Evenfall (11 page)

The blonde, wearing tight black pants and a white shirt knotted at the waist, leads them toward the back of the room. Here, away from the press of the bar, it’s quieter. A few tall ficus plants along the back wall glow with necklaces of tiny white lights.

The hostess drops their menus on a small round table, revealing a small slice of her perfectly flat stomach in the process, and departs with a toss of her hair. Screened by a ficus tree on one side and an outcropping of brick on the other, the table is an oasis from the hubbub surrounding them.

Cort pulls out her chair, and Andie slides into it. He sits across the table from her and studies her face.

“Not what you were expecting?” he asks.

“It’s definitely different. To tell the truth, I thought we’d wind up at Johnny’s.”

“Nah. That’s for second dates.”

Andie studies the menu to avoid a reply, and finds herself surprised again. It’s short—just one page, without a fried item in sight. There’s a list of pizzas, and a handful of entrees with ingredients like capers, creme fraiche, and olives. She’s debating what to order when a short, plump man with a shaved head and the start of a goatee appears at their table and drapes an arm around Cort’s shoulders.

“Hey, buddy!” says the man, dressed in the black and white pants and white smock of a chef. “How’s it going?”

“Hey.” Cort gives the man an affectionate whack on the back. “Andie, I’d like you to meet my friend Chris. He likes to pretend he’s the cook at this dive.”

“Nice to meet you, Andie. Pay no attention to our friend, here—he’s unskilled in the ways of the world, doesn’t realize you should never insult the man preparing your food. Make sure the waitress tells me which meal is for you when she brings the order back.”

“I’ll do that,” she says.

“C’mon, Chris, if I wind up with food poisoning, there goes your one-star rating.”

“Watch yourself, funny guy,” Chris says. “Andie, enjoy yourself, despite the company, and I’ll try to pop out here later and provide a little intelligent companionship for you as a change of pace.”

He claps Cort on the back once more and strides away.

“How do you know him?” Andie asks. Her napkin is slipping out of her lap, and she stops its descent by catching it on the toe of her shoe.

“Chris? We met last fall through some hunting buddies.”

“I didn’t know you hunted.”

“Yep. Been going out with my dad since I was a kid,” he says.

She’s about to reply when the waitress arrives. The woman sports the same black pants and white shirt of the hostess, but the pants aren’t stretched as tightly and the shirt is securely tucked into the waistband. She sets two glasses of sparkling wine and a small plate on the table.

“Compliments of the chef,” she says. “I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.”

“Thanks, Mary,” Cort says, and the waitress nods and hustles away.

“Do you know everybody here?”

“Just Chris and Mary. And Janet, the, ah, hostess.”

The way he lingers over the name makes Andie suspect he’s a little more familiar with Janet than with the others. Surprisingly, she finds it’s a train of thought she’d prefer not to follow. Instead, she examines the small white plate’s offering. There are two squares of toasted bread. On top of each sits a tiny asparagus spear with slender ribbons of prosciutto draped across it. Andie hesitates a moment when she sees the ham—she’s not used to eating meat—but figures she’s already had Gert’s meat loaf and might as well. She picks up one toast and bites into it. A thin ribbon of rich, lemony sauce is beneath the spear. She finishes the appetizer in three bites. It takes Cort just two.

“Pretty good, huh?” he says.

Andie nods. “Amazing.”

“Surprised?”

“To find a place like this in Franklin? You’re kidding, right?” she says. “We couldn’t even get McDonald’s to come here when I was growing up.”

“Chris has only been open a few months, but he’s been pretty good for the area. He’s bought a lot from us. And the asparagus comes from Old Lady Miller’s farm, just up the street.”

Mary bustles over to clear away their plates and tell them about the specials. “There’s a goat cheese, onion, and red pepper flatbread. There’s also a trout prepared campfire style that I highly recommend,” she says, speaking to Andie.

“Any recommendations for me?” Cort asks.

“Yes. Be glad that it’s me waiting on you, and not Janet. Now, what can I get you?”

“I’ll have the pizza,” Andie decides.

“The trout,” Cort mumbles. The tips of his ears are bright red.

It’s very quiet at their table after Mary leaves.

“So you and Janet, ahh?” Andie asks, amused.

