Buck scoffed at the whale shorts, but he agreed to try them on with—Why the hell not?—the pink polo shirt. He spoke to Deacon in his mind. It would serve you right if I wore this getup to spread your ashes.
Then Buck thought, Why not? He would buy the whale shorts and the pink polo.
Buck poked his head out from the dressing-room curtain. “I’m buying this combo,” he told Laurel. “I’ll wear it tomorrow when I say good-bye to our old friend.”
Intermezzo: Deacon and Scarlett, Part I
The age of the celebrity chef is upon them. Mario Batali and Bobby Flay, Daniel Boulud and Anthony Bourdain, and the biggest gun of them all—Thomas Keller—are household names. No sooner does Deacon quit Raindance, and no sooner do he and Belinda officially separate—both developments land Deacon on the front page of the tabloids—than the Food Network calls to offer Deacon a new half-hour show called Pitchfork. The producers want to capitalize on Deacon’s bad-boy image while it’s still fresh in everyone’s minds. The show will spotlight his diabolical recipes—the caramelized foie gras pudding, the striped bass cooked in cigar smoke, the lobster momos with the creamy sriracha dipping sauce.
Buck is over the moon. Deacon’s shameful behavior has turned out to be his salvation—once again.
Only two weeks after his divorce from Belinda is final, Deacon resumes his old ways. He tapes the show every afternoon, and then he goes out drinking. His haunts include McCoy’s, McSorley’s, the Cupping Room, Spring Lounge, Mother’s Ruin, Fish, the White Horse Tavern, and El Teddy’s. Sometimes he meets Buck at Ryan’s Daughter because Buck doesn’t like to go below Fourteenth Street, and especially not since 9/11.
Having Angie helps keep Deacon in check. He’s home by seven or seven thirty to make her dinner and see that she’s at least pretending to do her homework. One weekend per month, however, Belinda comes into town, and Angie is required to stay with her. Belinda has given Deacon the apartment in the Waldorf Towers, and now she stays at the Standard, in the Meatpacking District.
The first time Belinda fulfills her maternal duties, Deacon is at loose ends. Angie keeps him honest, but now she’s with her mother, and the way Deacon feels about Belinda, a city of nine million people isn’t big enough.
He goes on a bona fide bender: Spring Lounge, Gatsby’s, White Horse, Jekyll & Hyde, the Ear Inn, the Four-Faced Liar. At the Four-Faced Liar, he bumps into a bachelor party for two gentlemen getting married, one of whom used to be a sommelier at Raindance, a guy named Morgan. Morgan lassoes Deacon into their group, and down they go to Soho, to places that are so exclusive, they don’t even have names—private lounges, supper clubs, speakeasies. They are dimly lit and filled with beautiful people. Deacon is underdressed and unprepared, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Everyone knows him. Free drinks appear wherever they go—or maybe the drinks aren’t free, maybe Morgan’s future husband is paying; Becker is the in-house counsel for Merrill Lynch. Deacon is confused, disoriented, drunk, and growing more depressed by the minute. The downtown partying life is empty and hollow; it’s filled with poseurs, pretenders, charlatans, and actors like him. He’s a chef, but something about cooking in makeup makes him feel like a fake. He longs to be back in a real kitchen, but not at Raindance. Raindance was too corporate. He longs for his days at Solo, back when things were immediate and real. Back when he was with Laurel.
It’s nearly three o’clock in the morning. Should he call Laurel? When they got home from St. John, she returned to her life saving souls in the Bronx—and he went back to his. He hasn’t spoken to her since their return, and he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to receive a drunken, late-night phone call.
He has lost the bachelor party, which is a blessing and a curse. Morgan, at the very least, would have seen him into a cab. Deacon doesn’t know the name of the place where he presently finds himself, so even if he calls Laurel or Buck, he wouldn’t know where to tell them to come. He locates a banquette upholstered in what appears to be black mink. There’s a glass of ice water on the table. Deacon drinks it gratefully down and thinks he’ll probably just sleep here, and when he wakes up, he’ll stumble home.
Someone slides into the banquette next to him and puts a hand on his leg. He startles awake. It’s a young woman with a shiny curtain of long, dark hair. She smiles at him. He knows the smile somehow.
“Deacon,” she says. “Is it you?”
It takes him several seconds to figure out who this is and how he knows her and if this is real or if he is dreaming. The voice is so familiar, a voice he knows intimately, he thinks, and yet he can’t place it. The Jameson has gobbled up all the brain cells necessary for him to interact appropriately.
He nods. He can say with relative certainty that he is Deacon.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” she says. “It’s me, Scarlett!”
Scarlett? Deacon blinks. Last he heard, Scarlett was still pursuing her dream of becoming a photographer. She latched onto the entourage of Pilly Dodge, whom Deacon knows because Pilly once shot Belinda for the cover of Vogue, and Belinda came home crowing about what a genius he was—better than Weber and Demarchelier combined.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“I live here,” she says. “I have a studio apartment on Sullivan Street.” Deacon nods and feels relieved that Scarlett didn’t move to Brooklyn, like all the other cool and smart people in New York.
“But what are you doing here here?” he asks, indicating the club around them.
“Here at Yukio’s?” she says. “My friends and I popped in for something to eat. I’m starving. Are you hungry? They have the most amazing edamame with sea salt, and word is that they take more calories to digest than they actually have, so you lose weight eating them. Do you want me to order you some?”
“Yes,” Deacon says.
He won’t lie; there’s no point in it now. He has fantasized about making love to Scarlett Oliver since she first walked in the door to interview for the nanny position. He sometimes thinks back to the time on Nantucket when she invited him into the outdoor shower—she was right on the other side of the door, wet and naked—and castigates himself. He blew his chance! Other times he congratulates himself for his restraint. Despite his hundreds of other sins, he wasn’t the guy who seduced the nanny.
But now, things are different. Scarlett is no longer the nanny. She is a woman who can make her own decisions. She decides not to take Deacon up on his offer to come home with him, but she does agree to have dinner with him the following night at Le Bernardin.
The dinner at Le Bern is twelve courses with wine pairings and all kinds of luscious treats sent out by Chef Eric Ripert. Scarlett looks absolutely ravishing in a red dress, her hair straight and long, framing her pale face and wicked red lips. She is exquisite.
But she isn’t much of an eater, he notices. Nothing like Laurel or Belinda. When Scarlett worked for them, she used to carry around a book that told her how many calories were in a grape (eight) or a chocolate éclair (ten thousand), but even then, she used to indulge in the occasional treat. She loved grits, and she never turned down an ice cream cone. Now, she lets most of her very expensive courses sit untouched until their server whisks them away.
Can Deacon pursue a relationship with someone who doesn’t enjoy food? Normally he would say no, but he is so swayed by her beauty that he says yes.
They go on three dates—Le Bernardin, Blue Hill, and Per Se—before she sleeps with him. The sex isn’t quite as explosive as he’d hoped—Laurel and Belinda were both unbridled in their lovemaking—but again, he doesn’t care. She is so beautiful, it’s like making love to a Michelangelo. He loves to watch her walk across the room naked.
“Have you dated anyone seriously?” Deacon asks. “Were you involved with Pilly?”
“For a little while,” Scarlett says. “Everyone who works with him sleeps with him eventually, I guess.”
But… she still really loves Bo Tanner, she says. Bo is her former boyfriend from the Savannah days. He’s an attorney down there, married to Scarlett’s best childhood friend, Anne Carter.