Chapter 2

The grand reopening went so disturbingly smoothly that if anything, I kept working harder, rather than relaxing and taking a step or two back to just passively observe what was going on around me. The bakery café was now running profitably again and for the next month or so I was frankly scared to take my foot off of the gas pedal, so to speak. I trusted my cooks and my Sous, my second in command, but it took me awhile to trust myself – that I didn’t need to add five new complicated European style pastries or desserts every single week, just for the sake of variety... ‘come see what we have new this week!’.

Furthermore, by the time we had reopened, I could tell that Adriana was quite capable of handling the front of the house duties handling the customers and the waitresses. She was also quite adept at handling all of the bookkeeping, but didn’t like me to hover over her shoulder while doing it.

As partners, I initially thought that we seemed to be getting along fine, each of us sticking exclusively to our own areas of concern. In actuality, I soon realized, Adriana was avoiding me and any sort of potential confrontation like the plague. I was working twelve hour days, arriving at work early in the pre-dawn morning, to be creative and try out new bakery recipes while things were quiet, before the morning rush, then leaving sometime in the midafternoon. She would in turn arrive about 11 a.m., just at the start of the luncheon rush and stay on into the evening. For the first five or six weeks then we hardly even saw each other.

We communicated largely by leaving notes for each other, except for a brief ‘partner’s meeting’ every Monday afternoon, just to quickly review the financials from the previous week. These meetings never lasted for very long, twenty minutes at most, during which Adriana would bury her face into her latest financial balance sheet and never make any sort of eye contact with me. I vaguely thought at first that she was hiding some sort of unpleasant news from me, but the financials always checked out accurately.

I, in turn, was also nearly equally preoccupied with my own lists of potential new menu items for testing soon, so I never forced myself upon her, professionally or personally ... until it became absolutely necessary. It was then that I began to realize that not everything at Baby Cakes was all peachy-dory ... and that Adriana’s personal relationship with her boyfriend wasn’t as happy as I had blithely surmised.

There is some shit that I won’t put up with ... and employees stealing is one of them. It was then that I realized that my partner was too conflict-phobic to do anything about it!

I hadn’t been looking for trouble. In fact, I was just killing time that early Monday afternoon double-checking things on the service line while waiting for our weekly business meeting to start, in about another forty-five minutes. Mondays were our quietest business day, especially for lunch, and nothing anywhere in the back of the house required my attention. While wiping down the already clean service window counter under the heat lamps, I was just bored enough to casually see and hear one of the younger waitresses ring open the cash register and take out a bill and stuff it into her apron. Getting change for a customer, I wondered idly at first, but then she did nothing afterwards, except to pretend to clean the soda fountain area for the next five minutes.

That made me wonder, and I decided that I needed a second opinion. As part of the overall renovations while the place had been closed, I’d added four security cameras, one of which covered the cash register. They were each small and almost entirely hidden, two outside covering the front and rear doors and the other pair covering the insides. Mostly intended for security in case there was a robbery, with the high-definition video feed going wireless to a dedicated laptop computer kept in Adriana’s office. This was the first time for me to look back on the security footage, but the images were crystal clear enough ... the waitress, a teenaged gal named Gloria, had rung up a no-sale and had taken twenty dollars from the till and stuffed it into her apron. No doubt about it, so I challenged her.

“Did I take money from the till just a while ago?” She replied with a vacant innocent smile on her face, “I might have ... yes! Mr. Hodgins needed change just a bit ago, before he left.” Damn ... as liars go, she was pretty damn good. Almost the perfect combination of confusion and innocence. And indeed Mr. Hodgins had just left about ten minutes ago, and he was just the sort of perpetually confused elderly gent that had probably already forgotten what he’d just eaten for lunch, let alone might just agree, if asked, that he might have gotten change.

If I hadn’t had the video footage, then Gloria would have quite gotten away with it. For now, I just smiled and her and decided to corner Adriana in her office to start our weekly meeting a little earlier than usual. Front of the house problems, like stealing waitresses, were her concern ... but she didn’t seem to care.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re quite mistaken.” She said, quite refusing to look at the security footage for a second time ... or at me.

