It was a solid business plan. She’d spent a lot of time researching the market and her competition. She’d found a web designer and a warehouse. All she had needed was an interested foodie—Dan—and a backer. Dan didn’t doubt she would find a backer. Beth was like an overgrown terrier, fearless and stubborn. Plus, according to her plan, Dan would keep his writing job for the foreseeable future. He could live without the money he earned, but even rich kids needed something to do and Dan liked working.
The waitress returned to collect their empty bowls and Dan ordered cooling persimmon punch for dessert. She returned with two bowls of coral-colored liquid with a dried persimmon sitting at the bottom and pine nuts floating on the top. The scent of cinnamon danced over the table, cutting through the cloying smell of sugary persimmon.
Beth sipped her punch and looked over the bowl at Dan.
“Something’s up with you. You have the job you say you’ve wanted since college. Why are you willing to give it up?”
He let the cold liquid wash over his tongue, warmed by the cinnamon and the heat in the ginger, before he crunched on a pine nut and answered his sister.
“I’m tired of bad reviews.”
“Does this have anything to do with the cute, blue-haired woman from the Taste?”
“What do you know about Tilly?”
“Just because you hate social networking doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I saw the picture posted to Twitter.” She looked at him sympathetically over her bowl of punch. “You looked really into her. I’m sorry.”
“She dumped me yesterday.”
“What!” She choked and coughed before she succeeded in swallowing her drink. “You were dating her?”
“I was trying to. One date was all she would give me.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Thank for the support, sis.”
Beth shrugged and didn’t look the least bit abashed. “If I were her, I’d knee you in the nuts and leave you for the wolves.”
“When your employees said you were a ballbuster, I didn’t think they meant it literally.” Dan smiled at his sister. “Fortunately for me, Tilly is nicer than you. I’m hoping she’s also more forgiving.”
“Don’t quit reviewing because of one bad experience. I want your help, but not if you’re going to be dissatisfied with the work in three years and leave me. I’d rather find another foodie.”
“I don’t think this will be a temporary career change.” Dan pictured Tilly’s wild hair and expressive face. What would she look like in twenty years? Thirty? Forty? He wanted to know and she wouldn’t be a part of the future he envisioned if he kept reviewing. “I’m feeling pretty permanent about it.”
“You have a stupid, puppy-love look on your face. It’s a good thing I’m the businessman in this relationship.”
Dan laughed loudly enough for heads in the restaurant to turn and stare at them. “We’ll be good cop/bad cop. And, sis?”
Beth raised an eyebrow at him.
“I’m going to love working with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TILLY LOOKED OVER the carefully designed menu for the rehearsal dinner. After talking with the bride, she’d prepared three choices for each course and added a meat option to the “something vegetarian and something chicken.” Appetizers were cabbage pierogi served with sour cream and mustard, duck sausage with warm sauerkraut, or cold barszcz. Entrées were rolled steak with fresh mushrooms served with mashed potatoes and green beans, chicken legs braised in sour cream with handmade egg noodles and carrots, or crisp fried leeks with a hot tomato sauce served with a beer and buckwheat pancake. Dessert was apricot compote served with fresh farmer’s cheese, rum babka, or chocolate cheesecake. Each diner also got the choice of three cocktails before dinner (two planned to match the bride’s colors of butter-yellow and a vibrant beet-red), wine or beer with dinner, and coffee with dessert. Guests who wanted more to drink could go up to the bar and buy from Candace.
All this and she had managed to be cheaper than the original restaurant. Of course, she was only charging enough to cover the ingredients, decorations and staff. She would barely make a cent from tonight’s dinner, but she hoped word of mouth would get Babka more customers. And the reason her costs were low enough to talk the groom’s father into adding a meat dish was that she had struggled to plan a menu that sounded elegant, would taste delicious and used cheaper cuts of meat; the only splurge was the duck for the sausage. With the tougher cuts, she could still purchase good quality meat from her regular suppliers while keeping costs low. Polish cooking at its best and most wholesome. She was gambling on some of the guests being from Chicago, remembering Babka and returning later with friends and credit cards.
