On this last syllable, Harry’s beer slopped over and onto the floor with a smack. The sound seemed to shake him off his track. He just stood there, as if he were trying to think of something to say.
Throughout all this Britt had gone from slight discomfort to alarm. It wasn’t that Harry’s words were irrational, but they did not quite fit the situation—not in content, not in the rabbity cadence of his speech. Maybe he’d simply had too much to drink, but then he should be slower, shouldn’t he?
Britt took the cup from Harry’s hand and Harry reached for it just as quickly, almost automatically, but Britt cupped a hand over each of Harry’s shoulders and looked hard at him. “Harry. I can’t even tell exactly what you’re upset about anymore. You don’t have to fix anything. It’s all fine.” He saw a few staff members look over at them and lowered his voice. He brushed off Harry’s shoulders and let his hands drop. “You want me to drive you home?”
Harry looked startled. “No,” he said. “I’m fine. I don’t want to be alone.”
Britt opened his mouth to question this, but then Harry looked over Britt’s shoulder and jostled past him. Britt turned to see Harry let out a whoop and pull Camille to him, lifting her easily into a hug and letting her down with a resounding kiss on the cheek. Camille’s pink cheeks and the gleam of her teeth made her look both embarrassed and pleased, as if she’d admonished Harry a hundred times not to do this but had done so only halfheartedly. And indeed Harry had reached for her as naturally as if they’d been doing this for years, as naturally as if he had not just been behaving like a different person altogether.
Camille’s eyes met Britt’s over Harry’s shoulder. She pushed herself away from Harry with a hand on his shoulder and stepped back, swiping her hair off her face. The gesture seemed to compose her, and she turned to Britt and kissed his cheek. It was all so quick that Britt wasn’t quite sure what he’d seen, if he had seen anything at all. He was not sure his own perceptions were sound in any way—hadn’t his brother just seemed so upset? But here he was, ebullient again. And what had that hug really been but his brother embracing a friend? She’d always been clear that they were friends.
Harry was already gone, and Britt watched him make his way through the crowd, accepting congratulations and back slaps. He was suddenly Harry again, triumphant and relaxed, the host of a raucous party.
“Well, hello,” Camille said, smiling. Having materialized so unexpectedly, stripped of the familiarity of her house and the restaurants, she was somehow taller here, more vivid and rangy among the smells of popcorn and beer, the peeling red booths and the cloudy mirrors. Britt was aware of the staff glancing over in amusement and interest.
“This is a surprise,” Britt said. He leaned over to kiss her because that was what he always did, but he was moving robotically, one eye still on his brother. Where Harry had touched her, her cheek was warm, smelling slightly, and confusingly for an instant, of Stray. “How’d you know we were here?”
“Harry,” she said. “He said you’d be at Mack’s.”
“Harry called you?”
“Texted me,” she said. “Honestly, I would have thought you’d call me.”
“It was already late,” Britt said.
Camille looked uncertain for the first time. “Do you not want me to be here? Is that why it was him and not you?”
“Of course I do,” Britt said, but some element was missing. They were looking at each other with a mix of trepidation and annoyance, and neither of them seemed entirely ready to name the reasons. But it was late now, and the tension of the past several weeks had left him depleted and inarticulate. More than Britt wanted to dredge everything up so he could address whatever had just happened with Camille, he wanted everything to be easy again.
“He’s a little worked up about the review,” Britt said. It was a relief to change the subject, but he found it difficult to articulate exactly what had made him uneasy.
“He seems anxious,” Camille said carefully.
“I’d think he’d be relieved,” Britt said. “But he’s freaking out about how to fix whatever might need fixing. And about what Leo thinks.”
“Have you talked to him about…I don’t know, just taking better care of himself?” she said.
“I try,” Britt said, but he wasn’t sure that was true. He talked to Harry about not flying off the handle; it wasn’t quite the same thing.
“Because he seems a little wound up,” she continued, a touch more forcefully. “Is this typical for him?”
