Adrienne speared a piece of tuna. Even the silverware here had a sleek design. “You don’t have to answer,” she said. “I’m at the mercy of alcohol now myself.”
“That was my goal,” Thatcher said. “Get you drunk so you forget I’m your boss.”
“Why do you want me to forget you’re my boss?”
“So you’ll like me.”
“I do like you.”
He stared at her a minute then reached for her hand. She looked at the side of his face, at the clean pink skin around his ear, newly exposed from the haircut. With his other hand, he loosened his tie and undid his top button. He had barely touched his food.
“You’re not eating,” she said.
“I’m pacing myself,” he said. “Remember, I know what’s to come.”
Adrienne reclaimed her hand to finish her tuna, and if Thatcher wasn’t going to eat, she would finish his.
“I became an alcoholic as a result of the business,” Thatcher said. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know that anything happened,” he said. “I was just drinking a lot every night. A couple of cocktails, a bottle of wine, a glass of port. And by the time the hand bell chimed, I was sloshed. I did stupid things. Forgave all the tabs at the bar. Doubled the tips for the waitstaff. This made me very popular, mind you, but it was bad for our bottom line. I started AA four years ago. Fiona insisted.”
“Did she?”
“My behavior was threatening the business. It had to stop.”
“Isn’t it hard, though, not drinking? Especially when you’re around alcohol all the time?”
“At first, I tried to cut back. Have one cocktail, one glass of wine. But I couldn’t do it. One cocktail wasn’t an option. Alcoholism is a disease and I have it. But it’s not so bad.” He held up his drink. “I really love club soda.”
Adrienne smiled and stared at Thatcher’s tuna, ruby red in the frosted martini glass. She could stay here all night. She wanted to enjoy being waited on for a change. But Thatcher seemed antsy. He checked his Patek Philippe. “Time’s up,” he said. “We’re going.”
At a restaurant called Oran Mor, Thatcher and Adrienne hid at a tiny table tucked behind the horseshoe-shaped bar. The table had a view of the harbor and the ferry-the same ferry that Adrienne had arrived on two weeks, and another lifetime, ago. A male waiter brought Adrienne a glass of red wine followed by an enormous porterhouse steak topped with Roquefort butter. Thatcher got a shallow dish of lobster risotto.
“I couldn’t decide between the two,” he said. “So we got both.” He watched Adrienne take a bite of steak. “Now taste your wine.”
Adrienne bristled once again at being told what to do, especially since she knew he’d be right. The steak and wine were made for each other.
“How’s the wine?” he asked.
“Incredible.”
He picked up her glass and inhaled. “Big,” he said. “Plummy. Just as they described it.”
Adrienne offered her steak to Thatcher but he shook his head. “Go on,” she said. “There can’t be more after this.” He relented, then hand-fed her a bite of his risotto, and all Adrienne could think was that it was a good thing no one could see them. Nothing brought more sarcasm from the waitstaff than a couple feeding each other.
Adrienne drank down her wine and another glass appeared. She was officially drunk; across the table, Thatcher was blurry. He was looking at her so intently that it took the place of conversation. He’s soaking me up, Adrienne thought. Whatever that meant. The more Adrienne drank, the more it seemed like Thatcher himself was drunk. When she finished eating, Thatcher took her hand again.
“Who are you, Adrienne Dealey?” he said. “Who are you?”
She didn’t have anything resembling a good answer. She couldn’t say “I’m a dentist and a father.” Or “I’m a restaurant owner.” Or “I’m a chef.” She couldn’t even say “I’m a childhood friend of Fiona’s. I’ve been a friend of hers since kindergarten.” She had no identity. She lived in a place for a while, working a desk, skiing bumps, visiting Buddhist temples, sitting on a sugar-sand beach, making poor decisions, fudging the details of her past-and six months or a year later she was somewhere else. Someone else. New friends, new boyfriend, new job, new location. The most important thing in her life had been the money for her Future, the money saved up for… what? Some bigger plan that she had yet to identify. Her father was right. One of these days she was going to have to pick a place and stay there.
“I’m a student of human nature,” Adrienne said. She was so drunk this didn’t even sound corny. “I’m trying to absorb it all before I settle down.”
“Do you think you’ll ever settle down?” Thatcher said. “Get married?”
Adrienne pushed her plate away; she was absolutely stuffed. She reached for her wine and held the glass with two hands. “I don’t know. I’ve had a lot of boyfriends. There was a guy on the Cape who asked me to marry him and I considered it for about a day and a half. Then I freaked out and flew to Hawaii. It was very immature behavior on my part.”
“My mother bailed on us when I was nine,” Thatcher said. “My three older brothers were sixteen, fourteen, and eleven at the time. There is no doubt in my mind that we drove her away; we would have driven Mother Teresa away. So I used to have an issue with women who run, but I got over it. I forgave my mother-that’s one thing AA really helps with, forgiveness. She lives in Toronto now, but I never see her.”
“Yeah,” Adrienne said. “My mother died when I was twelve.”
“I didn’t know your mother died,” Thatcher said. “Something you said earlier made me think…”
“I’m sorry about that,” Adrienne said. “I have a hard time talking about it and sometimes it’s just easier…”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Thatcher said.
“Maybe not to you,” Adrienne said. “But I’ve lied to a lot of people about it. I pretend my mother is still alive. I want her to be alive.”
“Of course.”
Adrienne placed a fingertip at the corner of her eye. “I probably don’t need any more wine.”
Thatcher looked around the restaurant. “I was going to take you to Languedoc for the Sweet Inspirations sundae.”
“It may interest you to know,” said Adrienne, “that the key to dessert is not sugar.” She bent her head close to the table and whispered, “It’s eggs.”
Thatcher groaned. “When a woman starts quoting Mario Subiaco, I know she’s had too much to drink. No sundae for you. Let’s go for a drive.”
“I have to use the ladies’ room,” Adrienne said.
She nearly tripped on the uneven floor on the way to the bathroom and when she got inside, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were bright pink. I am drunk, she thought. Schnockered. She splashed her face and pulled out her dental floss. Who are you, Adrienne Dealey? I am a person who cares about dental hygiene.
They climbed into Thatcher’s silver pickup. His truck was impeccably clean and smelled like peppermint. Adrienne fell back into the gray leather seat while Thatch fiddled with the CD player. He put on Simon and Garfunkel.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Old. Thirty-five.” He rummaged through the console and brought out a tire gauge. “I’m going to take you up the beach,” he said. “Do you have any objections to that?”
“None,” Adrienne said. The clock in the car said ten thirty. She couldn’t help thinking about the restaurant: Had Caren and Duncan made up? Would they be sneaking in gropes and shots of espresso, giddy with their freedom like kids whose parents were away for the weekend? Would they be playing techno on the stereo (which Thatch hated) and hogging all the crackers for themselves? “Do you miss work?” she asked. She noticed his cell phone sitting in the console next to the tire gauge, his ring of Bistro keys, and a tin of Altoids, but he hadn’t so much as checked his messages.