EIGHTEEN
It was the end of a long, crazy Saturday night, and Annie Fletcher was beat.
They had served over forty tables, a hundred and twenty plates. For the first time in the restaurant’s life, they’d gotten a three-time turn.
Since Annie’s Backstreet had opened, just over a year ago, they’d been trying to get the place off the ground. She’d been at it since seven that morning, starting with the fish market and the farmer’s market in Weston, picking out squash and heirlooms, and the local bakery she used for fresh-baked sourdough and olive bread. They had stuffed twenty veal chops, hand-rolled two hundred agnolotti stuffed with chicken and feta, made twenty off-the-charts chocolate crespelles. Her hair smelled of spattered grease. Her nails were caked with allspice and Madras curry.
They call it sweat equity, right?
Annie looked over the rows of empty tables, finally sitting down to pick at an iceberg wedge salad and sip a glass of wine. This exhausted never felt so good.
It had been a slow, building process. They didn’t have the “glamour” opening. They weren’t in the hot location. They were situated in Stamford on the other side of I-95, amid the antique warehouses and next to a tiling factory. OTMO, they called it, tongue in cheek. Other Side of the Metro-North. Not exactly Tribeca. They didn’t get throngs of young people lining up on the sidewalk drinking beers or families pouring out of the movie theaters. But it was her place. In her style. Cross-beams on the high ceiling. Linen-colored, stuccoed walls. An open kitchen with copper pots hanging from the racks. “Comfort food with a point of view.”
After the debacle at her last place in the California wine country, with her partner (and husband) siphoning off the register (and the checking account!), it closed literally overnight. She had put everything she had into that place. Her dreams, every penny in the world, her trust.
It had almost cost Annie her son.
She’d gone from someone who had everything going for her to a person who had no place to go the next day. To someone who had liens. Nothing. Jared, who was eight and needed a special school. She’d tapped into money from her parents, and she hadn’t done that since she had left home.
Then Sam, whom she had gone to the Culinary Institute with, called out of the blue and offered her this chance to do a new place. Start a new life.
So she left. Healdsburg. San Francisco. Where she had a history and a name. To come east, start over.
Everything rode on this.
It was eleven. The staff was finishing wiping the place down. Annie was leafing through the receipts over a glass of wine. Some of them were heading to Café Mirage, where a lot of restaurant people got together after-hours to let off steam.
She knew she should go. She could meet up with everyone there. Hell, she was thirty-five and had been working in kitchens for ten years. Pretty, funny, now divorced. She’d made a clean break. Now it all just seemed about two people who ended up headed in different ways.
Jose, the dishwasher, was tying up the garbage, hanging the last of the pots and pans.
“Go on home,” she told him. Jose had a wife and kids and went to church early in the morning.
“I finish, ma’am,” he said, picking up the broom.
“Nah,” Annie said, getting up. “I’ll close. Here…” She handed him the tray of the last of the crespelles. “Para los niños. Go on.”
Jose took the tray and smiled. “Gracias, Miss Annie.”
He left through the back door. Annie heard the rattling sound of Jose’s Nissan as it clunked away. Still in her whites, she got up and hung a few last pots, made a note about the specials for Monday, and picked up the last two bags of trash.
One hundred and twenty meals.
It still felt as if she was carrying most of them!
She pushed open the back door and headed out to the Dumpster. The cool night air hit her face and felt good. A single light illuminated the back. In this part of town, at night, even on a Saturday, there were no cars, no one on the streets. Just closed-up warehouses and the sound of the thruway overhead.
Something Annie saw made her stop.
A car was idling next to the Dumpster. The passenger door was open. She heard voices. In Spanish. A kid in a hooded sweatshirt and a red bandana lobbed a large black trash bag over the rim.
She stepped back into the shadows.
The kid turned to get back into the car; then his eyes fell on her.
A chill ran down her spine. There was something cold, almost spooky in the way he looked at her—not even startled to see her standing there. The driver revved the engine. A rust-colored Jetta. Some kind of marking on the trunk.
Don’t let him see you. Get the hell out of here, the tremor said.
With an indifferent nod, the kid in the bandana stared at her for what seemed forever. Then he jumped back in the car.
With a jolt, it took off onto the street and sped onto Atlantic, which led into the ramp and onto the highway. Annie saw the kid turn one last time and give her a long look through the car’s rear window. It was a look she had seen only in films—dull, fixed, implacable. Like in Blood Diamond or Hotel Rwanda. The smirk of someone capable of hacking bodies apart or shooting up people, yet no more than a boy.
Like he was saying, Lady, I know where to find you. I know who you are.
Annie let what seemed a full minute pass to make sure the Jetta wasn’t coming back. Then she went over to the Dumpster.
She knew she shouldn’t do it. Just toss in the bags. Don’t get involved. Monday morning, the cartage company would come. Whatever was in it, no one would ever know.
You have a son. Everything’s just starting to turn for you. Go home. Go to Café Mirage. Get drunk. Write Jared.
Instead, she reached over the side and pulled out the heavy, bound bag. She undid the tape. It was crammed full with newspapers and cartons. Used food containers. Slop.
Then she felt the black metallic shape at the bottom of the bag.
Put it back, a voice said. She knew she had just stepped into something.
She was staring at an automatic gun.
You don’t have to do this, she said to herself. Things are just starting to turn for you. For Jared.
You don’t have to get involved…
It was later, in the small one-bedroom apartment Annie rented on the point neighboring Cos Cob, with a glimpse of the sound. A few French liquor posters hung on the walls. Her favorite majolica pitchers were arranged on the kitchen shelves. Basically all the possessions she had brought east with her.
Two glasses of wine hadn’t made much more sense of it for her.
Annie sat in her flannel pj’s writing a good-night e-mail to Jared. He always checked in before going to sleep.
Hey, dude, how’d your day go today? I had a great one. Our best night yet…
She took her fingers off the keyboard and paused.
She had seen the TV news reports. They all had. It was on at the restaurant all afternoon as they prepped for dinner. That horrible drive-by shooting in Greenwich.
Only five miles down the road.
When they first heard it, everyone stopped working and fixed on the screen. Manuel, her