“Kind of,” Britt said, frowning. “Listen, can we not discuss him the whole night? Let’s just have a good time.”
Camille blinked. For a time neither of them said anything, and then she took a look around the room and shrugged, gazing away from him. “Fine. Whatever. Maybe Leo can calm him down,” she said.
“Meaning what?” said Britt. He sounded petty even to himself.
Camille was staring at him. “Meaning there’s Leo, over by the bar, and maybe he can calm him down.”
And so he was, making his way through the scrum. Harry slouched just a little as he accepted a hug from Leo, his posture suddenly sagging between exhaustion and relief, so that for a moment it looked as if Leo were holding him up.
Britt looked away. Was it just petulance? He thought it might also be exhaustion, from the constant vigilance Harry seemed to require even as he saved his best self for everyone else. Britt pulled Camille a little closer to him, wanting her then, even if her loyalty was divided, even if he was angry with her too. He could see by the change in her expression that he wasn’t looking celebratory now, if he ever had been. She opened her mouth to speak but then seemed to change her mind. Instead she just pressed her forehead against his temple. The night seemed to have been going on forever.
“YOU’RE LOOKING PRETTY TIRED,” Leo said. Leo looked Harry up and down, taking in his frame. “You ever eat?”
“Of course,” said Harry.
“I didn’t mean when your body has to consume itself. I meant a meal.”
“Jesus, you and Jenelle should get together. Suddenly everyone’s so concerned about my diet. I’m just not cooking for myself a whole lot.”
“Who’s Jenelle? The reviewer said you were cranelike.”
“Oh, right. That’s helpful, eh?” Harry swirled the liquid in his glass. “So, what’d you think?”
“I thought it was great!” Leo said.
“Seriously?”
“Listen, by any standard it was a great review. I’m proud of you.”
Harry looked toward the door, and when Leo turned he saw the back of Britt’s head as he slipped out. “That means a lot to me,” Harry said, but his voice had lost some energy.
“Well, I’m psyched for you,” Leo said, a little desperately. He wasn’t sure how many more ways he could say it.
“Could’ve been yours too,” Harry said. “All the glory, I mean.” He gestured in the direction of a group of dishwashers chugging beers in unison.
“Let’s not take it there,” Leo said, but Harry shook his head.
“It’s not a dig,” he said. “Well, yes it was. But I can’t figure it out, Leo. I made this great space. I built an amazing menu. I was bracing myself for a review because I thought that would tell me, but basically she loved it except for a couple things like the lamb’s neck.” Harry was standing very close to Leo, his gaze darting searchingly around Leo’s face.
“Is that it,” Harry continued, “the lamb’s neck? Was that why you passed? Because it’s one plate of food. And I keep fucking looking at my restaurant and trying to figure out what’s missing, and it’s making me nuts, because as far as I can tell, nothing is. But something must be, so just tell me. Tell me what you see that I don’t.”
“It was just me,” Leo said softly. He had to take a step back; beneath the beer on Harry’s breath was a desperate ketonic edge. “Harry, I don’t know. I thought it was the right choice at the time. I don’t know if it was. It was what I thought back th
en. And now it’s done.”
CHAPTER 17
THE POSTREVIEW RUSH BEGAN like a shot at five o’clock the next night and kicked the shit out of them straight through until midnight. Each subsequent evening hurtled over them the same way. Every Stray employee was on deck until the end. The tables filled; the bar was crowded with people both standing and sitting, chomping on appetizers and waiting for tables or just there to have a drink and a snack.
Harry had always imagined success as a happy clamor of inquisitive faces and ringing glassware, but the reality was chaotic and even a little frightening—he had dreams of running through the streets of Linden, pursued by a smiling crowd that increased each time he looked back.
He upped his orders of food and booze and upped them again, trying to walk the balance between running out and having product that went bad before he could use it. Who knew if the rush would continue? But it did. Each day he got to the restaurant earlier than the day before, as the amount of food he had to prep continued to grow. In the last moments before sleep he often saw piles of shallots in his drifting mind, heard the thunk of the Hobart mixer, or found that he was holding the fingers of his left hand in the clawed position in which that hand remained much of the day, holding food in place while the knife continually rose and fell.