“Look at the video, it doesn’t lie or even exaggerate.” I insisted in a stern voice, becoming increasing frustrated that my partner just didn’t seem to care. “And I’m not telling you to go on out there and fire her, right now ... just give her some sort of warning, that this can’t happen ever again! Now, that does make me wonder ... has the till been short on other days that she works? Gloria’s just part-time right? Mondays and Tuesdays only?”

“Well ... maybe.” Adriana conceded, taking a casual look inside a thick folder that had all of the cash register tapes for the current month.

“Well then, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do?” She hesitated for a long moment, “Well, I really can’t. Her mother, Gloria’s, is a good friend of my mother’s, has been forever. I just couldn’t ... it would be too awkward.”

“And keeping on a thief, a girl that we can’t trust is somehow less awkward?”

“Well...” she hesitated and then just remained quiet. It was then that I first noticed that she’d never quite look into my face when we talked.

“We need to do something, just so that everyone here understands the rules apply to everybody and not employees that aren’t friends of the family. So, what are you going to do?”

Adriana just shrugged and then tried to change the subject, but I wasn’t having it. I grasped her right shoulder firmly enough to swivel her desk chair around so that it faced me and I glared straight into her eyes. Her first visible reaction was physical fear, like she was certain that I was about to strike her, but then after a moment her eyes lowered and she resumed their typical indifference.

“ ... I’ll ask Thomas...” she eventually decided, and with her head and shoulders hunched down she stood to leave her office. I stepped out of her way and let her go, but later I decided that I probably shouldn’t have. I’d only met her boyfriend a few times, and I had been quite unimpressed from the start. He reminded me of every bully I’d ever encountered in school, loud, obnoxious, and overly smug and self-satisfied. When Thomas crooked his little finger, Adriana came running and they spent most weekends together. Frankly, I hadn’t been paying much attention.

It wasn’t my place to comment, let alone interfere in her private life, and if she apparently needed an extremely arrogant man in her life, then that was her own affair ... until it interfered with our working arrangement!

For the next week, Adriana did absolutely nothing ... so I had to. By then I had had plenty of time to review security footage for the last three weeks and had found four other examples of Gloria taking ten or twenty dollars from the till on days that she worked. No other shortages from the cash register were occurring, except when Gloria worked. I gave Adriana a written ultimatum ... which she ignored, so I acted on her behalf.

I phoned Gloria’s mother Betty and invited her over for coffee the next morning, just before Adriana usual arrival time. I then showed her the videos from the five thefts and calmly asked her how we should manage the situation with her daughter. She was in full agreement that Gloria should be fired and wouldn’t hold us at fault in any way. As Adriana just then arrived, Betty arose to hug Adriana and to apologize for her daughter, profusely, before leaving us.

“You fired her!” my partner complained, with a soft whine aimed more at the direction of her feet than my ears. “I was going to handle it...”

“No, you weren’t, so I had to. Now that this problem has been resolved, why don’t you look into hiring a full-time cashier just to handle the cash register? I’m sure you’ll agree that we can handle that additional expense now. Also, perhaps giving an opportunity to an older retired lady in town that might need the extra income. A chance to do good for the community, don’t you think?”

Adriana just vaguely nodded and shuffled off to her office and shut the door, and hid there for most of the rest of the week. She did hire two part-time seniors to permanently handle the cash register and our thefts from the till became a problem of the past.

As the next few weeks ran past smoothly, without problems, I began at last to start paying closer attention to the front of the house operations, of which I could find little to complain about, and also Adriana’s own odd behavior. I could sense that she viewed me with both secret curious interest and yet subtle dread, seemingly anxious that I’d either bark or bite at her, like an unknown street dog. Much the same, I now noticed, when she left on Fridays to meet her boyfriend; equal parts of blatant fear, nervous apprehension and eager anticipation.

