by Клео Коул
I did remember Vinny. He was a nice-looking Italian boy—a young friend of Joy’s from her culinary school class. I had assumed (wrongly) that the quiet, slight young man was Joy’s boyfriend, something I still hoped could come true once she realized how wrong she was to get involved with Tommy Keitel.
Joy frowned. “Brigitte’s got Vinny so rattled he called in sick today. And nobody calls in sick at Solange unless they want to lose their job.”
“What kind of a kitchen is Tommy running?” I demanded.
“This isn’t Tommy’s fault,” Joy replied—too quickly, I thought.
“Mr. Dornier told me that Tommy hasn’t been around much lately,” I said. “Dornier doesn’t sound happy about it, and I can see why. Tommy’s the executive chef. If he’s not around, then he’s not doing his job.”
Joy’s face got tight. I recognized the look. I’d obviously struck a nerve.
“Is that man still sleeping with you?” I asked bluntly.
“Mom!”
“I know. I’m not supposed to bring it up, but—”
“Please don’t start that again, or we’ll have to stop talking altogether.”
I threw up my hands. “Truce!”
Joy flipped her ponytail over her shoulder, looked away.
“Truce,” I repeated, reaching over to squeeze her arm. “Okay?”
Eyes downcast, Joy nodded. “Okay,” she said softly. “And the answer is yes. Tommy and I are still involved…romantically.”
I tried not to cringe at the word. I found nothing whatsoever romantic about their relationship. It was seedy. It was wrong. And it was a testament to my daughter’s immaturity that she’d use a word like that to describe what was going on between her and a workplace supervisor thirty years her senior, who was married with kids.
On the face of it, I would have guessed that Joy had been singled out for criticism, if not sabotage, because she was getting preferential treatment from the big boss. But if the restaurant’s French-Canadian sous-chef had been torturing poor Vinny Buccelli so badly that he’d called in sick, it sounded like she was routinely targeting different staff members for her wrath. So why wasn’t Keitel doing something about it?
“Joy, tell me what’s going on with Tommy.”
“Well…Mr. Dornier is right,” she began, leaning closer. “Tommy has been absent—a lot. When I first started my internship three months ago, he was practically married to this place. Everyone says he was like that from the very first day. He’d come in early, oversee everything in the kitchen, right through dinner service. He’d stay late, too. After the last customer left, he and Dornier would sit in the dining room with a bottle of wine and go over every detail of the evening—‘tragedies and triumphs’ is how Tommy put it. He wanted to be in on every little thing that went wrong or right at Solange.”
Joy shook her head. “I really loved that about him, Mom…but now he’s hardly here. Sometimes he checks in around noon, but then he takes off a few hours later, way before dinner service even starts. And he doesn’t come back.”
“Where does he go?”
Joy shrugged. “Nobody knows. He won’t tell me, and everyone’s talking. Everyone has a theory about where Tommy’s going, what he’s doing…even who he’s doing…”
My daughter’s voice trailed off, and she looked away, her expression hurt and confused. Congratulations, Joy, I thought but didn’t dare say. Now you know how Tommy’s wife must feel.
I loved my daughter more than anything, but I wanted her to learn from this mistake. Affairs between older, high-powered men and their young interns seldom ended well—and the beginning of the end was the girl getting a clue that her cloud-nine view of Mr. Big was far from grounded in reality. I was relieved to see Joy at last displaying some ambivalence toward the larger-than-life Keitel.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Joy began to equivocate, “except that Tommy leaves Brigitte in charge.”
I forced myself not to roll my eyes. “I can see where that would be a problem.”
“You can’t imagine how bad it’s gotten,” Joy said, shaking her head. “Brigitte was just fine when Tommy was around, telling her what to do, but now that he’s gone, she can’t handle the responsibility. Some of the other cooks are saying she’s taking drugs to get through it—”
“Drugs!”
“Mom, please! Keep your voice down.”
