“There’s nowhere else?” Deacon asks.
“Nowhere,” Joel says.
“Put them in Siberia,” Deacon says. With nine courses and wine pairings, they’ll never fit at the three-top. “Give them each two cashmere throws. Who’s the extra guest?”
Joel shrugs. “Some guy.”
Deacon comes out to greet the table just after they’ve received their first amuse-bouche: a simple Nantucket bay scallop poached in lime juice and sprinkled with sea salt. The judge’s scallop sits untouched, as does Scarlett’s. Deacon notices this before he takes stock of the fourth guest. “Some guy” is a tall, sandy-haired man in a navy blazer and an old-school blue and red striped rep tie.
“Greetings, all!” Deacon says.
The judge stands. “Chef Thorpe,” he says. “You remember my wife, Abigail. And I’d like to introduce you to my attorney, Robert Tanner.”
The attorney, Robert Tanner, stands. He and Deacon shake hands. “Call me Bo,” he says.
Deacon turns to look at Scarlett. Her head is bowed over her uneaten scallop as if she’s saying a prayer.
Deacon goes back to the kitchen and shuts himself in his office. He can’t believe the rage that consumes him. He knew about Bo Tanner, and he made the adult decision to ignore it and let it run its course. Bo Tanner is married; he’s wearing a ring. And Scarlett is married. Scarlett has also proved to be flighty in her adult life. She can’t stick with anything for more than a few months; as soon as a project or interest loses its shine, she’s on to the next thing. Hence, it stands to reason, she’ll lose interest in Bo.
Except that… she’s loved him since she was in high school. Or maybe even before that; Deacon can’t remember. This is a love that will haunt her forever. Deacon should just let her go. He considers sending her a text right that second that says I want a divorce. It pains him to think of the relief and the joy that such a text would bring her. It pains him to contemplate failing at marriage a third time.
There have been critical junctures in Deacon’s life when he has needed his father: when Hayes was born, when he was about to leave Laurel, when he messed up so egregiously on Letterman… and right now. Deacon has toyed ten thousand times with hiring a private investigator to find Jack Thorpe. He’ll do it tomorrow, he decides. He doesn’t care how much it costs. He wants to know what’s become of his father.
In the meantime, Deacon takes a bottle of Jameson out of his bottom desk drawer and pours himself a shot. He can’t believe Scarlett brought her lover into his restaurant! It’s beyond the pale. It breaks every code of human decency. Deacon doesn’t care if the judge insisted; Scarlett should have put a stop to it somehow.
Harv knocks, Deacon doesn’t respond.
Angie knocks, Deacon doesn’t respond.
Lily knocks, then says through the door, “The judge’s table refused the sexy scorched-octopus course, Chef. He took offense at the name.”
Deacon pours another shot.
When Deacon goes back out to the dining room, he’s drunk. It’s the middle of course six, the salmon, and Scarlett’s food is uneaten on her plate. Fury rises in Deacon’s throat.
How does it look when even the chef’s wife won’t eat the food? Then he remembers that Scarlett is doing a juice cleanse. He had asked her that morning to abandon the cleanse, for him. Who in their right mind starts a juice cleanse four days before Christmas?
He bares his teeth to the table. The judge has hardly touched his food. Only Abigail and Bo Tanner are enthusiastically eating.
“How is everything?” Deacon asks.
The judge clears his throat to speak, but Deacon doesn’t want to hear it. The judge is a long-winded, pompous ass who doesn’t appreciate anything Deacon is trying to do on the plate.
Deacon sidles up behind Bo Tanner and whispers in his ear, “Stay the hell away from my wife.”
“Deacon,” Scarlett hisses. “You’re being rude.”
Deacon straightens up. “Enjoy your food,” he says. He marches back to the kitchen and passes Angie and Joel Tersigni, standing too close together in front of the walk-in fridge.
“Get back to work!” Deacon shouts at them. He goes into his office and locks the door.
Joel and Angie? he thinks. Over his dead body.
He pours another shot.
The next day, the judge calls Deacon and asks for his initial investment of a million dollars back. Deacon is hungover and contrite. He apologizes for his behavior. “Let me make it up to you tonight, Your Honor. I promise the meal of a lifetime.” Every restaurant has an off night, he says. The judge has to understand: the holidays are a fraught time for everyone.
The judge does not understand. Deacon will return his money, as per the clause in the investment contract. The judge had been the last investor Deacon needed in order to start construction nine years earlier, and in his eagerness, he granted the judge a legal rip cord, a get-out-of-jail-free card, and the judge wants to use it now—otherwise, Deacon will be hearing from the judge’s counsel, Bo Tanner.
“Yes, sir,” Deacon says.
Deacon spends the week between Christmas and New Year’s calling every regular diner he knows in hopes that one of them will want to invest in the restaurant. But these guys are savvy; they know how much the restaurant costs to run and that they likely will never see a return on that investment.
Deacon needs to find someone who cares about the restaurant for the restaurant’s sake. The only person he can think of is himself. He wires a million dollars from his personal account to the restaurant coffers. He’ll deal with the ramifications later.
He hires a private investigator named Lyle Phelan, a former NYPD detective. Lyle Phelan charges a flat fee of $30,000 for missing persons, no matter how long the search takes. He will find Jack Thorpe, he tells Deacon. Guaranteed. Detective Phelan reminds Deacon of Officer Murphy, who came to their apartment in Stuy Town so long ago. Deacon writes the check.
In the ensuing months, Deacon’s financial situation goes straight downhill. He doesn’t have a royalty check due until August, so he works on getting a proposal together for his cookbook. Buck has put him in touch with a literary agent named Kim Witherspoon, who is eagerly awaiting a submission. I’m thinking part cookbook, part memoir, she says. The world is dying to know about your personal life. She sees a bidding war in his future and an advance in the mid six figures.
Envelopes come from Nantucket Bank, but Deacon doesn’t open them. He knows the news isn’t good. Notices come from the management of his building, as he’s behind on the rent. The building’s business manager, Debi, is a huge fan of Deacon’s, and he offers her dinner for two at the Board Room, on the house, if she will give him another month’s leeway. He can’t ignore his kids, however. He writes a check to Hayes’s co-op board and pays the second half of Ellery’s school tuition.
He’s going under. By the time his royalty payments come, he will have spent the check three times over. The notes for his cookbook aren’t anything he’s willing to show anybody. Writing is hard! The world is dying to know about his personal life, but Deacon has serious reservations about discussing it. He’ll need Belinda to sign a disclaimer and she will never agree to it. Writing is really hard! He nearly failed English in high school. The notes sit in a red folder on top of his desk at work, along with the envelopes from Nantucket Bank. They are too awful now for Deacon to even look at, so he puts the envelopes away in a drawer and sends the red folder to Kim Witherspoon. Can she work with this?
Probably not, she says. He’s sent her nothing except a bunch of disjointed notes and the recipe for the clams casino dip, which has been published and reprinted nearly a dozen times over the past decade.
Maybe you should hire a writer, she says. Lots of people do it.
But that costs money he doesn’t have. He should just give the people what they want: the details of his love life, starting way back in the Dobbs Ferry High School cafeteria.
No, he can’t. He’ll stick to food.
Scarlett has been well behaved since the fiasco at dinner. Deacon checks her nightstand table: all the letters, notes, and cards have been removed, and no new ones appear. Scarlett notices him slaving over his cookbook, and she asks, Why the rush? He tells her they’re a little strapped for cash and the cookbook will likely bring in a nice advance.