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  “That wouldn’t be fair to the other students, would it?”

  “We wouldn’t tell them,” he whispered.

  Lindsey laughed. David liked her laugh. “Is that a yes?” he asked hopefully.

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not a yes.”

  “How am I ever going to become the teacher’s pet then?” he grinned.

  “Just ask my employees. I don’t have pets.”

  “Well that’s too bad. I would’ve made a good one.”

  “I’m sure you would have.”

  *****

  At lunch time on Friday, the delivery service dropped off a large package for David at the gallery. He knew what it was so didn’t bother opening it.

  “What is it?” Audrey asked him.

  “A gift for my brother and his wife.”

  “Oh,” she replied. “What is it?”

  “Nothing much,” he shrugged. “Just a sketch I did.”

  “You still draw?” Audrey was stunned. “I didn’t know that. Can I see it?”

  David sighed. He didn’t like people looking at his sketches. It made him uncomfortable. He never knew when people were genuinely praising his work or when they were just trying to be polite. He would prefer that they told him they hated it, if it were the truth, than to lie to him to spare his feelings. So he just kept his art to himself and to the members of his family that he’d given pieces to.

  “Please?” she insisted.

  David peeled back the brown paper to reveal the sleek black minimal frame. It was square. Twenty-four inches by twenty-four with a crisp white mat that held the sketch, eighteen inches square. Audrey gasped as she beheld the picture.

  “It’s beautiful,” she gushed. “The emotion is perfectly captured.”

  “They’d just announced she was pregnant,” David smiled, recalling the day just a few weeks before.

  “Oh, David, really. It is quite superb.”

  “Well I hope they’ll like it.”

  “Well if they don’t, I’ll take it!” she smiled.

  David was flattered with Audrey’s response. She was one of the people he could trust to tell him the truth. So if she said she liked it, he believed her.

  “Thanks,” he smiled and rewrapped the brown paper as best he could. He would take it to them after work.

  They finished their lunch and were cleaning up the paper boxes when the receptionist rang back to say that Griffin was there and asking to speak to David.

  “Send him back,” he replied.

  A few seconds later, Griffin appeared in the doorway.

  “Come on in and have a seat,” David said and pulled out a chair at the table.

  “I can’t stay. I just came to say that I can’t do the show.”

  “NO!” exclaimed Audrey. “You said you’d have your pieces ready!”

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  David took a couple of steps toward him. “Griffin. This is your shot, man. You may not get another one.”

  Griffin shrugged. “I can’t do it.” He turned and hurried back to the front door and left.

  “Shit!” David yelled and buried his face in his hands. “Shit!” He walked over and slumped into the chair next to Audrey. She didn’t speak.

  “Well,” he said, “Lou and Reggie might be able to add a few pieces and then we could just spread them through and it would probably be fine.”

  Audrey shook her head. “Nope. We’ve advertised, marketed, promised three new artists. The Atherton will deliver on that promise.”

  “Where the hell am I going to find another artist in a week? The show opens one week from today!”

  “I’ve already found one,” Audrey declared.

  “Really? Who?”

  “You!”

  *****

  David sat in his apartment looking at his finished work he kept in the closet. He didn’t want to show any of them. They were extremely personal and he didn’t like the idea of strangers critiquing him. But, Audrey had insisted, in fact, she had demanded. David tried to dissuade her and came up with every possible excuse he could think of but she wouldn’t give in. There really wasn’t enough time to find another artist and Audrey pointed out that ultimately it was his responsibility to fill the walls with art. He owed her, and that she had repeated several times.

  On the way home, he’d called both Lou and Reggie and asked if they could add a couple more pieces for their exhibit. Both agreed willingly. David figured with their additions he would only have to subject five, maybe six sketches to be ogled and dissected. And now he had to whittle down the selection to the pieces that meant the least to him, so as to not risk too much emotionally.

