by Tracy Ewens
But that was several years and one big lie ago. This was now, as Jake had put it, and the Logan walking toward her didn’t feel all that warm anymore.
“Kara.” Logan nodded and stepped in front of her.
“Logan, thank you for agreeing to meet with me. Any ground rules we need to go over before we get started? Is this even a good time for you? You look pretty busy.”
“Irrigation pipe broke. I was fixing it.” He wiped his hands on a rag he pulled from his back pocket. “Rules, yeah, I have one.”
“I’m all ears.”
“The scene in my kitchen a couple of weeks ago, I’m not up for that if we’re going to be working together for a few weeks now. Basically, I just want it to be clear that I don’t do women anymore.”
Kara’s head tilted in confusion, and sarcasm got the best of her. “Really? Hmm . . . I didn’t see that coming, but if you’re gay that’s—”
“Not what I meant. I’m not gay.” He twisted the greased rag in his hand. “I don’t do the dance around, please like me, what are you thinking, woman game. Not my thing these days. I don’t have time for it.”
He had an edge. Kara didn’t think it was just her this time. He seemed like he had things on his mind.
“Oh, well then we will work beautifully together because I don’t do the look at what a stud I am and you’d be lucky to have me, but I’d like to screw around for another five years, guy game. Not my thing. No time.”
“Great.”
“Perfect.”
Kara noticed the bead of sweat dripping down his neck, into that little dip right below his Adam’s apple. She let out a slow breath and sat down on a concrete bench.
“Well, in the interest of moving on—as my editor already told you, the Times is interested in doing a feature on your new restaurant and more importantly your philosophy on farm to table and the local food scene.”
Logan smiled. “This is killing you, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea.” Kara focused back down on her pad. “Anyway, I’d like to start with your place here, some history, and how you’ve revitalized this particular urban farm. Then I’ll do a separate piece on the restaurant concept, the work that went into it, and surviving in the food world.”
Logan laughed.
“Something funny?”
He shook his head. “No. Food world. I like that.”
“Great. That will be followed by a piece on your family’s farm and your hometown roots.”
“I’ll need to discuss that with my dad, make sure he’s on board, but the rest sounds fine. A little painful, but good for the restaurant, so I’m in.”
Kara nodded and closed her notes. “Okay, well if you have time maybe you could show me around.”
“I have time.” Logan lifted the hem of his cotton shirt and wiped his face. Kara knew it was for her benefit, his way of being all farm boy to what he considered her princess, and it worked. She was sure her face flushed as her eyes dropped to his—bad eyes, she scolded herself.
“Where should we start?” Kara asked, clearing her throat again.
“Well, it’s all about composting, so let’s start with the soil and how we got things back together when I bought the place.” He gestured for her to walk in front of him.
She started toward the back of the property and marveled at the organization and the beauty of a garden this size. When Kara was growing up, her mother had paid people to keep up the gardens around their house, and she was pretty sure they once had a cook who kept a small vegetable garden, but it was nothing like this. This was incredible and the smell of the earth—minerals she guessed—drew her in. She’d once read that your body responded to the things it was lacking—the nutrients it needed. The life growing all around pulled at something in her.
“Kara?”
She glanced over her shoulder. Logan had stopped and picked up some of the black soil.
“This isn’t going to be a puff piece, is it? I mean, there aren’t going to be any pictures of me holding a damn shovel or anything, right?”
“I don’t write puff.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve read your stuff.”
Kara was taken aback, but looked down instead of at him while she gathered her attitude.
“But I seem to be your least-favorite person these days,” he continued, “so I just want to make sure I’m not wasting my time here only to be humiliated.”
“Right, well, I have a reputation. My boss gave me this assignment and it’s a feature. I won’t be blowing this. You’ll come across however you present yourself. I’m honest, if nothing else.”
“Really? Not my experience.” His face was unreadable.
“Oh Christ, Logan. Let it go. I didn’t tell you who I was in Paris because I couldn’t and . . . well, I didn’t want to be the person I was. You certainly never came after me to ask questions, so let’s leave it in Paris, okay?” She took a deep breath. It felt good to finally say something about their past, even if it was merely a fraction of what buzzed around in her head. “And you are not my least-favorite person,” she admitted.
“I’m not?”
“No.” She faced him. “Maybe in the top five.”
She smiled, and so did he. It was a real, genuine, smile. Probably the first time she’d seen him smile like that since they’d shared a kitchen and began slipping into blissful lust with each other. He used to look at her and smile in a way that made her believe in the entire crayon box, not just the black and white of her world. She grew to believe things were possible and eventually she saw herself dancing in his eyes. Barefoot, in the rain, dancing.
“So”—Logan rubbed the soil between his fingers—“this is where it all starts. The soil is key and when I bought the place, things had pretty much dried up. It took me about two months of constant composting, tilling, and troubleshooting before I planted anything.”
“Is all of this from seed?”
