Bread and Butter

by Michelle Wildgen

  Leo sat down on Thea’s couch. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You knew,” Britt said bitterly. “You saw him. You’re just not paying attention.” Leo heard the catch in his voice, as if Britt had sat down suddenly and heavily. “I can see where the water started in that pot and it’s almost boiled away. He’s been gone a while.”

  CHAPTER 18

  BRITT TURNED OFF THE FLAME BENEATH the pot of water and threw out the soggy vegetables, but left the flour in case it was salvageable. He tried Harry’s cell phone, which went straight to voice mail, and then he tried a text and an e-mail too. He did this every half hour, in case the previous messages were somehow not getting through.

  He examined the doors and windows, but there was no broken lock or even a cracked window. Out on the sidewalk he looked at the building’s façade, trying to tell whether it appeared to be the kind of place that was easy to break into, where someone might be working alone with a bunch of cash. It wasn’t—not the cash part, anyway, but people might not know that. Teenagers were smoking on the curb in one direction, and shadows were shifting inside the grimy bodega windows in the other.

  Through the scrim of cigarette smoke the teenagers’ skin was pale and pebbled with acne. They hadn’t seen Harry. “You didn’t see anything unusual, did you?” Britt pressed them. “Anyone hanging around the restaurant?”

  “You mean like us?” one kid said, and they laughed longer than necessary. Britt stood there for another beat, wondering if they’d just told him something, but then he realized it was only a joke, at his expense. They’d forgotten him almost before he gave up and left to talk with the bodega owner.

  None of them seemed very concerned, but he couldn’t tell whether that was because the neighborhood was safer than he thought or just so sketchy that the locals were inured to its dangers.

  When he hadn’t heard from Harry by twelve thirty, he phoned the police. As he dialed he had the sensation of observing his own actions, as if he were watching a movie in which the clueless brother is about to get terrible news, and he did not know whether this was detachment or insight. But the police had no reports of anyone like Harry doing anything at all. They agreed that it was odd for someone to leave his prep work half done, but not so odd that they would pursue it yet.

  “But he’s been under a lot of stress,” Britt said. Was he being alarmist or not alarmist enough?

  “Are you worried he would harm himself?” The man’s voice was brisk but faintly disappointed, as if Britt should have led with that.

  “No,” he said automatically, but he wasn’t sure that was right, either. “Deliberately? Or accidentally?”

  “Deliberately,” the policeman said. “Anyone could hurt himself accidentally.”

  “I don’t think so,” Britt said. Harry had been under duress, but he had also been coming to work and going home and generally doing what needed to be done; he was just being ornery and touchy about it. Still, Britt had hoped for some kind of reassurance from the police—he hoped they’d be so used to real issues that they would scoff at his. Obviously Harry is fine, he wanted someone to say. Nothing you’ve said sounds that bad. Instead the police were taking him just seriously enough to be frightening, sounding just disapproving enough for him to begin to realize that in his own story he sounded lax and irresponsible.

  The policeman interrupted, newly brisk. He seemed to have abruptly reached his limit. “I have your information and your brother’s information. If you don’t hear from him by this time tomorrow or the next day, give us a call back. And call the hospitals, just in case. Keep trying him. Ninety-nine percent of the time there’s just a misunderstanding.”

  “That often?” Britt asked hungrily.

  “Something like that,” he said.

  Britt stayed on the line, not knowing what to say. Nothing had really been accomplished; it seemed wrong to hang up. Finally he realized that the line was dead.

  When Hector arrived, Britt tried to casually feel out whether there was any chance of his working the line. This was around one o’clock, and Hector was standing before a table stocked with bus tubs of produce and chocolate and bottles of liqueur and vanilla. He was holding a prep list with only one item crossed off. Britt started to ask, but then he recalled how recently Hector had rebelled against some perceived slight by filling the kitchen with trays of marshmallows and a fudgy, throat-coating penuche.