  In high school, David had spent every spare minute in the art room. He wasn’t an athlete like most of his brothers, or a straight A student like Matt and Ben and Andrew. He wasn’t cool like Mark and Paul or the class clown like Tim. He was reserved and had a small but close group of friends, most of them budding artists like himself. And when it came time to display his work, his teachers had to threaten him with flunking the class if he didn’t allow his work to be shown with the rest of the students’. It wasn’t that he thought his talent was less than his peers, or he was ashamed of it in any way, he just didn’t like other people looking at it. When he created, he poured his soul, all his emotion, onto the paper or canvas. It was private.

  Several of his family members had encouraged him to try to make a living at selling his work. Right after college, Matt, already quite successful in the real estate industry, had offered to let him use some retail space to show his work, but he’d quickly declined. His mother always showed any guests in her home the pieces he’d given to her. She had several. Some were sketches of family members, and in the dining room was a big oil painting of the beach. When he was little, his parents would take the family to a house they rented in the Hamptons for long weekends in the summer. When he painted the scene, he hadn’t been there for years but the memories were etched in his brain. Maureen had cried when he’d given it to her for Mother’s Day.

  David pulled a recent sketch from the pile. It was one he’d done last year after they returned home from their Caribbean cruise. It was of his parents sitting in deck chairs on the boat holding hands. He’d hidden their faces with sunglasses and hats but the image of two people completely comfortable and at ease with other was very apparent.

  “That could work,” he muttered to himself as he took it from the stack and placed it carefully on the desk.

  He continued to flip through the sheets of paper and abruptly stopped. He hadn’t realized he still had this one. It must be over fifteen years old and he hadn’t seen it in years. He slowly pulled it from the stack and put the other papers down on the floor. Leaning back in the chair he held up the pencil drawing to better see it in the overhead light.

  She was sitting on the bleachers in the football stadium. She would have been sixteen years old and he had captured her innocence well. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore an oversized sweater. He’d met her in third grade and had stayed friends all the way ‘til their junior year of high school…until she’d died.

  Laura was the youngest of three girls, the baby of the family. When she’d realized she was gay, David was the only one she’d told. Growing up Catholic, like the Lathem’s, it was difficult for her to ‘come out’ to her family. The church, as did many, frowned on homosexuality as a sin, and she was convinced that her family would disown her once they found out. But Laura never found out what her parents would do if she told them because she’d died; the fear so real and so overwhelming that she’d taken her own life rather than risk her parents’ disapproval or disappointment.

  All the memories flooded back to him now as he looked at his picture. Andrew, David’s older brother, had already come out to his family. It took a little bit of getting used to but they all still loved Andrew just as they had before he had divulged his sexual orientation. Davi
d didn’t understand Laura’s anxiety. Of course her parents would still love her. Of course they wouldn’t throw her out of the house. But none of his encouragement would convince her to tell them and one day she didn’t show up to school. She had taken her mom’s sleeping pills and gone to sleep, never waking up.

  David carefully placed the drawing back into the leather portfolio and closed it. He hadn’t thought about her in a long time. He cleared off his desk and pulled a clean crisp piece of paper from the drawer and pulled some charcoal from the box and his hand began moving quickly over the paper, creating the images he now saw in his mind. He needed to get them out of his head or he would never be able to sleep.

  5.

  Chef Lindsey Dardin sat in the empty dining room of the restaurant, the table covered in ordering forms and menus and employee schedules. She chewed mindlessly on the end of her pencil, not hearing Aaron walk in behind her. She jumped when she heard the chair move next to her.

  “Where were you?” Aaron chuckled as he sat down opposite her.

  Lindsey shook her head and waved at the paperwork in front of her. “I guess I’m not in the mood for this,” she frowned.

  “Everything okay?”

  Lindsey nodded. “Food costs at The Bourbon are spot on. But here? Something’s going on and I just can’t seem to figure out what. But I’ll get it.”