Like a dog, eager to be petted by its master, I decided, but equally certain that kicks or a blow of from a stick were equally certain to occur. Adriana, undoubtedly for the worse, apparently needed an asshole running her life. The more I opened up my eyes to the situation, the more certain I was that I couldn’t keep going on saying nothing ... especially on Monday mornings when she invariably arrived at work with fresh bruises that long sleeves and heavy makeup couldn’t always conceal.

I’ve never been one to interfere with anyone else’s personal life outside of work, but there is some shit that I’ve never put up with either!”

“Adri!” Thomas bellowed out, as he stomped his way past the service counter to barge right into Adriana’s small office in the back. “Don’t make me call you again ... get up and get your sweet ass moving, we’re going to be late!” That was a joke ... at this time of day on a Friday, Thomas was usually still having his third beer parked on a barstool at Larry’s Place, just down the street. Today, he was early, by twenty minutes and short by least another pint, unless he’d made an unusually early start.

“Wait ... I need to finish these last end of month accounts and then do payroll.” She weakly requested, but Thomas wasn’t even remotely listening. He grabbed her hard by the upper arm, fingers pinching in tight, and yanked her up out of her office chair. Adriana had just a moment to grab her purse and permitted her boyfriend to frog-march her out, sullen and obedient, without another word of protest.

For three months, I’d been watching her boyfriend pull this sort of drunken crap. Usually on a Friday evening like now, sometimes more frequently. Other times he’d disappear and stay gone for weeks, but like a bad penny he’d keep turning up again. His raging asshole act got old ... really fast ... and now I was tired of dealing with it.

“Adriana, is there a problem?” I calmly enquired, partially blocking Thomas’s escape route back out to the front. “I know that you wanted to make sure that the weekly payroll got done before you left tonight.”

“It can wait.” Thomas insisted, stopping Adriana from speaking with just a stern look from his face. “She can do it on Monday ... on her time, not mine. Is that going to be a problem for you, cook boy, and would you like to do something about it?” He sneered.

I just smiled and didn’t move an inch. I’d eaten burritos bigger and badder than he was! It also helped that I had my favorite chef’s knife in my hand. It was gift to me from an old boss, years ago, when I first made Sous Chef. It was a Japanese hand-forged Samurai sword quality knife made of ultra-high carbon steel, with an insane eight-degree blade angle for unsurpassed surgical sharpness. Like Chef Martin Yan, I could cut him apart like a chicken ... easily, and in probably less than sixty seconds too – and drunk or not, I think Thomas knew it.

He pushed on past, giving me a hard elbow thrust in the ribs and dragged Adriana on along with him. I wanted my hapless partner to do or say something ... even just to meet my eyes and then express some tiny bit of will, to make it clear to me that she didn’t want to go with him. But she kept her eyes down and averted, and like a small brown mouse she allowed her bully of a boyfriend to haul her away, likely for the entire weekend.

I told myself again for the umpteenth time that it was not my place or in my partnership agreement to interfere with Adriana’s personal relationships outside of the bakery café. Even if her boyfriend was a complete raging asshole! She apparently needed or wanted that sort of man in her life ... lots of drop-dead gorgeous women do. They like strong very confident men, i.e. complete jerks!

On the other hand, I wasn’t going to let myself get walked all over ... for anyone. You get one free finger or elbow poke at me, and then I’ll even the score. Thomas was my height and about my weight class too, but mine was restaurant hardened muscle and his looked to be mostly beer belly, and his bluster didn’t scare me in the least.

If Thomas had been present when Adriana slunk back into work late Monday morning, visibly bruised on her arms and with an enormous shiner that no makeup could hope to conceal, I’d have turned the bastard into the daily Blue Plate Special. Granted ... the bastard would be a rather inferior sort of meat.

I’d had about enough and since Adriana had locked herself into her office and wasn’t answering my pounding on her door, I settled for the next best thing.

