The waiter finally finished and turned to take the bottle back to the bar with him. “You can leave that on the table,” Cat pointed out quickly, making space next to her plate. “Thank you.”
“Well done,” said Chris. All around them, diners nibbled on their own meager toasted slices of bread and stared indiscreetly, a few tables still snapping photos of the foursome. Bess and Cat might be Photogram-famous in the right downtown circles, but Chris and Jent were truly on their way to genuine multiplex celebrity.
“You guys are nice and all,” Cat said, swallowing half her wine, “but this place is a disgrace.”
“I think—and correct me if I’m wrong—but the executive producer on Jent’s last movie’s current girlfriend’s ex-stepson is an investor,” Chris said slowly. Jent nodded.
“Can you imagine having a child who is so stupid that they’d put your money in something like this?” Cat asked.
“Or so cynical,” Jent replied, gesturing to the packed room and the crowd that had formed outside. “They’re making a fortune on flour. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m from here, from Staten. And I don’t mean to be one of those people, but this is insane.”
“I’m from Tribeca,” Bess piped in. “I was born at St. Vincent’s. I miss specific years in specific New York neighborhoods the way amputees miss limbs. I’m so nostalgic for the West Village in 1997 that it literally hurts, you know? Or Williamsburg in 2000. Or Bushwick in 2004. It’s the most bittersweet thing in the world. God, someone brought up Monkey City the other day and I almost cried.”
“I loved Monkey City,” Jent replied, giving her an approving look. “I remember sitting on the floor in 2005 watching the Dalí movie where someone gets stabbed in the eye and eating the best polenta of my life.”
“I just can’t imagine a world where someone feels that way about this toast restaurant,” Bess said. “The waitstaff here. Is this honestly not absurd to them? Is this a real memory, an indelible part of their New York history? Will it hurt to remember it?” Just then, a server appeared with a multiplate tower of breads and crackers, which he dramatically placed in the center of their table.
“Okay: this is the tower,” he said with a flourish. “Let me walk you through it. We have a nine-grain biscuit that’s been wood-fired with Hudson Valley cedar and seasoned with anchovy crumble; a spelt and buckwheat pancake wrapped in a rice-based phyllo dough; a buttermilk johnnycake dusted with house-made artisanal toasted coconut flour; four petite almond meal loaves proofed in locally grown corn grain alcohol from our neighboring urban farm; and of course our signature rye rieska, a Finnish specialty, with a small side of cured lutefisk processed in the traditional birch ash, along with a selection of our house-made mustards.”
It was basically indistinguishable from the bread basket at Olive Garden save for its massive size. But the waiter’s sincerity as he searched their eyes for criticism and approval was, in fact, genuine. The group realized they couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings or denigrate his livelihood, no matter how absurd, with even the slightest eye roll.
“Thank you,” Bess said kindly.
“This looks amazing,” added Jent, his tone generous.
The waiter smiled in relief, having successfully delivered a $400 basket of the simplest food on earth, and retreated back to the kitchen.
“If thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee,” Cat said quietly to herself, staring down the bread in her palm.
“To be fair, this is, like, the best bread I’ve ever had in my life,” Bess replied as she finished off a johnnycake and started on one of the miniature almond loaves.
Chapter Thirteen
The meal at Paahtoleip? finished up uneventfully, but Cat, still hoping to hear from Hutton, wanted to leave right after dinner. Chris obviously didn’t mind. Jent was polite enough about it. So the group ate their bread, Photogrammed some behind-the-scenes pictures of themselves with the chef, and parted ways a few blocks from the restaurant. On busy Bowery no one noticed Chris and Jent hopping out of the Cooper SUV, their good-night kisses merely friendly pecks on the cheek.
Once they approached Delancey, traffic stood still. Hutton still hadn’t replied to Cat’s text from earlier. The doors were unlocked. This was her chance.
“I’m walking home,” Cat announced abruptly, opening her door while they were stopped at a light. “See you tomorrow.”
“Seeya,” Bess, busy texting, replied dreamily, while Jim was disapprovingly unresponsive. Whatever, Cat thought. I don’t need a babysitter. I can go where I want.
Her feet hit the pavement flat—oh, sweet sneakers!—and Cat pulled her hood up as she hustled over the Williamsburg Bridge, down Broadway, turned on Driggs, and slid sunglasses onto her face before walking into Leicester.
It didn’t do much good. At least three people spotted Cat and took her photo while she waited for the hostess; they were using Mania, she was certain. The first user to flag Cat and accurately tag her clothing would get five Mania points, good on any form of merchandise in their online store, a juggernaut that was fast becoming the Amazon Prime of clothing.
“Hiya! How many?” asked the hostess.
“Just one,” Cat said. “Outside, with an ashtray.”
“Right this way,” the hostess said, to the obvious exasperation of the four groups who had been waiting up front.
“I’m Yelping this,” grumbled a man behind Cat, just loud enough for her to hear. He clearly meant the comment to be threatening—that Cat or the restaurant would quake at the internet wrath of another predatory credit-rich white male being denied his god-given right to go somewhere and spend spend spend as soon as he’d read about it in New York magazine—but Cat, her stomach grumbling, found herself so irritated by him that she actually lit her cigarette, turned around, and exhaled in his face before walking outside after the hostess. Then she ordered a double tequila on the rocks and a Pacifico, keeping her sunglasses on and the cigarette dangling from her lip while she drank alone.
She scanned the restaurant, looking for Hutton, but he was, of course, nowhere to be found. Leicester was a dozen miles from his apartment. They’d been here once. It wasn’t exactly the top of the Empire State Building or anything, just a nice bar with a nice patio with good service and small-batch liquor, one of hundreds in this part of Brooklyn, here to serve you, to meet your needs, to provide a bistro-lit backdrop to your romance, any time after noon and before 4:00 a.m.
There could be hundreds of me, she realized suddenly, sitting in hundreds of bars, just like this, alone in a crowded place, famous and not, trading one thing for another, winding up with nothing.