Chapter 8: Critic Night

The whole bus stop was watching us now.

I held up the keys so Neil could see them.

"Enjoy Friday," I said.

Then I turned my back on him and crossed the street with my cooks.

We spent four days scrubbing that old steakhouse down to the tile.

The produce supplier drove in from Wisconsin with a truck full of ducks.

The fish supplier brought halibut on ice and wouldn't let me pay for the first box.

We had no sign yet.

We had no name.

Friday night, Ezra picked me up at seven.

"We're eating at Ellsworth House," he said.

"Absolutely not."

"I booked table nine a month ago. Under my name. I'm not wasting it."

"Neil will throw me out."

"In front of the Tribune critic?" Ezra opened the car door for me. "I'd love to see him try."

I wore a black dress I hadn't had a reason to put on in two years.

Ezra looked at me when I came down the stairs.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't have to.

The dining room was full again.

Neil had filled it with friends and regulars and people from Brittany's comments.

At a two-top by the window sat a woman in her fifties with cropped gray hair and a plain black sweater.

The Tribune critic.

She'd been reviewing Chicago restaurants for twenty years.

She never smiled in a dining room.

The host went pale when he saw me on Ezra's arm.

He walked us to table nine anyway.

From the counter I could see the whole line.

I didn't recognize a single cook.

Temp workers from an agency, sweating in borrowed aprons.

Brittany stood at the pass under the heat lamps.

She saw me.

Her lips went thin.

Then she turned her back and kept yelling tickets.

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