Reservations for Two

by Jennifer Lohmann

  Tilly was cute. He liked her blue hair and wanted to see it again.

  Without getting egg on his face.

  “I’ll fix it.”

  “We’ll see another review of Babka on the blog?”

  “I said I’d fix it.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Dammit. Who are you? ’Cause you’re not my mother, father or priest, and they are the only moral authorities I subscribe to.”

  “With your parents, it’s no wonder you’re whacked. I’ll give your priest the benefit of the doubt.” Mike leaned forward in his chair. “When I leave here, I’m going to have coffee with Brian Urlacher. You may have heard of him. He’s a linebacker for the Bears and eats quarterbacks for breakfast and running backs for lunch. I’m going to sit in front of this two-hundred-fifty-pound beast of a man and ask him if he thinks he’s getting too old for professional football. Then, I’m going to ask him about missed tackles and his mother. If I can do that for my job, you can write a new review for yours.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I have those tickets to a Cubs game I promised you, behind home plate.”

  “Were your fingers too busy writing letters of advice to the pope to send a text letting me know you were coming over?”

  “Stop making love to the chicken and you’ll notice your phone is blinking.”

  Dan looked at his phone with its telltale light blinking a message at him. Tilly’s chicken should be banned as a narcotic for making him miss the text from Mike. Tilly and her food were messing with his mind.

  “I don’t want to share my tickets with an asshole,” Mike said, breaking into his thoughts.

  Right now Dan didn’t care. He had plans for the next several nights and they didn’t involve a Cubs game. He had sworn he could never seriously date a White Sox fan. For Tilly, he was willing to make an exception. They’d have to have a serious conversation about how they’d raise their kids, though. “Then leave me alone so I can enjoy my lunch in peace.”

  Mike tipped an empty take-out box over onto Dan’s plate. “I hate to tell you, buddy, but your lunch is finished. So are your excuses. You need to sack up.” Mike didn’t even wait for a response. He left, the disgusted look on his face matching Dan’s own opinion of his options.

  Dan stared at the closed door to his house long after Mike left. The chicken was gone, as were the potatoes and green beans. Only his dessert remained, which wouldn’t be enough to keep him occupied until he found a solution to his problems. He needed more food and more time.

  More time. Was the solution so easy? He liked Tilly, wanted to get to know her better. Wanted to find out what she dreamed about at night and fantasized about during the day. He needed more information about her. Maybe she was a woman for the long term. If she was the woman he imagined, then he’d think about how he could get Babka some better press. Not a new review from him, but maybe a short mention in a newspaper or magazine; enough to push a few new customers her way.

  If she wasn’t, well, no need to stress them both out with his review. He could fade out of her life. They were adults and could separate business from their personal lives. The end of their relationship didn’t have to be a nasty scene about the review and its unfairness, especially because it wasn’t unfair. The review had been an accurate representation of his night.

  Dan had only met Tilly on Monday. This was Friday. He’d gone to eat at Babka last Thursday. He’d known Tilly a grand total of five days and had only talked with her for two of them. A weekend of talking to a woman did not make a relationship. Thinking about a woman all day, every day for five days didn’t make a relationship. When they had a relationship, maybe his choices would change.

  Dan took a bite of his pastry. His problem wasn’t solved, but it was pushed far enough into the future that he could enjoy his dessert. The poppy seeds still retained a little crunch against the buttery, tender pastry and the sweet, tart raspberry jam. If he hadn’t been busy chewing, Dan might have cursed again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  STEVE WAS WORMING his way through the line cooks and kitchen equipment to Tilly, though he should have been busy running tables. It was Saturday night and Babka had been, pleasantly enough, half-full most of the night. Her restaurant should have been completely booked on a Saturday night, but Tilly would take half-full to the more recent alternative of mostly empty. For once, Babka was busy enough to require her presence on the line. There weren’t quite enough customers to keep them jumping, but she didn’t need a rush right now. So long as she didn’t have time to think about blond hair hanging over blue eyes and the hint of a smile, she was content. Not happy. She wouldn’t be happy until she’d read a new review of Babka and customers started pouring in, but distracted enough not to...

