The Bar and Grill

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

I'll be honest: This isn't a pure Loving Wives story. Sure, there's a divorce and all that crap, but I wanted to explore some different themes. In my first LW story, I wrote a suspense story about revenge on the cheating wife. In the second, I wrote about how a husband deals with the immediate aftermath of discovering his wife's infidelity. Here, I wanted to take a longer look. I wanted the husband to question whether the relationship was doomed to fail from the beginning, whether his own make up contributed to things, and whether he can learn from past mistakes and move on. So I guess this really could've fit into any of several categories.

I picked to post this in LW for several reasons, though. First, DanielQSteele's current "When We Were Married" saga really got me off my ass to write something a bit longer and more involved. No, this isn't as involved as that one, but it's the longest thing I've written in some time. Second, as usual, I really love the comments in this section. Call me a comment whore, but they really tend to be more numerous and more in depth. (Hats off and many thanks to HarryinVA, Angiquesophie, Harddaysknight, Ohio, DanielQSteele, Curiouss, Juanwildone, Bruce22, and so on and so on.) Third, my last epic (choke sputter) work was a 9-chapter story published in Novels/Novellas, and nobody read the goddamned thing. At least in LW, I know it'll get read.

Finally, I confess to pandering. To those who complained not enough sex in the last one, this one will have a few sex scenes. (If you want too much sex, then read the aforementioned 9-part Knox County series; it's loaded with sex.) There is no sex, though, in this first part. I think you'll see why.

I'll do my damnedest to get this written as quickly as possible and post as soon as I can, but no promises. Sorry.

Thanks again, and please take a moment to comment when you're done.

*

ONE

It was 2:30, the dead time between the lunch rush and the dinner crowd. The bar was damned near empty, and the waitresses had already cleaned up and gone home for a few hours before the dinner shift. In other words, the perfect time to either make up the evening's specials or work on new recipes. And that's what I was doing now: Trying to come up with the perfect carrot soup.

Sounds easy, you say? Not really. Sure, I could cook a ton of crappy, woody carrots in some water mixed with salt-drenched soup base, puree the whole crappy mess, stir in some cream at the end and call it carrot soup. But that's not what I do. No, the perfect carrot soup needs to taste like a silky mouthful of carrots. Okay, not really carrots the way you think of them. Think silky carrots on steroids, carrots where you can taste the sweetness and have a velvety mouth feel that makes you want to lick the whole damned bowl clean and say, "Holy shit, I never realized I liked carrots that much!" When you've done that, you've come up with the perfect carrot soup. And when your produce purveyor has given you a great price on several boxes of farm fresh carrots, this is what you do.

I had been working on this half the morning and for the past hour after the kitchen clean up. What I'd come up with so far was cutting the ends off the carrots, running them through a mandoline to shave them to an eighth of an inch, saute over medium heat in butter, then add some minced shallots, celery, and garlic, quickly add some cinnamon to allow the oils to come out, then top with stock and simmer until it was all soft and the flavors melded. Once done, blend the whole thing, run it through a fine mesh strainer, and add some cream. Reheat the now smooth, orange, velvety goodness, and taste. It was still missing something.

"Taste this," I said to Clara as she strode past me toward the back door.

She got a frustrated, I-need-to-get-the-hell-out-of-here look, and leaned over the steam tables with her mouth open. She took a slurp and let it sit in her mouth before swallowing. Then she raised her eyebrows at me and nodded.

"Close," she said.

"And?"

"Fennel bulb," she announced. "Try some fennel bulb with the saute."

We'd been doing this for the nine years I'd owned the place, and she somehow always knew how to make something better. Still, fennel bulb?

"Really?"

She nodded. "Not too much," she said, shrugging into her jacket. "But definitely fennel bulb."

And with that, she was gone until the next morning.

And me? I went back to square one and used fennel bulb. A half hour later, I was nodding my head in amazement. In my defense, though, it was better with the wild fennel bulb than with the regular old fennel bulb. More mild, but still adding a depth of flavor that accentuated the sweetness of the carrots.

I was crumbling a molasses cookie into the center of a soup bowl--the crunchy texture and warm spice of the cookie chunks would contrast nicely with the soup--when the bartender stuck his head in the kitchen.

"Phone," he said, then turned and walked back to the bar.