Renia had come in before the rehearsal and helped Tilly decorate the dining room. Small bud vases on the tables held either a deep pink or a yellow rose. Babka’s white napkins had been replaced with matching yellow or pink and her dark wooden tables were covered in crisp white linens. Large arrangements of roses adorned the bar and hostess station. Tilly even had the menus printed on a heavy-weight butter-yellow paper with one beet-red rose across the page. She thought the restaurant looked elegant, especially for little more than a week’s notice.
She helped the waitstaff lay the menus on the tables and check the spacing between the place settings. Her work in the kitchen was done. The dishes were prepped and waiting for the guests to choose their meals. Candace had briefed the staff on the best beer or wine pairings with each dish choice. Even the tea candles floating in glass bowls on each table were already lit.
She had nothing to do but wait and fret.
Before opening Babka, Tilly had never been a fretter. Even the first few weeks after Babka’s opening had been fret-free. She’d had steady enough business due to the respect Chicagoans had for Healthy Food and the general curiosity people had for “fancy Polish.” Her menu was delicious, her staff hardworking and committed to her vision, and her dream a reality. Even her dishwasher seemed unlikely to toss his apron in the sink and walk out during a busy dinner service.
There had been nothing to fret about.
Then Imbir and that dog had overturned her restaurant. Someone had upset the careful arrangement of ingredients for the line cooks. The toupee clogged her pipes. Paychecks were left lying around. The rat was planted in her kitchen. Thinking about the rat, at least, had taken her mind off Dan. He hadn’t been to Babka at all in the past week, and she was disappointed.
And disappointed in herself for being disappointed.
At least now her free moments could be spent trying desperately to imagine her saboteur’s next move, while feeling instantly ridiculous for thinking she even had a saboteur. A restaurant was an accident waiting to happen, but she wasn’t fighting cuts and burns. The saboteur was the only explanation for the rat and the toupee, but it was still too incredible to believe. Why would one of her employees want to sabotage Babka? She didn’t think any of them had a personal vendetta against her, but the alternative was one of them ruining her dream because someone paid them, which begged another absurd question—who would want to hire someone to sabotage a Polish restaurant? Was there some mad Prussian chef intent on widening his domain to include her little slice of Poland?
Ridiculous. Forcing her to close Babka was the only result anyone would get out of the damage they caused and who would want to close her restaurant? All an employee would get was no job. If one of her employees didn’t want to work there so badly, they could quit. If she kept with her theory about someone hiring an employee to close Babka...that didn’t make any more sense.
Babka didn’t have any competition, other than Healthy Food and a smattering of other Polish restaurants, but she was different enough from those places not to be a direct competitor. Babka was not a casual family restaurant. Tilly expected—and got—a fancier class of customer. If she got the Polish cops coming into Babka for a taste of their mothers’ cooking, she got them when they were taking their wives out for
a nice meal and dressed up in a tie, not when they were in uniform.
There were a few other nicer Slavic or German restaurants in Chicago, but Tilly had planned carefully to slip into the niche they left open. Her food was neither Russian nor German, but distinctly and authentically Polish. Pierogi might be similar to Russian pirozhki, and she served sauerkraut, but Babka served the characteristically tangy and spiced food of Poland. And, like the aristocratic Poles of old, she served it plated in a fancy French style rather than more casually served food of Germany.
Even if she were competition for the other Eastern European restaurants, casual, fancy or somewhere in between, Babka was certainly not doing well enough to be poaching a significant number of their regulars. If those other restaurants were suffering a loss of business, her empty tables were evidence that those customers were not coming to Babka.
Not that it mattered. Tilly couldn’t imagine her saboteur’s motive, but her saboteur hadn’t stopped acting. Various new catastrophes jumped around in her head like cumin seeds frying and popping in oil—all of them terrible and all of them probably not the saboteur’s next move.
