After I Learned I Was Going to Be His Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Dead by Dessert

Hen moves into the supper club with Zelda, signs Edmund's contract to save the lease and control the room, and meets Maxine, who says Benedict has asked her to dinner.

I didn't get the lid back on in time.

Benedict stopped in the doorway with two mugs of tea.

He looked at the box in my lap.

I looked at him.

"I was looking for a charger," I said.

"Bottom drawer."

"Why do you have these?"

He set my mug on the dresser, the one he'd lifted me onto the night before.

"You gave them to me."

"I gave you a line to say. You were supposed to say it and forget it."

"I didn't."

That was all. He didn't explain. He picked up his own tea and went back down the hall.

[ok what is happening]

[author pls this is not the guy we signed up for]

I put the lid on and slid the box back exactly where it had been.

Then I zipped my suitcase and took the freight elevator so I wouldn't have to pass him.

Dead by Dessert lives in a dead supper club on Clark Street, in Andersonville.

Red leather booths. A stage the size of a pool table.

A pink neon COCKTAILS sign in the window that hasn't worked since 1994.

Zelda opened the back door in a sequined bathrobe at one in the morning.

Her cat, Columbo, looked at my suitcase with his one good eye.

"So you left him," she said.

"I left him."

"In front of the grandmother?"

"Over lemon tarts."

She pulled me inside and hugged me so hard my ribs popped.

"I'm so proud of you. You're sleeping in the prop room. Columbo gets the cot."

By Saturday afternoon the whole troupe knew.

The twins brought a bottle of rosé and a breakup playlist.

Our old Hamlet, who is sixty-one and has been dying onstage since before I was born, brought soup.

The new kid brought nothing, because he's twenty-two and didn't know you bring things.

Our accent man brought a casserole his wife made and said, "She says leave him twice, to be sure."

We ate on the stage with our legs hanging off the edge.

Then Zelda put the lease on the table.

Forty thousand dollars. Due April 1.

"I have eleven," I said. "Eleven of my own. I never took a cent of his for this place."

"I know, babe. You've told me every time we were broke."

I put Edmund's contract down next to the lease.

Forty thousand. Half on signing, half on the night.

The new kid read it over my shoulder. "That's the exact same number."

"It's a very popular number," Zelda said. "Who's the guest of honor?"

"The new pastry chef."

"And why do you look like someone just died in act two?"

Because the air above the stage was glowing again.

[she's going to sign it]

[this is literally how she gets the poison into the kitchen lol]

[stupid ex-wife, walking right into it]

I read the readers. Then I read the contract again.

Somebody was going to poison a dessert in the Gold Ballroom on June 6.

If it was going to happen in a room, I wanted to be the one holding the script for the room.

I signed it on the stage at four o'clock on Saturday.

Monday morning I took the twenty thousand to the bank and the train to Michigan Avenue.

The pastry kitchen was the only finished room in the Northcott.

Everything else was plastic sheeting and men on ladders.

Maxine Driscoll stood at a steel bench with her sleeves shoved past her elbows, piping something gold onto something dark.

"Mrs. Northcott," she said. "You walked out on my tarts."

"I praised your tarts. Then I walked out."

"Fair. Sit. You're my first tasting and I'm terrified."

She put six plates in front of me.

A chocolate thing shaped like a pistol. A pear poached in red wine until it looked like a heart.

A sugar skull with a cherry inside that ran out when you cracked it.

"It's a murder dinner," she said. "I went theme."

I tasted the pear and had to put my fork down.

"This is ridiculous."

"Ridiculous good or ridiculous I should go back to Milwaukee?"

"Good. Stupidly good."

"Thank God. My last boss threw a sheet pan at me."

[MAXINE QUEEN]

[look at the ex-wife pretending to be nice. snake]

I asked her the questions I had come to ask.

Who comes into this kitchen.

Who has keys.

Who touches a plate between her bench and a guest.

She answered all of it and then narrowed her eyes.

"Are you writing the show, or casing the joint?"

"Both. It's a murder mystery. I have to know where the bodies go."

"Put mine near the bread. I want to go out somewhere warm."

I laughed before I could help it.

I liked her even more today. It was going to be a much bigger problem.

Then she leaned on the bench and pulled a face.

"Can I ask you something weird? Woman to woman?"

"That's my favorite kind."

"Are you and your husband actually split up?"

"On paper we're married until June. Why?"

She wiped her hands on her towel.

"Because he asked me to dinner. Tonight."

The air above her head went off.

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