Oh, God…of course… That crazed woman had shown all the signs: the dilated pupils, the sweat on her brow, the shaking, the paranoia, the uncanny strength when she’d fought Dornier. It has to be uppers. Amphetamines would have caused those symptoms, and they were the drugs of choice in this kind of late-night work. Stay up! Stay focused! Speed or meth would produce those symptoms, too. So would cocaine…
The very word doused me with horrible memories.
My ex-husband had become a coke addict during our marriage (and I’m not talking about the stuff you buy in ice-cold cans). The drug use had been “harmless” at first. Or so Matt kept telling me. “Just a few lines” during parties in Central and South America, where cocaine had been used for centuries and was still a cash crop. Then he began doing lines privately “just to combat jet lag.” Right. Somewhere in there he’d started sleeping around and cleaned out our bank account. Clearly, the drug use wasn’t so “harmless” anymore.
Hearing about drug use in Solange’s kitchen was my nightmare come true. Ever since I’d caught Joy snorting cocaine with some friends in the bathroom of a downtown nightclub, I worried she’d start traveling the same path her father had: arrested for possession, rushed to the hospital after overdosing, relapsing after rehab.
Joy’s use hadn’t gone beyond a few casual experiments, out of “curiosity,” but I knew it was a short trip to hell if she wasn’t careful—because I’d had a front-row seat for Matt’s descent.
My ex-husband was clean now, and he believed he’d won out over his addiction. But recovered addicts never really stopped fighting the battle. He’d have to continue resisting relapse for the rest of his life. I didn’t want that for my daughter.
Joy cleared her throat. She seemed to take my lengthy silence for disbelief. “I know it sounds crazy,” she said. “I mean, who has time to do drugs in Tommy’s kitchen? There’s too much work, and so much is expected of everyone. You always have to perform to the highest standards, and who can do that while they’re high or stoned out of their minds?”
“What are you saying?”
“That Tommy won’t tolerate drugs. He’s made that clear to everyone. If he ever found out Brigitte was using again, he’d fire her on the spot. I’m sure of it.”
I was genuinely surprised by this revelation. I’d assumed Tommy Keitel was a hard-partying guy. But if Tommy was doing drugs at all, it would have been with the young woman he was bedding; and I could see in Joy’s eyes that she was telling me the truth.
“Tommy knows something’s wrong in the kitchen,” Joy continued. “But, for some reason, I don’t think he cares. He didn’t come in at all last week, and Brigitte was in charge. She’s fine for the prep work and most of service, but at the end of the night, she goes ballistic, freaking about any little thing she thinks went wrong. It’s been getting worse and worse—”
A knock on the door interrupted us.
“Yes?” Joy called.
“It’s Ramon. We’re getting ready to close up now.”
“I’ll be right out,” Joy said. She rose, picked up her soiled jacket, and straightened her bangs with her fingers. “I kind of have to go.”
“Me, too,” I said, rising. “When I left your grandmother in the dining room, she was flirting with a new potential beau.” I smiled at my daughter. “They’re probably engaged by now. Either that or your grandmother’s already broken his heart and moved on to her next conquest.”
Joy laughed, and I was happy to hear it.
“Listen, honey,” I put my arm around her. “Tommy needs to be told what’s going on. Will you let me talk to him?”
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br /> “No, Mom. That’s ridiculous. This is my workplace. I’ll handle the problem. I’ll just explain to Tommy what’s been happening. I’m sure he’ll listen to me.”
“Are you, Joy? Tommy Keitel doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who listens to anyone.”
“You have to let me handle this, okay?”
I frowned, my jaw clenching. This wasn’t easy. “So…you’ll talk to him?”
“Yes. I will. I promise.”
“Okay, then. Guess I’m demoted back to ‘butt out’ mode.” I forced a smile.
My daughter smiled, too, and we returned to the kitchen.