Spring streamed past them and became summer. By the time June came around, the restaurant had been at high speed for two months, and Harry couldn’t see any sign that it was letting up. Now and then he caught a glimpse of Britt moving about the dining room, where there were never quite enough servers. Britt looked as tired as the rest of them did. Jenelle and Hector were even less talkative than before, too busy hunched over their workstations even during prep to converse beyond the basics of position and tools. Even the servers, whose general pallor had always suggested a variety of unsavory pastimes, were paler than usual, with pouches beneath their heavily lined eyes.
But Harry thought he and Britt might be okay. They hadn’t fought again, at least. He was taking this as a good sign. Once a week or so Camille appeared at the bar to meet up with Britt, and when she did Harry often slipped an extra tempura shrimp into the fryer or sliced off a crisped bit of chicken and made it into an amuse. She ate the dishes, she arrived and departed with a wave, but she seemed to him to be a distant celebrity, shiny and eye-catching, friendly but remote.
He left the lamb’s neck on the menu, but he could not stop tweaking it. He tried it with artichokes, with toasts and little coins of new potato. He tried it with no starch at all, just carrot and parsley. He tried skewing it sweet-tart with gooseberries and skewing it savory and dark with thyme and garlic and braised cipolline onions. They all sold about the same—regularly, if not flying off the shelves. The dish was a more of a cult item, one a guest ordered as much to announce himself to the restaurant as to allow the restaurant to show itself to him. The point was, nothing revealed itself to Harry as the obvious course of action. He liked the dish no matter what, he would eat it no matter what, and he knew that this was a problem. A chef should be able to break down a dish to its components in a few bites, not view it as a mere lump of tastiness that had just appeared on a plate. The more Harry tried to fix it, the more confused he became.
On the Saturday when he got the idea to try it with pesto, he began his day at the farmers’ market. There was a little weekend market about fifteen minutes away, where he often shopped in a chef’s coat, not only to buy supplies but because people loved to see a chef at the market. They asked questions about where he worked and what he’d do with garlic scapes. It was better than a commercial. The facts that this summer was hotter than the last and he felt dizzy and damp standing in the blaze of the morning sun, that it took longer to get in and out when he had to stop and chat all the time, and that every moment he was not barreling through his prep list it felt like something was drawing more tightly around his chest were not enough reason to skip the chef’s coat.
The pesto was going to be made with garlic scapes, which shouldn’t have been difficult: blanch them, shock them, puree them with olive oil, lemon juice, cheese, and nuts. Boom. The result was supposed to be a vibrant green paste, garlicky in a subtler, greener-tasting way than one made with bulb garlic. He’d do a toast with pesto, maybe, serve it alongside the neck, or toss little new potatoes in it.
The problem arose once he was back at the restaurant with his produce. All he had to do was choose the right nut. Pine nuts, walnuts, almonds? He knew he should simply make a tiny batch of each and taste it, but he got caught up thinking about the rest of the menu. You didn’t want almonds on too many dishes, and they were already in a tart. Walnuts? He was low on walnuts, and anyway they might disappear into the pesto. Or maybe they’d be a kind of stealth ingredient.
While he ruminated on this he started to put together flatbread dough, but as he was hauling out flour and yeast he began picturing how the bread would work on the line. To get the best from a flatbread, to get its blistered edges and those chestnut-crowned bubbles, one had to cook it like a pizza, with last-minute intense heat. He couldn’t dedicate one whole oven to the heat he’d require, and anyway it might heat up the whole bar. He supposed he could do it in a hot oiled pan, but his range was crowded as it was, and he didn’t know if he had room for yet another dish cooked in a big sauté pan.
By this point Harry was standing before the mixer with an empty bag of flour, several pounds of which he’d already dumped into the bowl, working through calculations that should have been brisk and simple but that felt impossible to reconcile. Maybe he’d skip the flatbread and throw the flour back in its bag, but he could not recall whether he had added salt and yeast yet.