  In the end, he just lied. He said that Harry was ill and possibly contagious, that he couldn’t be sure whether it was even safe to let him work tonight. Hector nodded shortly and returned to his work, but although Jenelle maintained her placid expression, her dark eyes were as watchful as a crow’s.

  “I can’t work the line by myself,” she said. “Not on a Saturday night.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Of course not.”

  “I don’t suppose you could work it with me?”

  He laughed a little bitterly. “I wish I could,” he said. He looked around the room and checked his watch once more. “Just keep going for now. I’ll take care of it. If you can prep extra, though, do. I’ll call one of the dish guys and ask them to come in early and you get ’em doing the prep they can handle, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, and gave him one last glance, a sight that tightened Britt’s gut into a fist. Skepticism in one’s employees never boded well long-term. He would rather have seen outright rage.

  By now it was nearly one thirty. This time he tried Camille, on the off chance that Harry was with her and had persuaded her he wasn’t much needed in his own restaurant to prepare for a jam-packed Saturday night.

  “Listen. Any chance you’ve talked to Harry today?”

  He was expecting defensiveness—they had tacitly buried the night at Mack’s and their argument after the dishwashing episode, and Britt believed that recently she had not even spoken to Harry except to say hello when she came to the restaurant. But she must have sensed that he wasn’t asking out of jealousy, and her voice shifted crisply into office mode while in the background music continued to play jauntily. “I haven’t. What do you need?”

  “I need my brother in the restaurant,” Britt said, ducking behind the office door. “I don’t know where he is. He hasn’t called you, e-mailed, anything? He’s about six hours late to work.”

  “What?” The music disappeared. “He’s not there? Are you sure he’s not at home?”

  “He’s not. I tried my parents. They’re starting to freak out. He left at the usual time this morning, and he was here at some point, but then he left.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” she said soothingly. “He probably needed to get something.”

  “He left all his prep work in the middle,” Britt said. Each time he said this it sounded worse. He wanted not to say it anymore. “He left pots on the stove, flour in the mixer.”

  There was a long silence. “I’m checking my phone. Nothing. What should we do? Did you call any hospitals?”

  Britt rubbed his brow. “Not yet.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “It’ll give me something to concentrate on. Let me help you.”

  “That’d be good. I have to call Leo,” Britt said. “We have this lean, mean kitchen staff and there is not one extra hand in an emergency, which it’s now clear to me was a terrible business plan. I need a pair of hands up here.”

  “You’re opening anyway?”

  “Should I not be opening tonight?” he asked, stricken. “Do you think this is that bad?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It just popped out. No, you should be open. You’d feel stupid otherwise, when he comes back in half an hour and you’ve closed it all down.”

  “You’re right,” he said. He’d never been so relieved by a statement so obviously made up, but Camille sounded sure. “Listen, I have to go fix this. Call me if you see him, okay?”

  “Okay, then. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

  “You don’t have to come here,” he said.

  “I�
��m coming. I’ll help you set up the dining room while you deal with other things. I can cut vegetables and do basic kitchen help if your cooks give me a little direction. I’ll bring something decent to wear in case you need me on the floor.”

  For a moment Britt felt slightly weakened by emotion for her—for her complete reliability, her willingness, and her universal competence. When she spoke so calmly and authoritatively, it made him think Harry must be fine, as if Camille must somehow know Harry better than he did. For once, this seemed like a positive thing.

  “You’re okay, aren’t you?” he said, wanting confirmation.

  “Sure,” she said, but she sounded less confident now. “Harry must be too. He’s just…I don’t know. He fell asleep somewhere, maybe.”

  They both paused, letting that idea hang there in all its implausibility. After they hung up, he took a breath and then stared at his hands for a long moment. He wanted to work, to address the immediate needs of the restaurant, because that was such a manageable problem. You needed bodies in a restaurant. You had the necessary number of hands or work failed, and that was all there was to it. He could find people. But that felt wrong too, to focus on something as small as call sheets and prep work when his brother was gone. He should be driving the streets or combing the neighborhood.