  Nope. There she was, thinking about him again. She willed another ticket to print out, but service was almost over and the kitchen was starting to close down. What she got instead was Steve’s spindly arms twitching next to her.

  “That guy is here,” he said, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the commotion of the kitchen.

  “What guy?” she asked, distracted by the plate PM Carlos put in front of her, roast chicken for the last four-top. “Where’s the trout?” she called out to Enrique.

  “Uno minute.” Enrique didn’t even turn around to look at her.

  “You said that a minute ago and I still don’t have it.”

  Enrique ignored her. It was a game all the line cooks played. She’d yell at them to get her the food and they’d promise her the moon, while steadily continuing to cook the food. Her job was to yell at them to be faster. Their job was to make sure every dish that left their station was perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned. If they gave in and handed her undercooked fish, she’d fire them.

  “Tilly, the guy outside?” Steve’s hands shook.

  “Are you using again?”

  He clasped his hands together and held them behind his back. “No. Just too much coffee.” His weight shifted from one foot to another. “That guy who fixed the sink. He’s sitting at the bar.”

  Dan. Anyone who said you got what you asked for was a liar. She’d asked for another ticket, another customer. What she’d gotten instead was a jerk. Well, he was in the dining room and she was in the kitchen. She didn’t have to go out there and he wasn’t supposed to come in here, she thought, purposefully forgetting that he’d undressed her with his eyes in her walk-in, so it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in the kitchen before. She’d allowed that breach when she’d liked him. She didn’t like him anymore.

  “Tell him to leave.”

  “I came back for my toolbox.”

  She looked up and wished she hadn’t. Why did his eyes have to be so bright and his shoulders so broad? He deserved a hunchback and the flat, emotionless eyes of a psychopath. “It’s in my office. You know where it is, so you can get it and then you can leave.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “No.” Enrique, bless him, decided at that moment the trout was ready and put it in front of her. “As you can see, I’m busy.”

  “Tilly...” Her sous chef scooted over from his station. “This is our last table of the night. I can finish up.”

  “Fine.” She ripped her towel off her shoulder and threw it on the counter. If Dan wanted some painful, useless back-and-forth about his review, she’d give it to him.

  * * *

  DAN WASN’T SURPRISED when Tilly didn’t greet him with open arms, but he’d hoped her tendency toward violence had dissipated in the past forty-eight hours. If the force with which she threw her towel and slammed her office door was any indication, he should make sure she didn’t have a butane torch nearby. She stood by her office door, hands on her hips and face puckered with anger.

  “Well,” she said. “Your toolbox is on the floor by your foot. Say what you have to say, take the damn thing and go.”

  He swallowed back doubt. If he wanted to spend any time with her, he’d have to push her
past the review. “I think we should get to know each other better.”

  “I think you’re crazy.”

  She was the second person to accuse him of madness in thirty-six hours. Hell, he deserved it. There was a clear line in the sand between reviewer and chef and he wanted to cross it. More than cross it, he wanted to leap across the line and sweep the steaming woman standing in front of him off her feet. Even though she probably had a fillet knife tucked in her clothes to gut him with.

  “Look, I’m not looking for you to give me the keys to your kitchen, just don’t try to kick me out when I come here for dinner.”

  “I won’t try to kick you out. I went to high school with half the Polish cops in Chicago. I’ll let them do it for me.”

  Her words and the nasal a in Chicago—years of living in New York couldn’t entirely erase her accent—were a fine reminder that she was more than just an owner of a small restaurant in Bucktown. He may have lived here more recently, but her roots were deeper. The popularity of CarpeChicago couldn’t overcome the established Milek family. So far she’d only threatened him with cops, but her brother was also the city’s inspector general. It wouldn’t surprise him if she had an alderman ex-boyfriend.