I ladled the soup around the cookie, grabbed a handful of spoons, and carried it out to the bar. The usual after work crowd was just drifting in, and they perked up at the sight of the bowl in my hand.

"What're we trying today?" Lonnie Mackie asked, sitting straighter on his barstool to get a peek.

"Carrot soup," I said.

"Carrot soup?" he said, the disappointment etched on his face.

"Try it," I said, placing it between him and his workmate, Charlie Ford. "Good for your eyesight."

"Fuck my eyesight," he grumbled, picking up a spoon as I walked toward the phone behind the bar.

"It's Nina," Mitch said, handing me the phone before pulling out some beers for the regulars walking through the door.

"Hey babe," I said into the phone. "What's up?"

"Not much," she said, sounding nervous. "I was wondering what time you'll be home."

"Sixish."

She paused, and I decided to wait her out. She'd been like this for the past few weeks, all quiet and pensive and skittish. My first few attempts to bridge the gap had not gone over too well, but the last week had taught me that patiently waiting her out went miles toward soothing the tensions.

"For sure?" she finally said.

"Pretty much," I responded. "Why? You need me to get something?"

"No," she sighed. "I was just wondering if you could watch the girls for awhile tonight. I've got a party to go to."

"A party?"

"Yeah," she said, sounding defensive. "You know. One of those Pampered Chef things."

I chuckled. Pampered Chef? Overpriced crap. "How about you stay home instead? Maybe pamper this chef?"

"It's a girl from work," she continued, ignoring my comments. "She's doing it to save up for a car. I just thought, you know, maybe I could go get some things from her."

"Yeah," I said. "I don't see a problem there." Well, maybe I did see a problem. Still, the mood she'd been in lately, I thought it better not to complain. Better to just let her unwind however she thought best.

"Please be home by six, okay?"

"Sure, babe," I said. "Six it is."

"Thanks," she said, sounding relieved for the first time since I'd come on the phone. "I really . . . well . . . thanks, Tim."

"Sure," I responded, wondering what she had almost said. "I'll see you then."

And before I could say more, she hung up on me. Not even so much as a 'Bye,' let alone an 'I love you.'

I shrugged, turning around and looking at the now full bar.

Six or seven of the guys at the bar had polished off the soup, and Mitch was picking up the empty bowl and filling it with the dirty spoons.

"Well?" I said to Lonnie Mackie.

He smiled. "What can I say? It was good for my eyes."

That was secret Lonnie Mackie code for a home run recipe. Not that he was too picky, as his three hundred pound frame attested. Nevertheless, the man knew good food when he had it, and I'd more than once adjusted recipes based on his input.

So back to the kitchen I went to make up batches of carrot soup for the next day's soup special.

TWO

I'd been in the food business for about nineteen of my twenty-nine years. Mom and Dad owned the Bar and Grill before me, and I'd been busing tables, doing dishes, waiting tables, and cooking since shortly after my tenth birthday.

Sure, parents can get in shitloads of trouble over things like that, but not in Grant City. There were only five thousand people in town when I was growing up, and everyone knew everyone else. If you got in trouble at school, you begged the principal to just belt your ass; no matter what, you begged him not to call the folks or you'd get it way worse at home. Teenage drinking party? The cops pretty much left you alone so long as you kept the noise down and no one did anything stupid like vandalize the neighborhood or drive their drunken asses home. No, Grant City parents didn't mollycoddle their young 'uns.

And child labor laws in Grant City? You're kidding me, right? We were surrounded by dairy farms, and those poor bastards were milking cows and shoveling shit and baling hay from age seven on. Nope, nobody really noticed me working the relatively cushy restaurant jobs my folks had me doing. If anything, they all considered me lucky.

Ah, life in small town middle America.

Unfortunately, shortly after my twentieth birthday and just as I was wrapping up culinary school, my world went completely to hell. On a warm evening in early May, two pieces of shit from two towns over, all strung out on meth and looking to get their next fix, decided to rob the Grant City Bar and Grill. When Dad tried to talk them down, they opened up with their shotguns. When Mom screamed in terror, they screamed in terror, too, and turned the guns on her.

