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But before he could take a look, Maria came flying through the double doors like a kite snapped loose in a high wind.

“That’s it! I quit!”

She slung the plate she was carrying, the food on it untouched, onto the butcher-block island, and shook a fist up at the ceiling, middle finger extended.

“The bastard! Copping a feel every time I turn around, and now this. He orders his steak well done, and

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now he tells me he wanted it rare. Someone ought to make his face into a steak!” Her thin face was flushed, and her bleached hair stood out in an electrocuted frazzle.

Christ, this was the last thing he needed right now. Joe wanted to shake her-with her Betty Boop chest, and her little ass, shrink-wrapped in black jersey-until she rattled.

Then he caught himself.

“Whoa … time out.” He did grab her shoulders, but gently. “You want me to beat the guy to a bloody pulp, is that it? Throw him the famous Daugherty oarlock? At Yale, there were guys who’d run if I stuck out my hand in a friendly handshake.”

Maria’s eyes widened. “You were a wrestler?”

“Crew.” He grinned. “Nineteen sixty-three, we won the Henley regatta.”

“Huh!” She tossed him a disgusted look.

“Look, I mean it. Find me an oar, and I’ll work the guy over. Better yet, lash him to the mast and give him fifty with my cat-o’-nine-tails.”

He almost had her now. He could see a smile struggling to surface.

Then she pulled away, muttering, “College boys, jeez.” But it was going to be okay. He could see the high pink fading from her pointy cheekbones.

Exhaling slowly, Joe went to the refrigerator and grabbed a salmon filet marinating in lime and garlic. The fire in the big brick hearth was down to a rosy ash, and heat rolled from it in shimmering waves. He found a corner of the grate where it wouldn’t be too hot, just enough to char the outside lightly while leaving the center moist and pink.

“What’s l๎e drinking, the guy giving you such a hard time?” he tossed over his shoulder at Maria as he slapped on a fresh T-bone.

“Manhattans. He’s on his third, and practically falling out of his chair.”

“Bring him another. On the house. If we’re lucky, by the time his steak is ready he’ll be so out of it he won’t know it from a rat’s ass. Oh, and Maria? Make a note of

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his name when he pays his bill. And then if he ever calls for a reservation, tell him we’re booked solid for the next ten years.”

Maria grinned. “Gotcha.” She whirled out of the kitchen, slinging her jersey-clad ass.

Minutes later, Joe slid the salmon gently onto a heated plate and ladled the newly made mornay sauce in a little moat around it, adding a side of garlic-fried fiddleheads and crusty Santa Fe pudding made of finely ground white cornmeal with bits of mildly hot peppers and cheddar cheese. Nan’s companion had ordered the venison stew, which he ladled into a pottery dish atop another plate, and garnished with baby ginger carrots and bite-sized corn dodgers.

Looking around, he saw no trace of either Maria or Burke. Great. By the time these plates reached Nan Weatherby, the food would be lukewarm. Damn.

But he could carry them up, couldn’t he? Why the hell not? And then he might be able to catch the look on Weatherby’s face when she took her first bite-and maybe get some hint as to whether he was going to live or die.

In seconds, Joe was upstairs, weaving his way among the closely packed tables. He’d done the dining room in what he liked to call Early Quaker-plain scrubbed-pine flooring, natural wood tables, and high-backed benches padded with bright calico. Over the reservations desk hung a slightly faded antique wedding-ring quilt he’d found at a country auction. Framed samplers and a child’s dented sled hung from the whitewashed brick walls on both sides. And instead of candles, on each table he had placed an old oil lamp. Simple, clean-the way he wished life could be.

He spotted La Weatherby’s honey-blond coif-a shellacked helmet of hair that looked impenetrable enough to ward off a nuclear attack. Across from her sat a paunchy middle-aged man who looked sallow and dyspeptic, as if he’d just eaten something that disagreed with him. Joe’s own stomach flipped over.

Forcing himself to look relaxed, smiling even, he set

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the plates on the hand-loomed mats in front of the dragon lady and her companion.