Joy grabbed a fresh white jacket from a cabinet and buttoned it on as she escorted me past the walk-in fridge, the prep tables, and the cook stations. When we got to the double doors that led to the dining room, I turned to her. “I can wait around, you know. Madame and I would be happy to escort you home. I’m sure it’s lonely with your roommate in Paris for the next six months.”
Before Joy could reply, the doors pushed inward, bumping my behind. I leapt aside as Chef Tommy Keitel himself swept in.
“Chef,” Joy said, nodding. “You remember—”
“Clare Cosi!” Tommy exclaimed. “The coffee lady. Hey, good to see you again!”
He extended his hand, but the doors opened once more, and a member of the waitstaff entered, a tray of dishes on his shoulder. After an awkward moment, Keitel’s large, strong hand clasped mine.
“I’ve got to clean up my station,” Joy said, quietly excusing herself.
Keitel looked exactly as I remembered him. He was a tall, fit man in his fifties with arresting blue eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, a slightly crooked nose, and what looked to me like a perpetual smirk of confidence.
He released my hand then slipped off his coat and hung it on a peg. He wore a black silk shirt underneath, opened enough at the collar to show off his curling gray chest hairs, wiry muscles, and a silver chain. He grinned at me as he rolled up his sleeves, revealing the heavily developed forearms of a man who’d probably mixed and whisked and turned dough for thousands of hours in his lifetime.
“So, Clare, how do you like my kitchen?” Tommy asked with undisguised pride.
“Interesting,” I said, tightly folding my arms.
Tommy nodded, then cocked his head, shouting at a waiter who’d just pushed through the double doors. “Hey, René! Where the hell is Nappy?”
The Haitian man who’d waited on my table stopped and blinked, as if he was uncertain how to reply. “I, uh, just saw him, Chef,” he finally said. “I’m sure he’s around…”
I cleared my throat. “The last time I saw your maître d’, he was chasing your executive sous-chef into your back alley.”
Tommy winced. “Again?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “And I really think you should speak with—”
“René!” he barked again. “Did Dornier take any calls for me?”
“Your wife,” the waiter called as he moved toward the back staircase. “She rang three times during service, looking for you.”
Tommy scowled at that.
“And Mr. Wright stopped by. He needed to speak with you about something. Since you weren’t here, he spoke with Brigitte.”
Tommy’s scowl deepened.
“Chef Keitel,” I tried again. “Speaking of Brigitte, I witnessed quite a scene with her here earlier—”
“Tommy?” a new voice called from behind me. The voice was deep and male, almost guttural.
Tommy’s face instantly brightened as the stranger stepped into the kitchen through the dining room doors. “Hey, there he is!” Tommy cried. “Have any problem parking the SUV?”
The newcomer silently shook his head. He was clad in black from his pointy boots and chinos to his shiny black leather blazer. His sunglasses were black, too—so dark I thought for a second that he might be blind.
“Clare Cosi, this is Nick, a buddy of mine from Brighton Beach.”
I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you, Nick.”
The man drew his narrow hand out of his pocket and shook mine. His flesh was ice-cold, but then he’d just come in from outside, and it was November. Under his dark glasses, the man’s complexion was so pale, it looked almost pink. His hair was light brown, and it hung in long, thin strands from an elongated head. His chin had a deep cleft, and his lips were thin and expressionless—literally. He remained silent.
“Well, it was great to see you, Clare!” Tommy said with a dismissive wave. “Nick and I have some work to do.”
“But I wanted to tell you—”
“Good night now!” Grabbing Nick’s arm, he turned his back to me and swiftly led the man toward the walk-in refrigerator.
Like pale, timid monks, the line cooks watched their larger-than-life boss and his strange friend wend their way to the back of the kitchen. Joy glanced in my direction and flashed a tiny wave.
“Don’t worry,” she mouthed to me. “I’ll speak to him.”
I waved back, realizing there was nothing more to do but trust my daughter. I wasn’t through butting in. I promised myself that. For now, however, Joy said she could handle explaining things to Tommy, and I had to trust that she would.