“Yeah.” He dropped the soil and brushed his hand on his jeans. “There’s this great seed bank in Petaluma. Used to be an actual bank. They have everything. I also like Baker Creek if I’m looking to get creative. They’re out of Missouri and I’m like a kid with their catalogue.” Logan laughed and Kara wrote a few notes down.
“Can I use these names?”
“I’m sure you can. The exposure would be great for them. Baker Creek has these tiny Thai eggplants. They look like green peas, but they’re eggplants. So cool. I put them in a red curry with chicken.” Logan’s love of food radiated off him. “That was one of the specials the first week we opened.”
“Red curry? Interesting. What would you call the cuisine of The Yard?” Kara asked, reading from her notes and trying to keep to her structure.
Logan laughed.
“What?”
“I have no idea what the cuisine of The Yard is.”
“That’s a legitimate question, Logan. People are going to want to know how to classify your food, what they’re getting when they come to your place.”
“Can’t they just show up? You know, it’s called The Yard. Doesn’t that say show up? It’s a barbecue one day and maybe a Cajun feast the next. There’s also room for fresh lemonade and sandwiches. A yard with twinkling lights could be a wedding or a fancy event, too. I like it all.”
“I suppose, but at some point you’ll need to define it. Do you have a set group of recipes?”
“No.”
Kara regarded him.
“Recipes? Come on Kara when did we ever follow—”
Logan seemed to catch himself. He stopped talking and his eyes shifted away from her as if he’d been too caught up in something. He took a breath and started again.
“I mean we have our standard menu that we set every quarter. Those are offered every day, but we don’t use recipes.” His eyes met hers. “Travis and I work on everything for each menu together. We test and build the whole thing in the kitchen.”
Kara found herself a little light-headed listening to him, watching him pa
ce back and forth, hands moving with his words. She was grateful for her notebook because she needed little breaks to find her balance.
“Okay, let’s save some of this for the middle piece which will actually focus on the restaurant itself. Tell me about your place. Like, what are these?” she asked gesturing to the planter right in front of them.
“That’s kale. Dwarf Blue to be specific. I’m harvesting that now. We use it in our chili, which is on the fall menu. We’ll also put it in mashed potatoes with some variation of our meatloaf. Travis is really into bison these days. He wanted a bison meatloaf, but we need to watch that flavor for most people.”
Logan stopped. “Sorry, I’m rambling. What was the question again?”
“You were just talking up the kale.” Kara smiled, feeling playful, if that was even possible anymore.
He laughed. “It’s hard to separate what I do here and the restaurant. They sort of go hand in hand. There’s also a smaller garden onsite at The Yard. Did you notice the garden when you were there for your dad’s thing? Probably not, you were too busy being pissed.”
“I wasn’t pissed. I just don’t like airing my—”
Logan held up his hands in surrender. “Let’s not do this again.”
“Fine. Okay, so tell me some of the other things you’re growing right now and how they correlate to your fall menu.”
They went around most of Logan’s expansive yard, every inch dedicated to growing something. Carrots and peas, he explained, were ready and would be included in their stew and a split pea Travis liked to do with a ham hock. He showed her his herbs and three different types of garlic. All of it was heirloom, when he could find it, and organic. Kara knew enough about food to be impressed. Logan even had a large flower garden that supplied daily flowers for his restaurant. He cut them himself and brought them in every few days. The term “labor of love” was thrown around a lot in the restaurant world, but this, what Logan was doing, truly was that. Everything he grew and used, including the vendors he worked with, needed to be in line with his beliefs about sustainability and food integrity. Kara put her hand to her stomach, unsure if she was hungry or simply dizzy from him.
“We currently have five kinds of tomatoes, all heirloom and all delicious.” He picked a small cherry tomato and handed it to Kara.
She rubbed her thumb over the deep red surface.
“Try it.”
“I’m not hungry, but thank you.” She handed it back to him. “They are beautiful and I’m sure they’re—”
Logan put the tomato in his mouth, closed his eyes, and chewed. “God, I never get tired of the flavor. It’s like you can actually taste the sun in them, ya know?”
Kara didn’t know, but his eyes met hers again and she wondered if he could see the want. She hadn’t expected it, but her stomach fluttered again. It was clearly hunger, almost a craving.
“I’m sure they’re delicious. They look beautiful.”
Logan held her gaze for a beat longer than was comfortable and then turned to the house.
“So, this is 920 Seco Street, used to be 251 Las Robles.” He gestured to the house and grinned as if he was introducing an old friend. The edge she had noticed when she first arrived was gone; the exhaustion in his eyes softened.
“Oh, that’s right. It was moved,” Kara said, flipping the page of her small notebook. “I pulled up some history back at the office, but tell me a little about it. What makes it special for you?”
“I could talk your ear off about this house, so I’ll try to stick to the top three reasons I love it,” he said. “Greene and Greene built the house about a year after they started their architecture firm back in 1895. They were starting out, new and uncertain, kind of like me. I like that.”
He walked up the three steps of the white-painted porch and held the screen door open for her. She walked in and stumbled a bit as she tried to take in the honey wood floors, the sunny yellow and white colors of his home. She steadied herself by grabbing a small wooden chair. It was one of four chairs tucked around a round wooden table a few steps from the side entrance they’d already walked through. Kara ran her hand along the curve of the wood. She needed a minute, so she asked a question.
