My Darling Husband(20)
The wind sends an icy blast up my back. “It’s torched, man. A total loss.”
He smacks the sill and whoops, a full-bellied laughter that drowns out the birds overhead, the cars on the street, the dog still going berserk next door.
“Dude. Dude. Are you serious right now? Are you kidding me?” He pauses to catch his breath, a long stretch of silence to enjoy the hell out of my expression. He laughs some more, all jolly hilarity. “Oh my God. This is too damn good.”
“Shut up.”
“For real, man. And though I appreciate you coming all the way here to tell me the joyous news in person, what kind of idiot do you think I am? An arsonist would have to be really incompetent to give his former boss a six-month warning. I mean, come on. You and I both know I’m not that stupid.”
“It was four and a half. March 24.”
“Aww, you remembered our anniversary.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what? Forget it. I’m out of here.” I turn and march for the gate.
“Wait. Where you going? Who are you going to accuse next—Drew?”
The name slams me in the back, and I stop, my soles sinking into the grass. Drew is a fellow chef, a former employee who I lured to the Lasky brand with the promise of him running his own restaurant. One of the three chefs I fired in an ugly dispute last year because his food wasn’t good enough to fill the tables.
“Drew signed a contract, dickhead. Same as you.”
A contract that multiple attorneys on both sides agreed was legit. No hidden clauses, nothing sneaky or underhanded buried in legalese. The terms were spelled out in bulletproof, easy-to-understand black and white. I even cut Drew some slack, gave him some extra time to fine tune the menu to appeal to the Perimeter Mall crowd, but I couldn’t keep bailing him out when sales were already slipping. A couple more months and we’d be laying off waitstaff, slashing food quality, defaulting on bills. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to do it, but it was Drew or the restaurant, that’s essentially what it came down to.
So yeah. Drew might have lost his job, but I’m the one who almost lost his shirt. The one who had to pump in a buttload of my own cash and energy to fix Drew’s mistakes, who had to work harder and longer to patch up the holes his bad management blew in the place.
But George is not wrong. It’s not like Drew wouldn’t be more than happy to strike a match to the Bolling Way shop, too. And so would—
“What about Fred and Kelly? Have you been to see them yet? Because they hate your guts as much as Drew and I do.”
Fred and Kelly. Once upon a time, chefs at the West Side and Inman Park shops, until sales at those restaurants started sliding, too. Just because you’re a chef doesn’t mean you should be running your own shop. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.
“And what was the name of that line cook up at the Forum? The one you fired when his wife was about to get deported because he was spending too much time on the phone with his lawyer. Simon or Christian or something. Oh, and remember that mixologist you brought down from New York City to revamp the cocktail menu, only to send him packing as soon as he was done? Last I heard, he was slinging gin and tonics at the Dunwoody Country Club up the road. Any one of them would love to see Bolling Way blow up in smoke. Any one of them would have a reason to want revenge.”
“You’re a real asshole, do you know that?”
“You gotta admit I have a point. You really are your own worst enemy, aren’t you? And assuming all those people didn’t actually light the match...” He points a stubby finger at my face. “You know what they’d say about the fire, right?”
I shake my head and take off for the gate, not because I don’t know but because I do. I know exactly what they’ll say about the fire, just like a tiny part of me wonders if they might be right.
George’s answer chases me out of the yard: “They’d say it’s karma.”
T H E I N T E R V I E W
Juanita: One of the articles that went viral after the home invasion was an anonymous piece on Medium, accusing Jade of being a gold digger.
Cam: Right, and the fact that no one was willing to attach their name to such trash should have told the public all they needed to know.
Juanita: So it’s not true?
Cam: When Jade and I met, I was driving a ten-year-old Honda Civic with questionable brake pads and a hole in the floorboard, and my mortgage on the leaky, rickety building that housed my first restaurant was deep underwater. Every penny I made went into that money pit, which is why I was crashing on a buddy’s couch in Grant Park at the time. I couldn’t afford rent and the health inspector would have had a fit if he found me sleeping under one of my dining tables. All that goes to say, if anybody was the gold digger in this scenario, it was me.
Juanita: How did the two of you meet?
Cam: Jade was one of the designers pitching for the renovation of that place. She walked into my kitchen that day, and I couldn’t string two words together. She literally took my breath away. I would have hired her even if she was a talentless hack.
Juanita: [smiling] I guess it’s a good thing she was talented, then.
Cam: So darn talented. She nailed the design, and then she helped me execute it on a shoestring budget. Later, she pushed me to expand that first shop into a brand, one that’s timeless and recognizable, where people walk through the door and know immediately they’re in a Lasky restaurant. That’s all because of her.