Stepping back, his gaze swept over the other tables, zeroing in on each false note, a dropped fork lying unnoticed on the floor, a faulty bulb flickering in the punchedtin arts and crafts chandelier, a spot of what looked like tomato sauce on Maria’s white blouse. Then his eyes were drawn back to Weatherby, and he watched as she raised a forkful of salmon to her lips.

Never had he wanted anything as badly as he now wanted to see Nan Weatherby smile as she tasted what he’d cooked for her.

Nan’s fork hovered, then disappeared between her lips.

Joe held his breath, hoping. His blood thundered in his ears.

Shit. She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t reacting at all, for God’s sake.

He felt himself gritting his teeth, despair welling up in him.

Then he remembered how Cloetta used to say, Ain’t nothing in this life black and white ‘cept the color of our skins, Joey.

Okay, so it wasn’t all black. She was eating it, wasn’t she? At least she wasn’t sending it back. Maybe he’d just have to lower his sights. One star-pleasant and good value-might not be the kiss of death. He could squeak through, and then continue building through word of mouth. So far it’d worked. Most nights he could count on filling half the tables, anyway.

At any rate, in a couple of weeks he’d know. Either way, he’d be out of his misery. So get back to the kitchen now, he told himself, and forget about it.

Making his way down the steep service stairs, Joe found himself thinking of Annie Cobb, and the tree she’d exchanged for a lobster. Christmas was the day after tomorrow—would she and Laurel spend it out there in Brooklyn … alone? That’d be tough. Especially for Laurel. It didn’t look as if Old Santa would be making more than a pit stop there this year, if that.

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He recalled the hour he’d spent with her in that tiny, scantily furnished apartment on Fourteenth Street in Brooklyn, waiting for her big sister to show up. Laurel at first had seemed pinch-faced and withdrawn. But then gradually she’d relaxed and began chattering as if they were old friends. After a while, she’d even gotten out a dog-eared deck of cards and coaxed him into a game of gin rummy. And damned if that frail-looking, angel-faced kid hadn’t beaten the pants off him.

Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, he’d be closed. Maybe he could take Laurel somewhere, say, to look at the windows at Saks. Except for a funny rattling in the transmission, the old Dodge was running okay, so picking her up would be no problem. She would probably love that. Or he could just drop by for a visit, if they were going to be around. Yeah, he’d like that. And maybe playing big brother would be good for him, help him get Caryn out of his head.

But the memory he kept trying to lock away came rushing in. At the bottom of the stairs, Joe leaned against the wall, that hellish night replaying itself again in his head. He heard Caryn’s toneless voice over the phone, then he was sprinting down York Street, past the colleges, past Yale Drama, past Art and Architecture, his heart pounding. Finally, crossing College Street, he got to the building where she had a little studio and vaulted up three nights.

He found her on the floor, curled up, her body not cold yet, but white, bluish even, and blood … blood everywhere, staining the bedspread and the rug, matted in her long black hair, still oozing from her slashed wrists.

Then the ambulance and police cars, dome lights pulsing, their red glare spilling like more blood over the darkened street and the shocked white faces of Caryn’s neighbors. And all the while, her last words over the phone, like a stuck record that wouldn’t shut off, playing over and over in his mind, I’ve taken care of it. You don’t have to worry, Joe.

An abortion. Christ, what else could he have thought? What else could any sane person have thought? They’d talked and talked about it, and yeah, true, she

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hadn’t been exactly keen on the idea, but he’d thought … well, that with a little time she’d come around.

She came around all right, you asshole, all the way around the bend.

He’d been so scared. But why? Of what? Why couldn’t he have listened to her? She was so funny and smart and sexy. He’d loved her, dammit, he had. But marriage, kids, a house in the ‘burbs, at twenty. It had seemed too crazy even to think about.

Joe now saw her in his mind, sinking down on a stone bench outside Sterling Library just after she’d first told him she was pregnant, her crow-black hair shining in the May sunshine. She’d been crying, her eyes puffy, her milk-white cheeks marbled with red.

“Oh, God, Joe … what are we going to do?”

And what had he done?

Like a jerk, he’d smiled.

Seeing her there, looking so little-girlish in her navy Ship ‘n Shore culottes and crisp white blouse, it somehow didn’t register. How could she be pregnant? Even a little bit. It had to be some sort of crazy mistake.

