The Hotel Nantucket (88)

“Are you waiting for someone?” Leigh asks.

Lizbet shrugs. “Maybe.”

Leigh cocks an eyebrow—and the very next second she breaks into a smile. “Look what the cat dragged in! It’s just like old times. Can I get you the usual, Chef?”

“Please,” JJ says.

Lizbet stands and greets him with a hug as though he’s an old friend from high school. He takes the opportunity to squeeze Lizbet tight and she inhales his scent—boy fresh from the shower, Ivory soap, wintergreen aftershave, a lingering hint of the cigarette he smoked on his way here.

When she pulls away, he says, “You look gorgeous, Libby. I don’t think I’ve seen that dress before.”

“You haven’t.” Lizbet is wearing a red crinkled-cotton sundress—short, to show off her legs—and her nude wedges.

They take their stools, the same ones they’ve sat on a hundred times before. When JJ’s drink arrives, they touch glasses. Lizbet has unwittingly slipped right back into her former life. This is a meeting, she reminds herself. Not a date. She knows Leigh is not only tenacious but discreet; anyone else would be sending an all-caps text around the island: LIZBET AND JJ REUNITING AT PROPS BAR!!!!

Lizbet isn’t sure what to say to the person she knows better than anyone on earth. Should she ask him about Christina? (No.) Should she launch into the story about the impostor Shelly Carpenter? (No, he won’t get it.) He seems nervous. His hand shakes as he holds up the dinner menu.

To put him at ease (she can’t believe she’s falling into the same old habit of worrying about his comfort), she asks about the restaurant.

“Worst summer ever,” he says.

“We said that every August.”

“I’m serious, Libby. Everything sucks. The place has no soul. My cooking is technically sound and the staff know what they’re doing but there’s no love, no magic.”

Well, Lizbet thinks.

“My TravelTattler reviews are atrocious. Everyone calls the dining ‘disappointing.’ It’s like we’re being punished for being great in the past. Any idea how frustrating that is? People hear, ‘Oh, the Deck is the best,’ and they come in with unreasonable expectations. We’re human beings running a restaurant. Things happen.”

“They certainly do.”

“I need you to come back, Libby.”

Lizbet scream-laughs and Leigh glances over. Lizbet flags her. “We’re ready to order.”

There’s no conflict or confusion where the menu is concerned because Lizbet and JJ always get the same thing. They start with one order of fried green tomatoes with pimiento cheese and black-pepper honey and one order of the bone marrow. Then Lizbet gets the chicken-fried trout and JJ the Korean short ribs with kimchi grits.

“Would you like another drink?” Leigh asks Lizbet.

“I’m going to stick with one,” Lizbet says. “I have an early day tomorrow.” She has an early day every day now and can’t afford to stumble out of here the way she used to.

When Leigh leaves, Lizbet says, “I’m not coming back, JJ. You blew it.”

He swivels toward her so that his knees are kissing her leg. He puts his hand on the back of her barstool, leans in, and speaks very softly. Lizbet can’t make out everything he says, but she gets the gist of it: I was such an idiot, a fool, a creep, I hate myself for what I did, I would do anything to go back to how it was, I was so unhappy with Christina, she’s shallow and mean-spirited and insecure and so jealous of you, she almost ruined the restaurant, the staff hated her, she let some underage kids in on a Sunday and sold them the wineglasses even though a blind man could have seen their IDs were fake, I would do anything to get you back, if you don’t come back, I’m not sure what I’ll do.

“You’ll do what we all do, JJ,” she says. “You’ll keep on keepin’ on.”

“I’ll sell the restaurant to Goose,” he says. “Walk away.”

“You would never.”

“Watch me.”

“It sounds like you’re trying to threaten me,” Lizbet says. “But I don’t care if you sell the Deck. Why would I care? It’s yours.”

“So you’re telling me you don’t care about the Deck?”

Lizbet reaches for what’s left of her Celery, Man and finishes it. “I cared so much. That restaurant was my…our…home. The staff was our family. But I wasn’t the one who torched it, JJ. This is your arson, not mine.”

Leigh arrives with their appetizers. “Here we go, guys, one fried green tomatoes, one marrow. Anything else I can bring you?”

Earplugs, Lizbet thinks. A Valium. A graceful exit.

She puts a tomato on a side plate for JJ, just like she always has. He spreads the luscious marrow on a thick golden slice of grilled bread for her.

“Bon appétit,” they say together. Lizbet can’t get the first bite of tomato to her mouth fast enough. This is Nantucket in a nutshell. She’s in emotional hell but at least the surroundings are charming, the service impeccable, and the food maddeningly delicious.

Between the appetizer and the entrée, Lizbet goes to the bathroom, where the walls are papered with pages from a vintage copy of June Platt’s Party Cookbook, which provides menus for each day of the calendar year. March 24: pea soup, dressed crab, bishop’s pudding. The wallpaper improves Lizbet’s mood—imagine, every day a party!—and when she gets back to the table, she decides to tell JJ the Heidi Bick/Lyric Layton drama. He becomes engrossed in the story—holy shit, he can’t believe it; no, he hasn’t heard about any of this, though, come to think of it, he hasn’t seen the Bicks all summer and he’s seen the Laytons only once.