  “I have no doubt!” grinned Aaron. “You’re a pitbull when it comes to puzzles. I just stopped by to tell you that David Lathem has asked that we cater his gallery opening at The Atherton on Friday. Apparently, Audrey Atherton was supposed to take care of securing the food and she forgot.” Aaron used air quotes around the word.

  “David called?”

  “Yeah…do you know the Lathems?”

  “Well, no, not really. Although I did meet many of them at the wedding reception in January.”

  Aaron pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “This is what we’ve decided on. It’s really just cocktail food…we’re just gonna step it up a notch.”

  Lindsey took the paper from his hand and read down the list. “Shouldn’t be any problem. I’ll send three people with the food.”

  Aaron stood up. “I figured you’d handle it,” he smiled. “Thanks.”

  Lindsey said goodbye to her boss and reviewed the list again. Finger food. Easy. She called out to Gary, one of her sous chefs that worked in both restaurants wherever he was needed, and gave him the assignment of ensuring food was completed and ready to be delivered by four o’clock the following Friday and then she once again chewed on her pencil, her mind wandering to David Lathem.

  He hadn’t shown up to class last night. She had watched the door all evening waiting for him to come in and he never did. But he’d called Aaron about the gallery. She was slightly irritated that he hadn’t called her. But then she told herself that Aaron was a family friend – of course he would call him. Lindsey tried to concentrate on her order forms.

  *****

  Lindsey didn’t have to be in the restaurant on Friday evening. As Executive Chef, she created the dishes served, prepared the menus, sometimes did the food ordering, and on a rare occasion, like earlier in the day, arranged the employee schedule, but she didn’t actually have to do any of the line cooking or kitchen supervision. She had employees that took care of it all. As she sat at the end of the bar at six o’clock, watching the ‘after-work’ drinkers leave and the couples arriving for an early dinner, she felt pathetic. Just slightly pathetic, she told herself.

  She was thirty-five years old and an Executive Chef of not one, but two very successful Manhattan restaurants. She was at the top of her profession and loved her job. Aaron had guided her, mentored her, and now trusted her with two of his five restaurants and she would never do anything to lose that trust. She was head-hunted often and always felt flattered when the outrageous offers would come, but they were always for the west coast and she couldn’t leave her city, her home. And she wouldn’t leave Aaron.

  She was also divorced. The marriage had lasted just over two years. She was way too young and she and Lewis hadn’t spent enough time together. It was doomed from the start. He’d been the Executive Chef at the first restaurant she’d gone to work in after culinary school. It was love at first sight…for both of them. But working eighty hours a week didn’t help their relationship and it quickly crumbled. She’d left after the divorce and Aaron had hired her. She hadn’t looked back. She would never date anyone in the restaurant business again. It was too hard and held too many bad memories.

  She only really ever met people in the restaurant biz, and that is why she sat alone, at the bar, on a Friday night, when she could be anywhere else but at work. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. She didn’t have anyone else to be with.

  Her cell phone ringing snapped her out of her melancholy.

  “Hi Trudy,” she smiled into the phone. Trudy was the foster mom Lindsey had spent her teen years with and the woman who had made a huge impact in her life. She had given her direction and the permission to speak her mind without the threat of retribution or punishment. Trudy had been the only mom she’d ever known. “You always call when I need to hear a friendly voice.”

  They spoke for a few minutes and then Lindsey hung up. Trudy had just called to say hi, something she did weekly, just to stay in touch. She hadn’t lived with her for over fifteen years, but the bond they had forged would never be broken.

  Trudy and her husband Trevor had not been able to have children of their own. They’d tried for years but couldn’t afford in-vitro or other expensive medical treatments or even adoption so they had decided to be foster parents. They were well into their seventies now and hadn’t taken in any children for the past several years but Trudy tried to keep in touch with most of them. She had been Lindsey’s angel, rescuing her from a neglectful foster home that she’d been in since her mother had over-dosed when Lindsey was three years old. She’d stayed there ‘til she was nine. She was fed and housed and had clean clothes to wear, but there was no love, no attention, nobody to make her feel special. And then one day, her case worker had picked her up and taken her to Trudy and her life changed…instantly.