Cort mutters something unintelligible.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Yeah, we went to high school together. She moved back around the same time I did and we’ve been out once or twice. It’s no big deal. I didn’t know she was working here, though.” He glances toward the hostess stand, and Andie
follows his gaze just in time to see Janet smile and give a little wave. Mary’s cackle is audible from a table away.

Cort puts his head in his hands. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I just thought…Chris’s food is really good…”

It’s clear a diversion is necessary. “So, you and Chris are hunting buddies?” Andie asks. “I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty.”

Cort looks like he’s wishing someone would put him out of his misery, but he rallies and sits up. “Ever been hunting? It’s quiet, peaceful out in the woods. If you do it right the deer doesn’t know what hit him. That’s not a bad way to go.”

“I guess,” Andie says. She thinks of the deer that she’s seen in the woods surrounding Evenfall, all big eyes and delicate, fashion-model bones. She saw a fawn watching her one morning, just after her first year at boarding school; its white spots blended so carefully into the sun-dappled leaves that, recalling it later, she wasn’t sure if she’d really seen it or if her eyes, weary from a year of studying, had tricked her. It’s of this deer that she’s thinking when she asks Cort, “But why should he have to go at all?”

“I guess, in an ideal world, he wouldn’t. But we’ve all got to eat, and all we can do is make the best choices we can. I’ll tell you one thing—I’d rather come back as a deer than a cow.”

“I don’t know,” Andie says. “I’ve seen your farm. The cows look pretty fat and happy to me.”

“For now, yeah,” Cort says. “But we’re an abnormality in the dairy business. Dad just put in automatic milkers about eight years ago, and we’re one of the last in this area to keep
our cows on pasture. And pretty soon, if we don’t start making money, we’re gonna be out of business.”

A busboy sets a plate of salad in front of each of them. Cort’s looking at it, but Andie can tell he’s not seeing it. His face is too bleak to be thinking about greens.

“Come on,” she says. “It can’t be that bad.”

Cort stabs at a piece of lettuce with his fork. “Yeah, well, my mom’s gone back to driving a school bus to pay for health insurance. My dad’s selling some land to pay the taxes this year but…” He shrugs. “It’s probably pointless. In a couple of years it’ll all be houses.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she is. For years, the McCallister farm has been her touchstone, the first sign of Hartman she’s glimpsed coming off the highway. In summer the pastures were green and lush, unrolling before her like the weeks of vacation to come. In fall, when her father came to collect her, she’d twist around in her seat for one last look. The memory of the farm’s trees, tinged the faintest shade of gold, had to sustain her the rest of the year, like a deep breath of air before entering the suffocating atmosphere of boarding school. Andie’s always felt rootless, but she can see how having a legacy like Cort’s and then losing it might be worse.

“Dad’s not the only one,” Cort says. “Every day, the state’s losing small farms. The little guy just can’t compete anymore.”

“Couldn’t your dad grow something else? Something that makes more money?”

“I’m open to suggestions, but the only profitable crop in Connecticut these days is houses,” he says. “Cows just can’t compete with $100,000 an acre.”

Andie knows he’s right. Everywhere she turns, there’s a new subdivision. Driving in town last week, she took a wrong turn and became completely disoriented. Down the lane where she and Clara used to gather blackberries, a network of houses had sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

“A whole way of life is disappearing,” Cort says. “There’s been farmers like us here since forever, and in a couple more years we’ll all be gone.”

“That can’t be true.”

Cort shakes his head. “You remember my brother Joe, don’t you?”

Andie has to think a moment before she can nod.

“Joe’s the oldest of all of us. He went off to school when I was a kid and never really came back. He’s got an MBA, he married a city girl, and he lives a life with no manual labor required.”

“My kind of life,” Andie says, but Cort ignores her. “Summers, though, he likes to bring his kids home to the farm and let them run wild. Last week, his youngest was out in the yard playing near the chicken coop, and all of a sudden he starts screaming “Grammy, Grammy!” at the top of his lungs. My mother rushes over, figuring he’s hurt himself. She grabs him to see what’s wrong, and he says ‘Grammy, do you know where an egg comes from? From a chicken’s butt!’ The kid wouldn’t eat eggs the rest of the week.”

Andie laughs, but she knows what he means. There’s a disconcerting sterility to the supermarkets here. When she picks up a red pepper, its waxy surface gleams but has no
scent. Cheese is wrapped so tightly she can’t tell if it is crumbly or not, and the dairy case is too cold in which to linger.