  “This is more than just about the bad review.”

  “Of course it’s about more than just the review,” she yelled, throwing her arms in the air. Then she looked over her shoulder at the door as if waiting for one of her employees to come in and see what was wrong. “You’re a restaurant reviewer—it’s your job to write reviews and sometimes you have to write bad ones. Maybe you’re even one of those twisted bastards who gets enjoyment from skewering chefs. I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  Her breasts lifted the buttons on her chef’s jacket as she took a deep breath and her hands returned to their enraged position on her hips. “What really pisses me off is that you panned my restaurant and then cozied up—” she said the words as if they were rotten food at the bottom of her Dumpster “—to me. Did you get some sick thrill knowing you were kissing the woman whose career you tried to destroy?”

  He exhaled his frustration. She kept trying to make the review personal.

  “I didn’t know who you were when I kissed you.” She raised an eyebrow at him and he corrected himself. “Kissed you the first time. Then I didn’t tell you who I was before your demo because I liked you and wanted you to succeed. I didn’t want to pressure you.”

  “I’m supposed to believe you don’t want to pressure me now?”

  “I’m not asking for special treatment, just to be another paying customer. I’ll eat your food, drink your alcohol and pay my bill.”

  She was weakening. Her arms had relaxed at her sides and her face was no longer at a rolling boil. A gentle simmer wasn’t much of an improvement, but he would take what he could get. If he came here for dinner every night...

  How could he have been so blind as to miss the giant carrot he could dangle in front of her? He didn’t have to promise anything, just hint enough to persuade her not to bar the door to him. They’d get to know each other and either they were as compatible as he was hoping and she’d forget about the review, or they’d part and his small deception wouldn’t matter.

  “I can’t revise my review if I can’t eat here.”

  Mike would be appalled. His sister would be appalled. His mother would be disappointed in him, but desperation bred shady behavior. He couldn’t leave the brilliance of her presence without knowing he’d tried everything.

  Her mouth flapped open and shut like a caught fish. When she finally got control over her lips, she crossed her hands over her chest and regarded him. “You’ve already eaten my food.”

  “I’ve only eaten here twice, and one of those experiences was terrible.”

  “It wasn’t—”

  “I’ll grant you the dog-and-cat fight wasn’t your fault. But my food was inedible. One delicious dinner eaten in your office isn’t enough to make up for my mother’s ruined birthday.” And the aftereffects of the ruined dinner. His dad had learned about the review and thought it was hilarious. His mom was trying, in her timid way, to get his father to stop referring to a night she’d found painful. In typical Meier family dynamics, his mother’s unease only encouraged his father to be more offensive. Dan wished he’d never written the damn thing. Life would be so much easier if he’d just considered his dinner ruined and gone on with his life.

  Though he never would’ve gone to the Taste and met Tilly.

  “I can’t explain how your food got oversalted.” Hurt-Tilly wasn’t talking to him any longer. His argument appealed to businesswoman-Tilly and she needed the chance of a better review. She also needed to know what had gone wrong that night. But there was still no warmth in her eyes when she looked at him. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “Just don’t kick me out when I come here to eat.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DAN HEARD TILLY MURMUR, “Special treatment my ass,” as she walked to the bar. Her face was flush from the heat of the kitchen, but her flamboyant hair was all tucked under her white bandanna. Too bad, he’d been looking forward to seeing that hair for two days.

  “Not too salty for you?” she asked, a hand on her hip and eyebrow raised. She was looking directly at him and he couldn’t miss her slight sarcasm. His dish wasn’t empty yet, but would be after he dragged a piece of bread through last bits of mushroom, potato and sour cream in a white wine sauce.

  “No. It’s rich and earthy and perfectly seasoned. Is it really named after Horatio Nelson?” The menu had called the dish zrazy grzybowe po nelsońsku and made that ridiculous claim.