“What’s the second thing?”
Logan stood in front of the couch. It had a cream-colored slipcover and Kara found herself wondering where he got the couch. Did he pick it up at a clever little secondhand furniture store one Sunday morning after breakfast with his girlfriend? Had she helped him decorate? Was she everywhere in the tiny house and Kara didn’t even know?
“Kara?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just looking around. Sorry.” Kara looked back down at her notebook. “So what was your number two again?”
“The design. It’s practical, but there are little touches, a few pocket doors, some glass knobs, that give it detail. I like the clean lines with a little twist.”
“Spice,” Kara added without even realizing she was speaking.
“Exactly. It’s a solid meal, hearty, but with a little spice.”
Their eyes held and there it was again, the pause that was heavy with memories. Logan broke first this time.
“And the last thing is a tie between the basement—which I still haven’t decided what to do with yet—and the story of Bill and Rosemary Barbus.”
“I read a little about them. They seem like lovely people.”
“They are, well Bill passed away a few years ago, so I didn’t get to meet him, but he’s everywhere in this house. They bought the house for a dollar. Can you believe that?”
Kara shook her head in disbelief.
“Rosemary is still a docent down at The Gamble House. She comes over every month or so and I make her lunch. Great people and an incredible love story. Her energy is, well it’s special.” Logan looked like he’d caught himself sharing too much again.
“Sounds like Bill and Rosemary are more important than the basement.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“I know you did a lot with the gardens or urban farm, but what about the house? Did it need a lot of work?” Kara tried to remember she had a job to do.
“Nothing.” He walked to the front window that opened out onto another small porch. “It needed nothing. Bill worked every day on this house and the love practically pours out of it. I wouldn’t change a thing, so I just maintain his work.”
Kara noticed the hardwood floors, buffed to a high shine, but the planks were a little misshapen in some areas, proof they were cut by actual human hands. The entire house felt like its own person, as if it had taken on bits of the lives of its former inhabitants. She had read about Rosemary and Bill and as silly as it sounded, she felt like she knew them, too. The house wasn’t specific to them now that Logan was in the space, but it felt like history and years of love, day to day. Kara watched Logan as he walked to the large wood banister and ran his hand along the polished surface. She lost her breath. She was drowning in the house, in him—pulled under by the unexpected weight of feelings that left her more confused by the minute.
“This is the spine of the house.” His voice startled her a little, and Logan laughed. “Still jumpy, huh, princess?”
He ran a hand up the banister and Kara walked toward the staircase.
“Everything seems to culminate right here.” He gestured for her to walk up the stairs ahead of him. She brushed past him and even though it was just the two of them, it suddenly seemed crowded. She could feel the heat of his body, smell the sweat on him, and it mixed with the comfort of the house, sending her senses into overdrive. Kara stopped, not sure she should continue up the stairs, but then she saw the pictures along the wall. Different frames; some pictures were black and white, some color. She went up a few steps and took in images of the Rye family.
“That first one is all of us.” Logan stepped up next to her. “That’s my dad, my brother, Garrett, and Makenna, she’s the baby. God that was taken a long time ago,” he added with something in his voice. “So stra
nge how you can have a picture in your house, pass it every day, and rarely look at it.”
She turned her head and he was right there. The sun was coming through the large glass window of the massive red front door. It brushed copper through his hair and highlighted the contrast between the white of his T-shirt and the tan skin of his neck. Kara suddenly felt more than she was prepared to feel when she first woke up that day and willed herself to treat this whole thing as just an assignment. On some days, the little affirmations she told herself in the morning seemed downright impossible as early as noon. This was clearly one of those days.
“Your mom?” Kara asked, surprising herself by managing to stay on topic.
Logan shifted and Kara could hear the creak of the stair below him. “I was almost eight in that picture. She was gone by then.”
“Oh,” Kara whispered at the realization and then felt her stomach turn. “I’m sorry. You were so young. How did I not ask that question when we were in Paris?”
He laughed, of all things, and Kara was suddenly uncomfortable.
“What?” she asked.
“There were a lot of things we probably should have asked in Paris, don’t you think?”
She nodded. “I guess the details didn’t seem important then.” She stepped back down the stairs, deciding she’d had enough for one morning.
“Don’t you want to see the upstairs?” he asked.
“I need to get going, but I would like to see your kitchen. Did you change it when you moved in?” Kara knew bringing the conversation back to food or his kitchen would rescue her from what felt far too intimate.
“I did, so I guess I lied before when I mentioned that I hadn’t changed anything. It wasn’t a complete remodel because I have the kitchen at The Yard, but,” he paused as they walked into the kitchen and he turned on the lights, “I changed out the appliances and the countertops.”
“More wood,” tumbled out of Kara’s mouth as she walked further into the small kitchen and noticed the well-used surface, one section still coated with flour. She touched it with the tips of her fingers.