And that was the worst part. No matter what jumped out at her, the saboteur had something nastier to burn her with. The devil was waiting in the wings of her imagination, taunting her as he poked his pitchfork into her brain before jumping out of sight. She wouldn’t know him and the damage he caused until he struck.
So she fretted. She paced her restaurant, rolling her hands together and checking in every hiding place for the next surprise while both hoping the bridal party would come and the night would be over soon and dreading the moment they walked through the doors. The wedding rehearsal that could save Babka would be the perfect time for the saboteur to strike.
A taxi pulled up and four people poured out. Tilly yanked her hands apart and forced them to her sides as Karen threw the front door open for the first guests.
“Welcome to Babka,” Tilly said as she smiled and shook hands. Wedding rehearsal or not, she was the hostess of tonight’s party and she was going to greet each and every guest. They were going to remember the delicious food, the gracious service and the individual attention of the chef. More importantly, they were going to tell their friends and return with money and appetites. She gestured to the dining room. “Please have a seat. Miss Carter requested open seating and menus are on the tables. I will be around until all the guests are seated to answer any questions about the food. My waitstaff also knows the menu and has tried every dish should you want to ask them for suggestions.”
Tilly shook hands and smiled at more guests, answering questions about some of the dishes and hearing compliments from people who loved Healthy Food and asked after her mother. Renia snapped pictures—the bride’s family had paid for her sister to cover the entire wedding weekend—and some guests commented on how alike they looked. One guest, whom Tilly recognized from his editorial photo in the Sun-Times, asked her about Karl and the inspector general’s office. Tilly answered honestly. Karl never talked with her or the rest of the family about his work. She just made him pierogi whenever he asked.
“Tilly...” Steve’s hands were shaking badly as he pulled her away from the editorialist. “...there’s a woman who needs to know what she can eat that is gluten-free.”
Tilly resisted wrinkling her nose. The bride had mentioned the vegetarians, but could have warned her about the gluten-free. Instead of being able to plan a special dish for the woman, Tilly would have to piece together bits of other dishes. The result would be tasty, but wouldn’t have the polish she preferred. She sought the woman out and they talked about what she could eat and what she couldn’t. All the appetizers had bread or flour in them, so Tilly agreed to make a stacked beet salad with the same cheese used in the apricot dessert. The roasted chicken leg would be good with the mashed potatoes and the apricot compote was gluten-free, as long as the kitchen didn’t include the butter cookies in the presentation.
As she hurried to the kitchen to let them know about the special order, a strong hand rested on her shoulder.
“Hey, Tilly.” Dan’s familiar voice stopped her heart. “I’d like you to meet my sister, Beth.”
“I didn’t know you would be here.” Tilly robotically shook hands with a woman who looked remarkably like Dan, cheekbones, strong jaw and all. The woman gave her a hard stare before her face softened into a smile.
“My brother has mentioned you a lot. He raves about your food.”
“Um...” Not knowing how else to react, Tilly decided on nonchalance. If Dan could pretend they were friendly strangers, so could she. They were both adults and wishing that Sunday’s ending of their relationship had hurt him more than it apparently had wasn’t a good enough excuse to not be pleasant to his sister. “It is a pleasure to meet you. I hope you enjoy your meal here at Babka. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to make it a better experience for you.”
Dan had described his sister as a hard-as-nails businesswoman. The smile softened Beth’s face, but her penetrating eyes evaluated Tilly’s every move. She was the serious older sister to the lighthearted younger brother, almost the reverse of the Mileks, without Renia in between.
“Dan,” Beth said in a no-nonsense voice, “let’s find a seat and leave Tilly to her business.”
As Tilly walked off, a female voice said, “Dan, I’ll bet you never expected to see your personal life covered on a gossip blog.”
Before Tilly could think too much about that statement, the kitchen door opened and she remembered the gluten-free woman and her errand. The night would definitely be a disaster if she made one of the guests sick.