  “Yes. People tend to name things after heroes who right wrongs and fight the good fight.” She paused, and he hoped she was done.

  She wasn’t. “Are you going to include that tidbit in your new review?”

  “The new review is only a maybe.” He wished she hadn’t asked about it, though he kept that thought to himself. Next time he ate dinner here, he didn’t want his food poisoned. He liked mushrooms and the line between a wild-mushroom dinner and death was a good eye and a gracious host. Tilly had the first; he wanted to make sure she remained the other.

  “How can you say that after eating food you just declared perfectly seasoned?”

  The clinking of his fork on his plate covered up his sigh. He’d come here to see her and to hear more interesting morsels about Polish cooking, not to be scolded about a review. If he wanted scolding, he’d go find Mike. “I’m a critic. I write reviews. They’re sometimes negative. It’s not part of my job to write retractions, especially when I don’t have a reason to.”

  Her face turned a new shade of red, no longer attributable to the heat from the kitchen. She didn’t look homicidal, though, and he wasn’t going to take back what he said.

  “Was the food of mine you ate last week good?” Her hand was still on her hip, but her eyebrow had fallen. She somehow managed to convey nonexistent angry gestures with the power of her stare. He looked around the mostly empty dining room. She must be controlling her reaction for the benefit of her staff. Too bad. He liked the way she talked with her hands.

  “Yes. Did that chicken you packed me have juniper?”

  “Your bio on CarpeChicago says you eat at every restaurant you review three times. When you wrote the first review, you’d only eaten at Babka once. Now you’ve eaten at Babka three times, plus having leftovers at home. It’s not time for a new review. It’s time for a review that meets your own standards.”

  “If you’re looking that closely at The Eater’s record, you’ll also notice I’ve never written a second review.”

  “I read all your old reviews. I don’t think another restaurant has deserved one.”

  Dan took a sip of his beer and wondered if she realized the double standard she was applying to his review of Babka. “If I started giving out new reviews, I’d have chefs and restaurant owners hounding me day and night. That’s not a precedent I’m willing to set.�
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  “But if you had just come back here to eat another time...”

  “My first experience here was terrible and you expected me to come back?”

  “You’re back now.”

  “To see you.” A good dinner was just a bonus. He’d have come see her if she’d been serving cow pies for dessert.

  His baldly honest statement disarmed her long enough for both her arms to drop to her sides. She wasn’t the only one surprised by what he’d said. Dan knew why he’d come back to Babka; he just hadn’t expected to tell her.

  She wasn’t defenseless long. “You come here to see me, you eat my food in my restaurant, and you still won’t write me a new review.”

  “The Eater, the review, all of that is business. My interest in you is personal. One shouldn’t affect the other or my professional reputation, the authenticity of The Eater, dies.”

  “Maybe you can separate business and pleasure, but Babka is my restaurant and I can’t.” She gave him one last glare before striding back to the kitchen in righteous anger. Dan let her have the last word. He’d be back at Babka tomorrow. There was something about Tilly he couldn’t stay away from.

  * * *

  TILLY HAD THOUGHT THEIR conversation on Tuesday was final. After all, what more could he have to say to her? But on Wednesday night Candace slipped into the kitchen to inform her that the quail with mushrooms she’d just called out was for Dan. Candace had said it under her breath, but movement had stopped in the kitchen for a brief second as everyone heard. Tilly glared and her staff went back to their business of cooking.

  Ignoring him would serve him right. If he was at Babka to see her and not to eat the food, she could ensure he didn’t get what he wanted. She could stay in the kitchen, swiping stray breadcrumbs off plates and reminding Enrique that he wasn’t taking a walk in the park. But she wanted Dan to write a new review, his dumb excuses notwithstanding, and he was unlikely to do so if she snubbed him. Separating business from pleasure, she scoffed. What a crock.