“It’s not like that everywhere, you know,” she tells him. “In Italy, it’s a completely different experience.”

“Tell me.”

Andie thinks for a moment. “I made this recipe once that had shrimp and garlic in it. When I bought the shrimp, they still had their heads attached, and I almost couldn’t bear to unwrap them when I got home. Their little bug eyes looked so reproachful. The garlic was so pungent I could smell it through the paper bag. Carrying it home on the bus, I was so embarrassed. I was sure everybody was trying to figure out what the smell was.”

“I’ll bet you got a good seat, though,” he says.

“It was one of the first dishes I cooked for company there. I kept thinking it was going to be a disaster, but it wasn’t. The ingredients didn’t look perfect, like they would have if I’d bought them here, but they tasted so much better.”

She’d served a Pinot Grigio, she remembers, and Neal had brought flowers, a handful of daisies he said he’d picked alongside the road. After, they’d gone out for gelato. Across the street she’d noticed a bucket of the same daisies in the fiorista’s window. Coincidence, she told herself back then. Now she knows better.

Cort says something, but Andie doesn’t hear it. She’s about to ask him to repeat himself when Mary swoops over, removes the salad plates, and serves their meals. The goat cheese on Andie’s pizza sits in round white dollops across the crust, slightly browned on the edges. The red peppers
are sliced thinly, and the whole pie smells faintly of garlic, onion, and yeast.

The food serves as a natural break in conversation, and it’s quiet for a bit. Andie picks up a slice of pizza and bites into the tip, eschewing a knife and fork. It is, she decides, worth every single calorie. The cheese and red peppers are slightly sweet, offset by the tang of garlic and the smokiness of the crust. She devours half of her piece before she looks over at Cort.

He’s just as intent on his meal, but he takes a second between bites to smile at her.

“Good?” he asks.

Andie nods, her mouth too full to answer. They eat in silence for the next few minutes. When she comes up for air, Cort’s watching her.

“What?” she says. “Do I have goat cheese on my face?”

He shakes his head. “Nope,” he says.

“Then what?”

“Admit it,” he says. “I’m enthralling you with all my talk about land management and chickens.”

“I’m fascinated,” she agrees. “No wonder poor Janet fell for you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a burden, being irresistible. Although you seem to be holding up just fine. Maybe I need to change my approach.”

“Maybe,” Andie says, surprising herself. Her left hand is resting on the table, and Cort reaches across to take it in his right. His palm is rough with calluses, and very warm. “How’s this?” he says.

Andie’s saved from a response by the arrival of Chris. She
pulls her hand away and places it in her lap as the chef drags over a chair and straddles it, resting his chin on the back.

“How was your meal?” he asks.

“Delicious,” Andie tells him.

“Thanks. I have to say, I’m flattered Cort chose to bring a date here. We give him such a hard time, it must be serious.”

“It’s not really a date,” Andie says without looking at Cort. “I used to babysit him sometimes.”

“No way. Little Cortie had a baby sitter? I’ll bet he was a real pain in the ass.”

“He was,” Andie agrees. “I was always dragging him out of trees and sticking bandages on him. Once he even broke his arm.” She remembers the heart-stopping moment when he fell, the sick feeling in her stomach. His face when he landed on the ground was white as bone, but he never cried, just blinked back the tears so they pearled in the dark of his lashes, shiny as a spider’s web.

“My babysitter was a seventy-year-old church lady with black hairs growing out of her chin. If I’d have climbed a tree, she’d have broken my arm for me,” Chris says.

Cort looks pointedly in the direction of Chris’s stomach, which plumps out the front of the chef’s smock. “I have a hard time picturing that,” he says.

“Yeah, well, some of us change between the ages of three and thirty, little buddy,” Chris says. “It’s called maturing, a concept you’re obviously unfamiliar with.”

“Really? I thought it was called getting old and fat,” Cort says.

Andie raises an eyebrow. “So thirty is old and fat, is it?”

“Not on you,” Cort says hastily. “Definitely not on you.”

Chris laughs and stands up. “It’s almost worth sticking around to hear how you get out of that one, but I’ve got to get back to work. Andie, it was a pleasure to meet you, and I hope to see you in here again soon.”