Lou walked back into the bathroom, pulling her hair into a ponytail as she went.
“Luella’s. It’s a few blocks away on the corner. Big windows out front. You need to stop by now that you’ve met Sue and Harley. Sue’s the sous chef. Harley does desserts. . . .”
Lou’s calm, confident voice kept talking but Al didn’t hear anything after “Luella’s.” He fell back into the pillows, thankful Lou couldn’t see him, and stared at the blank white ceiling, searching for answers to questions he didn’t know to ask. It couldn’t be her. Luella’s was owned by an Elizabeth, not a Lou. He pulled himself away from the brink, grasping for his last hope.
“Is Lou short for Luella?” Please say your first name is anything but Elizabeth. Let it be a different Luella’s restaurant, please not the same one, not the same person. Let there be two. But he knew, even without her answer. Al’s heart beat a million times in the second it took Lou to answer.
“Sort of. Luella is my middle name and my grandma’s. My real name is Elizabeth, but no one ever uses it. Don’t you dare start calling me Lizzy.”
He went still—channeling all the emotions into their proper place to be identified and analyzed. Shock would go there, then anger behind that, then sadness blanketed them all. He had to end it. Logically, a person in his job couldn’t fraternize with the people he critiqued for a living, and he certainly couldn’t make love to them for hours after having a cookout with half their staff. It contradicted his personal code of ethics.
And he felt shame.
He fumbled with the facts—shifting and sorting them into the right order, like Scrabble tiles spelling out words. He lined up the events he knew, then filled in the rest. The last event clicked into place. He knew now what had happened that day, the day he reviewed Luella’s. He saw it, saw her sad frosting trail and broken heart the same night he ate at her restaurant. Yes, the food was awful, but he didn’t do his job. Any other food critic would have returned, given the restaurant another chance. Not him, no—he had to bury her. Had he gone back, the food would have been perfect. If last night’s meal was any indication, Lou understood food and how to coax it into something grander. Shame at a job poorly done caused his eyes to burn with the truth of his situation. He had to leave. She could never know who he was, which meant they could not be together. He sat up, movements stiff and slow, grabbed his pants, and proceeded to get dressed.
Lou came out from the bathroom, a bottle of vanilla in one hand, the other dabbing the extract behind her ears. She saw what he was doing and frowned a little.
“Leaving? You don’t have to. You could come with me. Harley usually makes a few fresh pastries for those of us coming in early.”
Al looked her in the eyes, building up his courage for the lies he needed to tell.
“I can’t. I have to pack.”
“You’re going on a trip? Where?”
“Work. I have an assignment in California. I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. I leave tomorrow.”
“That sucks. You could come over when you finish packing.”
“Probably not. I tend to pack last minute, so now I have to spend all my time wrapping up loose ends.”
“Of course. I didn’t expect last night either.” Lou blushed a little, remembering, and Al’s guilt surged higher.
“I better be off. I’ll call you when I get back?”
“Sounds good.”
The radio in the bathroom sounded louder in the silence. “Storms are headed this way. Take shelter and don’t go out if you don’t need to,” said the weatherman.
Al gave her a swift peck on the cheek and left, closing the apartment door quietly.
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN •
Thunder rumbled and a cool breeze rushed through the open back door of the restaurant. A waterfall fell over the entrance, the gutters above long since defunct. Other than the rain and thunder, only the whir of Harley’s mixer and the snick of knives on cutting boards disturbed the peaceful morning. While Lou loved the raucous music, loud voices, and chaotic movement of a dinner rush, the calm of prep work soothed her soul and gave her time to think. Some people did downward dog, some burned incense in front of a Buddha statue, some prayed the rosary; Lou chopped vegetables into tiny squares, filleted fish, and reduced veal stock. Her meditation smelled better, and even if she didn’t find a solution, at least she got to eat.
“I don’t know, Sue; it was odd,” Lou said, breaking the silence and talking loud enough that Harley could hear in his corner of the kitchen.
“The morning after is always weird,” Sue said.
“No, that’s not it. He wasn’t letting me out of bed. He kept holding me tighter. It was really sweet. Then all of a sudden he couldn’t leave fast enough. I half expected him to mention a squash game he forgot about.”
“Maybe he really had to pack? You never know. What do you think, Harley?”
“He looks like Harry Potter.”
“Just because he’s British does not make him Harry Potter.” Lou rolled her eyes at Harley’s comment.
Sue leaned in close to Lou. “He must really like him if he’s comparing him to Potter.”
Lou smiled and whispered back, “I know. Not much higher praise than that.”
Even with her slightly uneasy feeling, Lou felt joy—giddy joy. She smiled the sloppy grin of the newly besotted.
“You know you’re glowing, right?” Sue asked.
Lou blushed. “I can’t help it. I’m just so . . .” She searched for the right word.
“Happy,” Sue said.
“Yes, happy. And giddy. And nervous. And twittery.”
“Twittery?”
“Yes, twittery. I’m twittery. This feels so different from Devlin. I want to know everything about him. Does he always snore when he sleeps? Did he always want to be a writer? Who was his first love? I know so little about him and I can’t wait to find it all out.”
• • • • •
“Hannah, please,” Al said, gripping the faded office chair in front of Hannah’s desk.
Hannah studied the muscles tensing in his jaw, restraining the multitude of counterarguments he had ready for any refusals she presented.
“You’ve never asked for anything before. Why this?”
“I got it wrong.”
“Are you telling me you lied?” Hannah sat up in her chair, alarmed at where this seemed to be going.
“No, it happened. I just didn’t have all the facts.”
“Then, no.”
“You have to let me rereview it.”
“I don’t have to let you do anything other than your job, which is to write entertaining opinion pieces about restaurants.” She drew out the word “opinion,” making her point plain. “If we retracted every opinion we published, that’s all the paper would be. You didn’t lie—you accurately described your meal; the review stands.”
“You don’t understand—I was wrong.”
“I don’t really care. Maybe in a year or so you can review it again. If you start retracting your reviews, you’ll lose credibility, and so will we. I won’t let you do that to yourself or this paper. We have a hard enough time competing with online review sites. At least with print media, we have a modicum of authority. I won’t let you undermine that.”
“I’ll never ask again.”
“No, you won’t. My word is final. Out.”
Hannah turned to her computer and began reading e-mails. Al, recognizing his loss, clenched his fist and returned to his cubicle. But he didn’t sit; he stared at the blank computer screen, glared at it as if it had written the cruel review and destroyed a good woman’s business. An image flashed of him hoisting the monitor over his head and tossing it through the large windows. But the British never show such emotion. He had to leave, get out of the office, out of the city if he could.