Dirty(68)

I could still hear Boyd banging pots and pans around in the kitchen. Assuming he was my ride home, I’d be waiting for a while. Which was fine. I’m sure I could find something to do here. Maybe I’d go ghost hunting for Andre Senior Scare the crap out of myself down in the dark basement. To my knowledge, I’d never been in a haunted building before. It could be fun. A once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“Lydia, think it’s time we talked,” said Eric from the bar.

Ruh roh.

“All right.” I wandered on over, untying my apron as I walked. If I was about to be fired for telling Masa to go home, at least it would be in comfort. I climbed onto one of the stools, giving my poor whiny aching feet a break. Actually, they weren’t so bad today. Guess I was getting used to being on them all the time.

Eric set a drink on the bar, served in one of the chunky pretend-cut-crystal, vintage-style glasses. I loved them. He clinked his matching drink against mine, then took a sip. It was an amber liquid. Scotch, judging by the smell. A spiral of orange rind and cubes of ice swam around inside.

“It’s an Old Fashioned,” he said with a smile. “Ever had one before?”

“No.” I took another sniff then dared a sip. Scotch and sweetness and something else I couldn’t recognize. Not bad. “Nice. Thank you.”

A nod. “You told Masa to go home.”

“Yes. He wasn’t feeling well and we weren’t crazy busy, so … given Rosie and Nell have got this virus…”

“We sometimes get large groups coming in late. Friends and other people in the area who know we’re not going to turn them away.”

I took another sip of my drink.

“You really think you’d have been able to handle it on your own?” he asked.

“Having to apologize for the service being a little slow would be preferable to having a customer get puked on, I think.” I didn’t bother crossing my fingers to protect against the lie. Masa could be sick too. You never know.

Eric coughed out a laugh. “Fair enough.”

Phew.

I took another sip of the Old Fashioned, trying to appreciate the scotch. Doubtless it was the top-shelf good stuff. Aged for three hundred years or something. But it was pretty much wasted on me.

Eric’s green eyes studied me from across the bar. His dark hair was tied back and he was wearing a crisp black button-up shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Vaughan wasn’t classically handsome, more of a custom job. Starkly unique and beautiful with his long lean body and angled face. Eric, however, was pure pretty. You could see how growing girls went from obsessing over ponies to boys like him in the blink of an eye. They were both lovely and just a touch wild.

“Saw you reorganized the front desk,” he said. “Cleaned up the reservations book.”

“We were quiet this afternoon.”

“Mm.” He did some more drinking. “Nell says you’re just passing through. That this isn’t your usual line of work. But if you were thinking of staying, we could definitely use someone to be in charge of the restaurant section.”

“Oh.”

“Nell’s got the kitchen under control. There’ll be a new assistant starting next week to help her and Boyd out. And between me, Joe, and Vaughan while he’s here, the bar’s fine,” he said. “We need a manager, or maître d’–type person, to keep the restaurant floor running smoothly, though. The job’s yours if you want it. A month on trial then we consider permanent, discuss suitable money and the rest. I don’t know what you earn selling houses, but we’d make it worth your while.”

Huh. My eyes felt very wide. “I was not expecting that.”

“You were good with the angry customers tonight. Calmed them down without us losing business,” he said, then nodded to my glass. “Drink up.”

I drank up. Given my mostly empty stomach on account of the earlier nausea and cramping, it was going straight to my head. “There are people with far more experience managing a restaurant out there.”

He stared at me for a moment then got busy grabbing a couple of bottles off the wall, pouring out shots into a cocktail shaker. “When we started this place, we just wanted to earn a living and have somewhere to hang out with our friends. Nell wanted to run her own kitchen, cook what she liked. I’d worked behind a few bars, figured it was pretty much just more of the same. We were naive as shit.”

While he spoke, he worked, mixing up something new. I watched, fascinated. Ice went into the cocktail shaker along with the alcohol then on went the lid. Silver flashed back and forth before my eyes as he shook the concoction. Next, out of one of the fridges below the endless shelves of bottles behind him came an elegant frosted martini glass. In went the liquid, poured through the cocktail shaker’s strainer. The drink was off white, cloudy. Eric pierced a single red rose petal, then the fruit of a lychee, with a little stick of bamboo, tied with a knot at one end. He carefully added the garnish.