  Lindsey finished her drink, said goodbye to some of the staff and went home to her apartment. After pulling a T-bone steak from the refrigerator, allowing it to come up to room temperature before she cooked it, Lindsey went and took a long hot shower and then dressed herself in flannel pajama bottoms and an old sweatshirt. Her long auburn hair was knotted on the top of her head and without any makeup on, she wandered through to her kitchen to make dinner.

  Searing the steak on a griddle pan, along with onions and mushrooms in a red wine sauce, was her preferred way to eat meat. She was definitely a carnivore and could live without bread or chocolate as long as there was red meat to be had. Her love of meat came from Trevor, her foster dad. Many evenings were spent grilling in the backyard; hotdogs, hamburgers, chicken, steak…it didn’t matter. Lindsey loved the smell and the sound of it searing on the grill and eating is was just heavenly. It’s not a surprise she became a chef when she grew up. She had spent thousands of hours in the kitchen with Trudy learning how to make everything from cupcakes from a cake mix to chicken cordon bleu and everything in between.

  Lindsey tossed some greens with a balsamic vinaigrette and set the table with a placemat and napkin and a tall glass of ice water. She let the steak rest for a few minutes and then sat down and ate as she listened to the hum of the city on a Friday night. Then she clicked on the television, found an old Doris Day and Rock Hudson movie and fell asleep on the couch before ten o’clock.

  *****

  Saturday morning Lindsey arrived at The Bourbon ready to put in a full day of work. She didn’t have anywhere else to be and there was always work to be done, even on a Saturday…especially on a Saturday. The kitchen staff wasn’t at all surprised to see her and Gary took the opportunity to have her approve the hors d'oeuvre menu for the Atherton Gallery opening the following week.
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  As Lindsey read through the list, she again felt a little peeved that David had called Aaron and not her. There really wasn’t any validity in her feelings…she knew she was being ridiculous, but she felt what she felt and accepted it. She liked him. Not in a middle school crush kind of way, but as an adult woman who didn’t have much interaction with adult men outside of the restaurant business. He was extremely pleasing to look at; tall, dark and handsome. He had beautiful blue eyes and a crooked smile that showed his perfectly straight white teeth. She enjoyed looking at him.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Gary asked if there was something wrong with his menu choices. Lindsey blushed, embarrassed at her mind wandering off while her sous chef stood right beside her talking about work. She told him it all looked great. He walked away and left Lindsey alone with her thoughts of David.

  Taking over the cooking class had not been something she had been excited about, but when she saw David in the class, her pulse had quickened and the idea of spending every Thursday night with him had been a bonus she hadn’t counted on. When he’d asked her out she’d been inwardly crushed that she’d had to say no. It wouldn’t be ethical to date one of her students, even if the class was just an adult continuing education class that didn’t receive credit and only cost a few hundred bucks. She needed to maintain a professional relationship with all the students, not just David.

  Lindsey stood in the kitchen in the early afternoon making bleu cheese dressing and parmesan crisps. Carving grape tomatoes into miniature tulips came next and by the time one of the line cooks arrived for the salad prep, Lindsey had completed most of it. She excused herself from the kitchen and headed to the front of the house to survey preparations for the evening rush. Saturday evenings were always busy and she had hired an excellent crew to maintain the high standard of the restaurant. As usual, all was in order and she wasn’t needed. Aaron told her to go home, she’d earned it.

  Walking home while the sun was still up was something she was still getting used to. Over the years she had worked harder than anyone else to get to the top of her craft and become an Executive Chef. She had achieved her goal at a much younger age than most. She still had a few years before the big 4-0 and she had a lot to show for it…career wise. Having some evenings off was unusual for a chef, the dinner rush being the main event for the work day.