With clenched fists, I forced myself to walk away. Though I was sad to say good night to my daughter, I was far from broken up about leaving Tommy Keitel’s restaurant. More than anything, I wanted to get back downtown to my Village Blend, where at least I could get a decent cup of coffee.
Three
The Village Blend occupied a four-story Federal-style town house in New York’s historic West Village. To my customers, however, the Blend was more than just a java joint. It was a dependable oasis of calm in a crowded, expensive, stress-inducing city that routinely stripped its occupants of their dignity.
The place was my oasis, too. Behind my espresso bar, I felt capable and in control. After that knife-wielding episode in Solange’s cutthroat kitchen, I was relieved to get back to some comfortable, familiar, sane surroundings, if only to lock up for the night and head upstairs for a fresh pot of joe and a warm vanilla bath.
As I stepped off the chilly Hudson Street sidewalk and pushed through the beveled glass door, however, I wondered whose coffeehouse I’d just entered.
Oh, it looked the same. Twenty coral-colored café tables sat on a restored wood-plank floor. There was a working fireplace, a colorful collection of antique grinding mills and tin coffee signs, a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading to a second-floor lounge, a line of French doors (which we threw open in warmer weather for sidewalk seating), and a blueberry marble counter fronting a pastry case and state-of-the-art espresso bar. What threw me, however, was the discordant noise reverberating off the exposed brick walls.
The pounding instruments mixed with the barking chant of an angry male voice had all the musicality of construction equipment. And then there were the enchanting lyrics:
The game’s all the same, homey
Uptown and down
Cell phones and names, baby
Bitches, hoes, and goin’ down
Bang, bang, for money, sonny
That’s what she want
So you bang, bang that booty, sonny!
Take it from her c—
Ack! I thought with a shudder. What barista of mine is running rap through the Village Blend sound system?!
It couldn’t have been my assistant manager. When he wasn’t scribbling one acts or landing small parts in locally filmed TV dramas, Tucker Burton was pulling shots for me to upbeat pop and retro eighties.
There was no way Gardner Evans would be playing rap, either. Gardner was a serious jazz musician who regularly decried “gangstas” making millions on selling “crack music to little crackers whose idea of slumming was going to the fringes of their suburbs for a 7-Eleven Slurpee” (his words, not mine).
The rap fan couldn’t have been fine arts painter Dante Silva. His preferences ran to Moby, Philip Glass, New Age, ambient, and space music. And if Joy’s fa
ther had been pulling shots of espresso tonight (which he did on occasion, when he wasn’t traveling the globe brokering deals for the planet’s finest micro-lots), opera or classical would have been playing right now. Unless Matt was feeling manic, in which case he’d be blasting the sort of synthpop electronica he routinely partied to in European and Brazillian dance clubs.
Unfortunately, what greeted me as I entered the Blend was none of the above.
Rich man’s got his dope, homey
Yo, he need that hit!
All his bitches get a taste
’Cause he think he the shi—
“Okay,” I murmured. “This ends now.”
I crossed the floor to the espresso bar, which appeared to be abandoned of all human oversight. “Hello!? Hello?!” I slapped my hand on the marble counter. “Is anyone here!”
“Don’t start buggin’, lady! I’m coming!”
Esther, another of my part-time baristas, emerged from the back pantry area loaded down with paper cups, sip lids, heat sleeves, and coffee stirrers. “Oh, it’s just you, boss,” she said upon seeing me. Then she dumped the stock on the counter and began to sort it out.
An NYU comparative literature major, Esther Best (shortened from Bestovasky by her grandfather) had untamed dark hair, currently stuffed into a backward Yankee cap; a pleasantly plump figure, now swathed in our blue Village Blend apron; and large brown eyes that were constantly on the lookout for anything that might require her critical observation.
“I’m glad to see you restocking.” I folded my arms. “But why are you playing rap on our sound system? You know the rules.”