  Leo answered on the second ring. In the background Britt could hear the sounds of people moving around and yelling to one another, and he wished he too were in the office of Winesap, where it was hectic and active with people. “Any luck?” Leo said.

  “No,” Britt replied. “The cops say to wait, and Camille’s trying the hospitals. I’m just trying to focus on the restaurant for now.”

  “The hospitals? Jesus. I guess so. Did you take a walk around the building, around that neighborhood? That place has a million little alleys.”

  “I looked,” Britt said. “I asked around, I looked around—he’s not here.” He took a breath. “Listen, I have to open as usual and I need a set of hands, Leo.”

  “Shouldn’t we be looking for Harry?” Leo said.

  “We are looking. But what am I supposed to do? We can’t skip a weekend night, and we can’t just have a closed sign up for no reason. It’ll make us seem like we’re circling the drain.” The needs of the restaurant may have been many, but they were simple too.

  “How come you never lined up any backup kitchen staff?” Leo said distractedly.

  “We were keeping costs down. I guess it was a bad plan, but this is the one thing I can fix right now. Is there any way I could borrow Thea? You could expedite for one night—”

  “I don’t think that’ll work,” Leo said.

  “What, you can’t expedite?”

  “I can do that, but I can’t spare Thea,” Leo said. “I’m sorry, I know you’re freaking out, but she’s my executive chef.”

  Britt said nothing, trying to control his temper. Leo’s voice was as sharp as if Britt had asked him to send over the entire Winesap staff.

  “I know it’s a big favor,” Britt said slowly. “And I’m sorry for even asking. But this is a pretty special circumstance—”

  “Jesus,” Leo blurted. “I said no, okay?”

  Britt could hear the sound of a door closing, and he knew Leo had shooed away whoever might have been in his office and was probably now standing at the locked door. And Britt would not have brought up what he did then, except that he’d been running on adrenaline and uncertainty for several hours, he was exhausted and the night had not even begun, and he had no idea where his brother was, whether he’d been so tired or distraught that he’d fallen asleep at the wheel or failed to see a mugger until one was right behind him, or had gotten in a fight and taken the brunt. Leo had been so happy that he hadn’t paid any more attention to Harry than Britt himself had.

  “Leo,” he said, drawing it out. Actually, he savored it, because this was the one moment in this terrible day when he felt absolute certainty. “Just because Thea tears herself away from you for one goddamn night doesn’t mean she’s dumping you. All you had to do was suggest someone else. This is why everyone knows about you—because you cannot lie. Not even to save your life. You never could.”

  The silence stretched out for nearly a minute. Britt started to wonder if Leo was going to respond at all. “I know you heard me,” he said. “I can hear you breathing.”

  “Everyone knows what?” Leo finally said, and this was what finally set Britt off.

  “About you and Thea, obviously! How dumb do you think I am? Do you think a person without a kidney condition needs to be walking past the line to get glasses of water that many times a night? You’re not acting like a boss, you’re acting like a jealous boyfriend. What d’you think I’m going to do? Because right now I don’t even care. Another time I might have the patience to pretend that everyone from the newest busboy to the sous chef to your brother and business partner doesn’t know about you guys. God knows I have been trying to be discreet until you came to your senses. But I don’t know where our brother is. I don’t know if he’s okay, and I don’t know who can do his job. That you have lost your fucking mind is a topic for another time.”

  He stopped, out of breath, and waited.

  Britt had been debating how to address this situation for weeks, and now he had chosen the worst possible tactic. He didn’t even care. Outside his own office door, he heard Juan arriving, Jenelle’s voice heading into the kitchen to start him on prep. He had almost forgotten Leo was on the line when he finally heard him say quietly, “Hold on.”

  Britt listened to the sounds of the phone being set down, doors opening, faint voices, boxes being thumped to the ground.

  What had Camille planned to do today, before he’d called? Sometimes you felt that loneliness on a bustling summer Saturday, as the restaurant geared up for service—or a crisis—while outside, people strolled happily around yards and shopping malls, wondering where to eat that evening, distant as a fairy tale.

