her to cross a boundary or worried that this meant she was not as levelheaded as he’d always believed her to be. Being at work with Thea but unable to touch her left him in a constant state of anticipation, suspended between the workaday present and the vivid, saturated past and future. It was a pleasurable ache but an exhausting one. He was the only one who knew her this way, he often reflected. He’d once thought of her gaze, when it landed on him, as chilly and searching, but now he found her thrillingly direct.

  He hadn’t told Britt. He hadn’t told anyone, and he couldn’t imagine a circumstance in which he would be able to. But he was a terrible liar. If anyone asked him straight-out if he had been dating his own executive chef, he’d probably get out a calendar and chart it for them. No one did ask, however, and he tried to believe that this was because no one suspected. This contradicted everything he’d ever seen in the restaurant business, where knowledge was shared osmotically, flashing from busser to cook to waiter to owner like a nerve impulse. He comforted himself by remembering that he and Thea were all business everywhere but here. Yes, people might have seen them leave Mack’s together, but they were colleagues. And yes, Britt had looked suspicious at Stray’s friends-and-family, but he’d said nothing to Leo since. Could anyone really know anything just from seeing two people go through a doorway one after the other?

  They could, of course. He could. He’d seen it a thousand times, in owners and managers who were foolish enough to do what he was doing.

  Leo kept watching her bare feet against the floor, the flex of tendons and the spread of her heels as she shifted her weight.