“Louise!” I bellowed out across the service window, “it’s time for your smoke break, right now, outside in back ... and don’t make me come tow you!” I was only mostly joking. Louise was our oldest and most loyal staff member, having been a waitress here for over twenty years now. She was also Adriana’s closest friend here ... and I needed some answers. Louise did smoke like a chimney, but she claimed that since it was her one and only vice, that we could all shut the fuck up about it. I admit to smoking perhaps a half-dozen cigars a year, mostly at parties, but I brought one outside with me now to mostly chew upon, to try and calm my rage.

She knew something was up and came scurrying along to join me outside, so we could speak together in complete privacy.

“Ok ... what the fuck is going on?” I asked her, “With Adriana and Thomas ... if I see just one more bruise on her I swear the sheriff is going to lock me up for assault and probably attempted murder. What is the hell wrong with her?”

“Oh, so we’re going to have that talk then?” She snorted, blowing a cloud of noxious cigarette smoke in my face. “Well ... it’s about time, and probably three months or more overdue. Ok ... for starters, quit the disinterested and strictly impartial co-owner crap. You’ve got a personal interest in all of this and the stupid game you’re playing was completely pointless, right from the start. She knew who you were, right from the day she signed the partnership papers, so can it!”

“Really? I could have sworn that she didn’t recognize me at all, just another guy from school. We never dated ... really. And honestly, I only found about this place from her ex-husband. I didn’t buy this place, well half of it, as a favor to anyone, either her or him! I wanted this place, to be here ... and yes, to be again with her. I did have a shine for her, back in school. Now ... who gave me away? How did that secret get out?”

“She figured it out, all on her own.” Louise giggled. “It was the way you looked at her, all of the time, quietly ... when you thought she wasn’t looking. She said it reminded her of a boy she had a crush on back at school, a guy who always smelled of pizza. She said you were always secretly looking at her but too shy to hardly ever speak to her for three straight years. She even pulled out the school yearbook to point out your home room photo. You’d changed, a lot, over the eyes, but the eyes remained the same.”

“Adriana had a crush on me? No way! She was dating steady one of the filthiest rich boys in the school. Me ... I could hardly afford to buy her a burger!”

“Yes way,” Louise nodded, “but she said that their school relationship had really been set up from the start by their crazy rich parents. She married Trevor, sure ... but they were more friends than real lovers, even back in school. She couldn’t go against her family, or really his either, but in her heart, if she had been able to make her own choice, she told me that she would have preferred you. You never wanted her for her money or social position, it was all there in your eyes – you just wanted her!”

“If so, then why Thomas ... now? Why does she allow herself to be his punching bag?”

“Oh, darling...” Louise exclaimed. She was very southern and called everyone ‘darling’. “I don’t think you understand, even the half of it. I think you know that her whole family lost their entire fortune, and most of them went to jail too. I think they’re all still there, too ... except for her father. Broke and disgraced, he checked out in a different sort of way, but just as permanent.” In case I didn’t catch her attempt at subtlety, she made the finger gesture of putting a gun to her head and then pulling the trigger. Complete with a short theatrical ‘bang’ sound.

No ... I hadn’t heard that part of the story.

“Well,” Louise continued, “that just left her and her mom, with not much than a pot left to piss in, and a few small old family properties here in the county, so they moved here. The restaurant here was already in fairly sad shape and they had to sell nearly everything else they had left in the world just to keep this pile of shit running. Fortunately, her mom’s family house, the Bed and Breakfast, was all paid for long ago, so they could take out mortgages on it to pay the bills here these last few years. She had to take your offer, regardless of how low it might have been. She didn’t even have enough left to pay the next month’s rent here!”

“I could tell that things had been bad ... but not that bad. So, if I was her financial savior, why then does she look at me like she’s afraid I’ll bite her? She never makes eye-contact with me and she damned near never smiles at all at anyone. Things are getting pretty good here now! Already I’m thinking about expanding into the space next door when the insurance office there closes down later on this year. Edmund, you know him, he’s going to semi-retire and just work the business from home from now on. She ought to be dancing, now that the place is making a steady profit, but she always looks miserable instead.”