  Leo’s voice was suddenly there again, cheerful and false and loud. “Jason says he would be happy to help you out,” he said. “We can work out the pay tomorrow, but he’s on his way over now.”

  “I’ll pay him whatever he wants,” Britt said.

  “You can tell him in a few minutes, then,” Leo said.

  “I will,” Britt said. “Listen—”

  “I’ll keep trying Harry,” Leo said. “Let me know the instant you hear from him.” His voice was the silky professional one he used with job candidates who had fatally failed to impress him, with vendors who would never see another order from him.

  CHAPTER 19

  LEO HAD REFUSED TO BORROW a chef’s coat. He was not about to don that uniform without having earned it. He just put on the striped navy apron, draped two clean dry towels over the tie at the waist, and stationed himself at the pass.

  He felt a little ridiculous in his suit pants, dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and the borrowed apron. It did not help that when told he’d be expediting, the employees reacted with surprise of an intensity that was the tiniest bit unflattering. But how could they have realized he knew how to do this? He hadn’t expedited for years, not since the earliest days, when they were still gathering a stable core staff and he was sometimes required to step in. Only David, who had been at Winesap since the very beginning, was blasé. Of course, David enjoyed reminding his coworkers of his longevity, so he too might have forgotten and merely nodded sagely out of sheer habit.

  On the line across from him, Thea was talking to him while she set up her station. “Apps take about ten minutes. Same with desserts. Dennis has a cold amuse all set to go, the servers just grab that themselves when they fire the app. They’ll let you know if you need to delay a fire on the entrée.” She glanced up as she chopped a last-minute bin of chervil and parsley. Leo winced, fearing for her fingers, as he watched the smooth motion of her chef’s knife. “Otherwise, when the apps go out, fire the entrées. Cross the served items off your tickets, move ’em down to the left as
you go from app to entrée.”

  “Got it,” he said. He’d forgotten how tight the timing really was back here. To the dining guest, the progression of the meal seemed leisurely and measured, but in fact the staff dealt with increments of five and ten minutes. And of course if the expediter timed it badly, if an extra five or ten minutes passed while the guest awaited a course, that felt like an eternity.

  “You have your menu?” she asked. “Your list of finishings?”

  “Got it,” Leo said again. His menu was carefully marked up; the correct one-word terminology for each dish had been highlighted, the cheat sheet for how to finish each dish jotted in the margins. For the most part he simply had to wipe plates and scatter them with fresh herbs or a drizzle of fragrant olive oil, but for the vegetarian tart he would have to brulée the Gruyère-scattered top with a kitchen torch. That he was looking forward to.

  His phone beeped with a text from Britt. “Nothing,” he said to Thea after looking. She met his eyes, trying to discern whatever he wasn’t going to say in front of the other cooks, the backwaiters slicing bread, and the staff darting back and forth with armfuls of coffee cups and folded linens. Leo looked at the message again, as if the meaning would change.

  The text was completely unlike Britt’s usual texts, which used full words and capitalization. Maybe Britt reserved his formal texting style for people he respected. Leo had been knocked down to those undeserving of vowels.

  He looked up again at Thea and shrugged. He had not told her what Britt had said about them. He’d told her only that they needed to help out and send over a cook, interrupting her before she could volunteer. He didn’t know now why he had felt so vehemently that it must not be Thea. Simply the need to have her in-house? Dread—obsolete now—that she would give them away during a postshift drink? Or just fear that she would march into Stray, be energized by its youth and verve, and never return?

  It was a relief to be able to look up and see her. She made him feel calmer than he ought to, distracted him from texting his parents to say there was no word. It was maddening to hear nothing, but reiterating the silence to them would make things worse. They had phoned him twice in the past couple of hours, and he was regretting having asked them to call him and not Britt. They were coming up with more detailed scenarios than any Leo had invented—Harry pinned beneath the truck on a deserted road, wandering the streets with amnesia after a blow to the head, the victim of a brutal, casual stabbing.