Then it hit him. Serious. She was serious. He’d felt his knees wobble, like somebody had pulled the linchpins that held them together. He’d wanted to sink down beside her, but he’d stopped himself.

Looking back on it, Joe realized that right then, unconsciously, he must have been distancing himself … removing himself from her … from this. But at the time, he’d been so stunned, he didn’t know what the hell he was doing or thinking.

Only when she began to weep had he lowered himself onto the bench next to her. “We’ll take care of it somehow,” he’d ttried feebly to reassure her. But she had to have seen right through him, known that he was nowhere near up to handling this.

“Is that all you can say?” She fixed him with a hot, accusing glare.

“Look, I’m not going to ditch out on you if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Ditch out?” She repeated the words as if they were

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ป

a new vocabulary she hadn’t yet learned. “No … I never thought that. I thought … Oh, never mind.”

“What do you want to do?” he asked gently.

“Do I have a choice?”

He could feel that she was waiting for him to say something, offer something. But what could he possibly offer? “Are you … you’re not thinking of having it?” He thought of diapers, a baby squalling all through the night while he “was struggling to finish a term paper. Jesus.

Caryn had looked off into the distance, cupping a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun. But he could see the tears on her cheeks, and wanted to put his arms around her. At the same time, he felt hemmed in, trapped, the sun pressing down on his shoulders like a heavy hand.

“I don’t think … at least, under these circumstances …” Hearing his father’s pompous tone creeping into his voice, he’d felt shocked, ashamed, and immediately started over. “… I mean, I was thinking maybe someday we’d get married … but not like this. Jesus, Caryn, I don’t even know what I’m going to do with my life after I graduate, much less yours and a … a baby’s.” There. It was out. He’d said it.

Caryn stood up, smoothing her culottes with short, jerky strokes. Over and over, until it seemed as if she must have rubbed most of the skin from her palms. Then she straightened, looking tall as a statue, her hair hanging in front of her face, partially shading it from his view.

“Caryn …“He put out his hand, but she jerked away as if he’d tried to hit her.

“You think I should kill it, don’t you?”

Now, too shaken to lie, or even think of a gentler way of putting it, Joe blurted: “Yes … I do.”

It was as if a rope connecting them had just snapped in two, one half containing all the love they’d once felt … and the other, only bitterness and blame.

For a whole week after that, he’d tried calling her, at all hours, knocking at her door, trying to track her down at her classes. But no answer. No Caryn. No one had even seen her. Joe had even called her parents in Plainview.

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Where she’d hid out that week, or how she’d managed to slip back up to her room without anyone noticing, he’d never know. There had just been that call: I’ve taken care of it.

Yes, he’d later learned from Caryn’s shattered parents that she’d been seeing a psychiatrist, and that in high school she’d been hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. He supposed he could’ve stacked up all the excuses high enough to let himself climb off the hook … but, deep down, he knew that if he’d handled things differently, Caryn would not be dead.

Joe, standing in the stairwell of his restaurant, passed a shaky hand over his eyes, as if to shield them from a piercing light that, had he looked into it, would have blinded him. Then, taking a deep breath and grabbing hold of himself, he plunged back into the kitchen.

“Hey, buddy, what’s cooking?” Wayne chuckled at his

own joke.

Joe grinned, phone receiver tucked between shoulder and ear, the cord stretching all the way over to the workstation, where he was kneading bread dough. A nice surprise, hearing from his old friend. They hadn’t gotten together in a while, but Wayne, a copy editor at Metropolitan, had to know the agony Joe was going through. He’d probably seen more than his share of hopefuls cut down by Weatherby’s ax. Was Joe’s Place going to be next? It’d been more than two weeks; if the review was going to appear at all, it had to be in this week’s issue. Could that be why Wayne was calling, to offer his condolences?

“Not much,” he said, keeping his voice light despite the sudden tightness in his chest. “I’m saving the carcass for the buzzard!.”

“Feast or famine, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Listen, that’s why I’m calling. Weatherby reviewed your place. This week’s issue, they just shipped out. Should be hitting the stands today or tomorrow.”