Even through their meth-induced haze, the scumbags realized they were in a world of hurt and fled, leaving the full till untouched and tearing out of the parking lot. Trying to put many miles between themselves and Grant City, they forgot all about the new guardrail at the T-intersection of Cypress Knoll Road and Blandings Farm. Old man Blandings had long since grown tired of drunken pisspots blowing through the intersection and tearing up his front lawn, so he'd petitioned the Township to put up a steel guardrail. Highway Supervisor Blandings--yes, his son--was tired of listening to his daddy bitch, so he'd installed a guardrail that would stop a Sherman Tank.

The morning after the crash, Supervisor Blandings had looked upon the dented guardrail with pride. It had held up like a champ against the 1979 Firebird going almost a hundred miles an hour. The Firebird was a scrap of heap at his feet, but he wouldn't need to replace the guardrail. Thus, by paying such close attention to detail, he'd saved the taxpayers the expense of putting in a new guardrail.

His work on the guardrail had also saved the taxpayers the expense of at least one trial, too. Apparently, nutjob murderous meth heads not only forget where new guardrails are installed, but they also forget to put on their seatbelts. They found the driver splatted against a tree like a bug on a windshield. The other little prick was damned near to the front doorstep of the Blandings farmhouse over a hundred feet from the guardrail. Apparently, hitting a guardrail followed by going through a windshield and connecting square with a hundred-year old oak tree is not a pretty sight, and tree boy was dead. Moron number two, meanwhile, had broken his back and was paralyzed for life. Judge Connerly didn't really feel too much sympathy, though, and didn't hesitate to put the bastard on death row. Oh well, sucks to be them. (Moron number two subsequently had his sentence commuted to life without parole, but I figured he'd have even more fun being a paralyzed pin cushion for fifty years than dying peacefully after ten years or so.)

Being an only child, I'd inherited everything when Mom and Dad died. House, cars, bank accounts, retirement plans. The whole kit and kaboodle. They'd owned the Bar and Grill for almost forty years, and it had long since been paid off in full. I figured I'd learned enough in culinary school to take over the business, so I came back home and tried to figure out whether I could make a go of it.

My first problem, obviously, was that I was now the proud owner of the Bar and Grill, but still a year shy of my twenty-first birthday. Sorry, they'd told me, but you can't operate a liquor license until you're twenty-one. Uncle Jack had stepped in, though, and put the liquor license in his name, which our lawyer assured us was perfectly legal so long as I stayed out from behind the bar.

Staying away from the bar was fine by me, though. All I wanted to do was introduce the people of Grant City to real food. No more of the crappy meatloaf dinners with salty, soggy canned green beans, instant mashed potatoes, and gravy made from a powder mix. Soups would be made fresh, not purchased pre-made or--way worse--made up from soggy leftover vegetables and saltier than hell soup base. (Notice how everything's salty? Welcome to pre-made products.)

Granted, Mom and Dad had never cooked that way. No, they'd offered a simple menu of hamburgers four or five different ways, tomato soup in the summer and chili in the winter, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, and a vast array of pre-made, frozen appetizers. Oh, and the Friday night fish fry, which I will grant was one of the most popular in Lincoln County. Everything on the fish fry was homemade, from the beer battered cod to the potato pancakes, coleslaw, and salted rye bread. Mom made one hell of a salted rye bread, and it became my most treasured inheritance when I found the recipe after they died; taking a bite of buttered, salted rye fresh from the oven always brought back her smiling image in my mind.

So Mom and Dad's food was better than the diner fare crap served at the other places in Grant City, but not by a ton. I wanted to make every meal like the Friday night fish fry: Homemade everything and nothing from a freezer except--maybe--out of season vegetables in the dead of winter. Might as well give it all my own little spin, too. You know, minor gourmet tweaks here and there.

Uncle Jack was indispensable in helping me implement my changes to the restaurant. "Go slow," he'd warned. "They're going to give you a chance up front. Feel sorry about your folks and all. But they won't put up with too much up front. So keep it simple and hearty and don't throw any of that small plate, crazy greens, and weird sauces on them too soon."

He was right, of course. Though Grant City was quickly growing as the urban sprawl from Chicago spread ever further outward, we were still comprised mostly of farmers and factory workers and other folks who thought Thai food was what you nibbled off a titty if you could talk your wife into bondage. Also, Grant City has never been a hub of the rich and famous, so raising prices more than a little would cause a major decline in the business.

