How do you win with someone like that? Especially when I was so confused as to how I’d ended up here—again. Stuck in Montauk. Stuck in a house with the one person who was a mirror of all of the things I was trying to escape. It wasn’t that I’d been trying to hurt her. It wasn’t that I wanted to make her feel as lost and isolated as I did.
It was really that I didn’t know how to ask her to stop, for just a second, doing everything in her power to remind me that she thought I deserved to feel terrible. That I deserved to have my career taken overnight, and to lose my husband, who had apparently already moved on.
I pulled into the restaurant parking lot, took a peek at myself in the rearview mirror, and wiped at my tears.
And now there was Sammy, her weird and wonderful kid. Thing was (chalk it up to the pregnancy hormones), I was getting used to her. I hated the idea that I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to her, that she wouldn’t even get to hear that I hadn’t wanted to leave. At least, I hadn’t wanted to leave her.
I walked into the kitchen and headed right to my station. Douglas was standing there with a young guy, showing him the ropes.
“What are you doing here?” Douglas said.
“Douglas,” I said. “You have two seconds to get away from my station . . .”
“My station now,” the young guy said.
I drilled him with a dirty look. “Who are you?”
“I’m in charge of trash,” he said.
“I have five hundred dollars in my pocket. It’s yours if you just go to the bathroom for the next five minutes.”
“Deal!” he said.
“No deal,” Douglas said.
“What’s going on?”
We turned to see Chef Z standing behind us. He had his chef jacket on, his arms folded over his chest.
“Douglas, move away,” he said. “And take Lance with you.”
“I’m not Lance,” the young guy said.
Chef Z raised his hands. “Nobody cares,” he said.
As Douglas disappeared and the young guy headed toward the bathroom (did he really think I would pay him now?), Chef Z leaned in.
He whispered in my ear. “What are you doing in my kitchen?”
I cleared my throat. “I apologize, Chef. I just thought if you knew the details of why I did what I did, you’d let me stay with you at work.”
“Details of why you threw a plate of food onto one of my guests?”
I had a whole plan of what to say to him—an entire story. I was going to tell him that Amber had ordered the last lamb entrée of the evening and left the entire plate. And it had just seemed wrong that she would take advantage of everyone’s hard work. Of Chef Z’s hard work. Especially when she was served the last lamb dish of the night. Other people would have loved and respected the food. But thanks to Amber, they hadn’t.
How could that not work? I’d be speaking to every single narcissistic impulse the man had. To deny it would be to deny himself.
Except I was too tired to lie to him. And, I suspected, too out of practice to sell the story. That was the thing about lying. You got used to it, and it was what you did. The truth became a low groan that you could hear, but didn’t really need to address. When you were out of practice lying, though, the effort it took to lie well—the energy to turn a story—became obvious. It was almost as hard as telling the truth.
So instead, that’s what I did. I told him the truth. “She’s not good enough to eat your food, Chef.”
He paused, considering. “No one is.”
Then he stepped away, motioning for me to take my usual spot.
“Consider yourself on probation,” he said.
I nodded, swallowed my tears.
He shook his head, disgusted. “There are no tears in my kitchen,” he said.
“You don’t have to tell me that, Chef,” I said.
“Apparently, I do,” he said.
37
I showed up at Ethan’s at midnight, completely spent.
He had told me he lived near the docks, and a quick search of his website told me exactly where.
He answered the door in his boxer shorts, nothing else. “Haven’t you had enough of me for one day?” he said.
“I need a place to stay,” I said.
He rubbed his eyes. “Come on in.”
From the outside, his place looked pretty run-down. It was a yellow Craftsman in desperate need of a paint job and some different shutters on the windows. Inside, his place was pretty rugged too, though it had a certain charm. Almost in spite of itself, the house had a way about it. There were these thick wooden floors (definitely the originals, which he must have sanded down) and fresh green walls, great photographs of gas stations scattered throughout. The furnishings consisted of decent rugs and a great leather chair. And there was a gorgeous bay window that looked out on the docks and let in the moonlight, putting a soft sheen over everything.
Ethan led me into the bedroom, where he pointed at a mattress on the floor, Frette sheets on top of it. Like the Frette sheets I had at home. And in a million years, I wouldn’t have imagined this man would have purchased Frette sheets, and I realized he hadn’t. They had been a gift from someone who hadn’t wanted to sleep on whatever sheets he had purchased. The celebrity.
He shrugged, not exactly apologizing. “It’s what I’ve got to offer,” he said.
I was too tired to care. We both lay down, back to back, heels touching.
“Don’t try anything funny,” he said.
And, like that, we fell asleep.
38
When I woke up, it was still dark out.
I looked at the clock. 5 A.M. Thankfully, Ethan was gone. It took a minute to acclimate to where I was. Strange bed, familiar sheets. For a second I let them take me to the last time I had been in these sheets, “Moonlight Mile” on the radio, Danny still sleeping in bed, the sheets up to his shoulders, the sheets up to my chin. Where was I now?
I assumed Ethan had gone to the docks and went into his kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. There was no going back to sleep. I sat on a wooden chair, waiting for the coffee to brew, and pulled up Danny’s number on my phone. I needed to tell him about the baby, whatever his situation was. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Maggie. And Danny.
How was it possible? That wasn’t how Danny worked. He wouldn’t want to be unfair to Maggie. She was a good friend. He wouldn’t want to start something with her until he was ready. Was there a world in which he was ready so soon? Maybe I was a complete fool, but I didn’t buy it. I still thought there had to be another explanation.
I poured myself a large cup of coffee and was about to call Danny, when Ethan walked back in the door, a bag from John’s Pancake House in one hand, a tray of coffee cups in the other.
He motioned toward the mug I was holding. “I definitely wouldn’t drink that,” he said.
I put my phone away. “If you’re judging me for drinking coffee while I’m pregnant . . .”
“I’m judging you for drinking that coffee,” he said. “I haven’t used that coffeemaker since the early eighties.”
He handed over his tray of drinks.
“Sugared. Decaf. Caf,” he said. “Wasn’t sure which way you’d want to go.”
“Thanks. What’s in the bag?”
“Egg sandwich. That’s for me, though. I need the sustenance.”
“And why’s that?”
“I’m driving to New York today to meet with some investors.”