* * *
DAN CRINGED WHEN HE HEARD one of Beth’s sorority sisters—he didn’t remember her name and didn’t care—say, “Dan, I’ll bet you never expected to see your personal life covered on a gossip blog.”
Given Tilly’s bland greeting of Beth, she hadn’t yet read the embellished report of their relationship on one of Chicago’s gossip blogs. Rich had forwarded the post to him two days ago, and it had been like a figurative punch to the gut. If Tilly had read the post, she probably would’ve given him a literal punch. He wasn’t responsible for the post—Rich was pulling strings to figure out who the “anonymous source” was—but Tilly seemed to trust a dead bug on the side of the highway more than she trusted him. She’d hit first and ask questions later—and he wasn’t sure he would blame her for it.
Tilly was a busy woman, and probably didn’t spend her rare moments of free time reading gossip blogs.
But Beth’s sorority sister had read it. The chances that she or someone else at the party who’d read it would mention the post to Tilly seemed pretty high. Any chance was too high. He never should’ve come.
Beth had called him in a panic on Thursday morning, seeking a date for the rehearsal dinner and wedding of a sorority sister. “Certain disaster” is what he’d said in return. He had plans to win Tilly back, but they didn’t include surprising her at her restaurant. Again. The gossip post had gone live and he’d refused. Again.
Beth had persisted—she always persisted—and eventually he’d given in. Especially after she threatened to show Tilly the post herself.
Dan didn’t think she’d do it. Beth was ruthless, but she valued family over everything. Enough niggling doubt had poked at his mind that he’d agreed to the dinner after offering up every single man he knew as an alternative. Beth had been willing to take Mike. Mike, however, had been unsympathetic to Dan’s problem. Like Beth, Mike thought the discomfort of the night was “cosmic justice for being a total douchebag” and Dan shouldn’t have ever gotten himself in this position. Neither of them had seemed too concerned that Tilly would also be uncomfortable with his presence.
And so Dan was here, sliding his seat under one of Babka’s tables, glancing at a yellow menu and keeping his attention focused on how he’d lost the best thing to ever happen to him. And how everyone in Chicago knew it.
Dread
clenched at his gut. No way would he be able to enjoy his food tonight. He’d eat. He could always eat and not eating his meal would draw more attention to himself, but he wouldn’t taste a single bite. He didn’t even know what he ordered, just pointed at menu items and hoped for the best. The other guests chatted cheerfully around him. Dan answered when questions were addressed to him, but didn’t allow himself to be drawn into conversation. Plastering a smile on his face, he tried to appear like every other wedding guest, here to have a good time and some drinks on another person’s tab.
If this had happened to someone else, he would’ve said it was funny. Wrecked by his hubris. Hoisted with his own petard. Even the idiom attached to his current problem was funny, though Hamlet, from whom the saying originated, probably hadn’t found it so.
Dan smiled and laughed at the comment of the woman across the table from him, something from The Daily Show. He didn’t have to know what Jon Stewart said. It was probably funny. So many things were probably funny. Even his current problem was probably funny, if it were to have happened to someone else.
* * *
TILLY KEPT BUSY in the kitchen and had little time to think about Dan’s presence in her restaurant. Every seat, with the exception of those at the bar, was full. Besides being—hopefully!—good advertising for Babka, the rehearsal dinner was a nice test of her restaurant. This was the first time the kitchen and waitstaff had experienced a full house. The full house came with a limited menu so the kitchen had less chance to mess up a dish, but the pressure to keep in sync was the same. Greater perhaps, because all the diners had been seated at the same time and would want their food to come out at about the same time.
Everyone, from the dishwasher to Karen and Steve, was working their asses off, and all of them with a smile. Not only did they need to coordinate the service, but the guests all knew each other. They were standing up, going over to talk with their friends, getting more drinks at the bar, and generally making it difficult for the waitstaff to keep track of who was where and what they’d ordered. Several people even switched seats to be closer to their friends.
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