He began sifting through the flour with a spoon, looking for traces of yellowish powdered yeast or the coarser grains of salt. As he was doing this, he began thinking about the nuts again. He was wondering if he should toast them instead of blanching them. Maybe toasting was one of those things no one did but they ought to, one of those little tweaks that elevated a whole dish. Maybe toasting would work better with almonds than walnuts, or maybe walnuts over almonds, but then again maybe toasting would bring pine nuts back into play.
He realized that he was still standing there, hunched over the bowl of flour, stirring it with a spoon. He’d forgotten why he was digging through a bowl of flour in the first place.
Harry decided to leave it for a while, while he went out for almonds or walnuts or whatever. Whatever was cheapest, he decided. That was a reasonable way of making a decision—do what won’t bankrupt your restaurant.
And then he was out in the sunlight, and it was nine o’clock in the morning, and he was walking to his truck and trying to concentrate on pesto-smeared flatbread beside the lamb’s neck. Was pesto too much of a cliché? Was flatbread a cop-out? Then he was back to the flatbread question, wondering if he could use the salamander for flatbread, if that would be genius or if it would irreparably slow everything down.
He got into his truck and began to drive, but he did so unthinkingly, turning according to some hazy instinct rather than logic, ending up going in the opposite direction from the store where he’d intended to go. The drive kept proceeding in these fits and starts—he’d correct himself, turn in the proper direction, then start thinking about some minutiae to do with nut variety or yeast or the end of the garlic scape season and whether anyone even wanted them anymore, because for a while there it seemed as if everyone was cooking with garlic scapes. Except why should seasonal produce become a cliché during its brief heyday? Was a tomato a cliché? A zucchini? Maybe the garlic scape would soon become as commonplace as carrots, so that it didn’t feel like such a trend to use them.
There were too many variables before he would ever get that far.
He had just thought of pistachios and was digging in the glove compartment for a scrap of paper on which to write that when the van pulled out in front of him. Or maybe it simply pulled into traffic at a reasonable distance and he failed to see it. He became aw
are of the van’s dull blue paint looming before him the moment his truck collided with it, creating a terrific bang and a flutter of broken glass.
Harry sat there clutching the steering wheel as the van doors opened and began to disgorge a number of flustered but unharmed senior citizens.
The driver of the van, a man in his sixties or seventies with thick square glasses and a floppy hat that hung down his back on a string, came rushing around to Harry’s truck. Harry gazed down at him, at the man’s fingers curled over the lip of the half-opened window.
“Young man,” the driver said. “Young man, are you all right?”
Harry knew you weren’t supposed to admit fault, and he wasn’t even sure it was his fault, but the man seemed so flustered, his glasses opaque and his white hair endearingly fluffy in the sunlight, his head turning this way and that as he fretted, explaining that he was supposed to be driving a group of seniors to the theater that night and with a broken taillight he couldn’t.
“It’s my fault,” Harry said, and he got out of the truck and joined the circle of people inspecting the damage. The truck was nearly unharmed, with a small dent in its fender, while the van’s taillight was pushed inward, the glass shattered on the roadway. The disparity seemed to convince the van’s driver of Harry’s guilt, and he turned rather cool and brusque as Harry wrote down his information. But when Harry pressed the paper into the man’s hand, that palm was extraordinarily soft, like a child’s, and a shudder of relief and retroactive fright coursed through him. The others got back in their van, busily discussing him, and left him standing beside his truck.
Harry wasn’t sure what to do. He should call his insurance company, but there was no need to phone the police. He got back in his truck and started it up. His hands were still shaking from the shock of the accident, but driving seemed to calm him. He forgot that he had begun the drive looking for a grocery store. He was just moving, in a rickety truck, and the pure uncomplicated motion felt so calming that he merged onto the highway. The blacktop stretched out before him, smooth and flat and flanked by Pennsylvania’s rolling hills.
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