So go slow it was, but fresh it became immediately. This was where all of my culinary school training came into play. "Don't buy frozen chicken breasts," the instructors had drilled into us. "Buy the whole damned chicken, cut the breasts off, use the wings for your appetizer, the hindquarters for soups, and the carcass for stock. No waste, and way cheaper than pre-made. Tastes better, too, which helps."

(Quick note on making homemade stocks. Never, and I mean absolutely never, allow it to boil. You need to keep it at a bare simmer, just a few bubbles breaking the surface, or the whole thing turns cloudy and greasy and you'll never fix it. I'm serious here.)

Granted, it was way more work to cut up fifty chickens at a time twice a week, but you get real good at it after a few months. And like I said earlier, there's a lot of down time before the lunch starts and between lunch and dinner. I kept myself hustling that whole time, and within six months was busier than hell. As a matter of fact, Uncle Jack confirmed that the Bar and Grill had never made so much money.

So there you go, how to be successful in the restaurant business. All you have to do is have a couple of lowly pricks murder your parents so you can inherit the whole thing free and clear, then have the town feel sorry for you long enough to give the place a try. Then, of course, work twelve hour days seven days a week, and pretty soon you've got something.

All told, I'd rather just have my folks back.

But I wasn't given that choice.

THREE

I got home by ten to six. Nina met me at the door, dressed to the nines.

"Dressed like this for a Pampered Chef party?"

She forced a smile. "Just felt like getting gussied up for a change."

She looked hot, I'll give her that. Short and petite, short-cut light brown hair, smallish, perky breasts, nice ass, tanned and toned legs beneath the simple, form-fitting flowered dress. Her dark brown eyes were sparkling with what seemed a mixture of apprehension and excitement, which confused me. The smile on her pixie face began to grow into a real smile, though, and I was inwardly relaxing to finally see her coming out of her two-week funk.

"Whatever it takes," I said, leaning over and kissing her. "Good to just see you happy again."

Her eyes flashed at that, and the corners of her smiling lips tightened a touch. Just a fleeting second, mind you, but I swear it looked like guilt.

"I'm feeling better," she said, leaning in and giving me a hug.

"Okay," she said, breaking the hug when my lips brushed against her neck. "I'm off. The girls and the dog have been fed, so just make sure they finish their homework before they watch the tube."

Before I could respond, she was sliding into her car and pulling out of the garage.

I walked into the family room and saw that the girls had already flipped on the TV, their schoolbooks, pens, and paper sitting ignored on the coffee table before them. My pug Ernie was snuggled into Nadine's lap, snoring as she lightly stroked behind his ears.

I cleared my throat, but was ignored by all but Ernie, who raised is eyelids but didn't move his head away from Nadine's petting.

"Emily, Nadine," I said.

"Quiet, Tim," Emily said. "It's almost over."

I looked at the wall clock and saw she was right: There were only three minutes or so left until the latest, crappiest re-run of Saved By the Bell ended. Might as well let them finish it, I decided.

Ah, the joys of being a stepparent. Emily and Nadine, ages nine and seven, were Nina's children from her first marriage. They called her ex-husband Dad. I was Tim or, more frequently, You're Not My Father and You Can't Tell Me What To Do. Granted, Nina rarely let them get away with the latter when she was around, but they had just taken to using it when she wasn't within earshot. Given that I wasn't their father, I usually let them just get away with it, too. Really, what was I supposed to do? They already treated me like crap no matter what I did.

The problem was that the girls somehow blamed me for their parents' divorce. Didn't matter that Nina and I didn't even know each other when she and her ex divorced. Hell, it didn't even matter that Nadine had only been three when they divorced, and she couldn't even remember when Nina and Steve still lived together. Instead, Nadine picked up on Emily's anger and resentment and, trying to be like her big sister, treated me the way she saw Emily treat me.

I don't want to make this all sound worse than it was. Actually, I usually got along great with the girls. Problems only arose when I didn't let them do whatever they wanted or actually demanded they do something they should be doing. In other words, when I failed to spoil the shit out of them like their mother, they got pissed.

"Okay," I said as the ending credits rolled, "time to finish up your homework."

In response, Emily picked up the remote and changed to another channel.