9
All that separates this nice sunny day from the makings of a nightmare is a single storefront. If the sliding garage door behind me that’s about to meet its fate with a sledgehammer could talk, I know it would say the same thing.
“Well, Allie? What can I help you with?” Angela huffs hot air onto the lenses of her big black sunglasses and wipes the smudges off with the fabric from her chevron-print dress. This is the first time I’m seeing her in broad daylight with nothing between her eyes and mine.
“Angela, I’m freaking out.”
“And here I thought you just needed a tampon. In that case, let’s move a little to the left so we aren’t in plain sight of the guy who thinks you’re stable enough to go into business with.”
Angela puts her sunglasses back on and ushers me toward the alley. I lose sight of Benji through the front door and pray to god he and Craig don’t take the liberty of making any permanent decisions during my momentary absence.
“Okay, talk to me.” She pops a piece of gum into her mouth and runs her fingers through her platinum hair.
“I have no clue. I’m lost with all this.” I can hear my voice quavering but can’t seem to make it stop.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of all the phone calls and logistics this afternoon. You’ll just have to sign a few papers later this evening.”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean.” That’s when I realize it: none of us are on the same page. She thinks Benji and I have talked and come to a unified decision—that we’re skipping toward the finish line together, when really, the extent of my involvement caps at an argument over roasted chicken and a fake doctor’s note this morning. Today was only supposed to be a conversation. Remember?
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she says. “Is there something wrong with the space? I know the building is old, but our construction crew is brilliant. Even if the foundation is sinking, they can handle it. So don’t worry.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just, we don’t have the money.” There. I said it. Well, whispered it.
All the features of Angela’s face protrude. Her jaw drops and her brows rise above the tops of her shades. “Wait, what? Are you serious? I made Benji swear on his mother’s life that he had the funds to go through with this.”
“Well, that’s problem number one,” I mutter under my breath. She doesn’t hear, which is probably for the best. Now doesn’t seem like an appropriate time to delve into his unfortunate family dynamics.
“Fucking A. I figured this was too good to be true. I’m going to rip him a new one right now.” She starts to storm off but I grab her wrist.
“Angela, stop. Relax for a minute.” Did I just tell someone else to chill out? “Let me back up. We have the money, technically. Well, I do. I have around $30,000 to my name, but that’s it. There’s nothing left in my savings after that. No trust fund. No added allowance from mommy and daddy.”
I watch her shoulders ease down an inch. The little voice in the back of my head that’s saying, “This is crazy, Allie. RUN.”—I can tell Angela hears it, too. But right now she’s choosing to be poised and factual instead of compassionate and worried.
“Well, thirty grand is enough to cover a share of ownership,” she states.
“I’m aware, Angela. But up until now, the most expensive thing I bought was a computer. I don’t do stuff like this. I don’t make investments. Alright? Especially not in something that I won’t even be involved in.”
“Ha!” she blurts out. What could possibly be funny?
“You are involved, Allie. You’re Benji’s girlfriend...or should I say, business partner. He’s made it quite clear he’s not going to wipe his own ass without you. So, you’re going to be a part of this whether you like it—or even know it—or not.”
“I know that,” I say, waving away this happy family thing she’s invented with a flick of my wrist.
I want to be his right-hand woman, so long as that caps at helping fill waters at a pop-up and being his date to fancy foodie dinners. This? This is something else entirely and I can’t do it. Hell, I hate when I have to be the one to pay for our dinners. How am I going to foot the bill for his biggest move yet?
I break away from Angela for the moment and pace around the alley. Approaching the noon hour, I can see, hear, feel Randolph Street is already abuzz. Produce trucks are making their final deliveries of the day for the restaurants that are only open for dinner, while hungry foodies are dribbling across the bridge over the river for lunch. I see a table of four women across the street check in with a hostess at a restaurant called Rosalind’s. She proceeds to offer them a table outside. They hang their bags on purse hooks being handed out from their server like a blackjack dealer. There’s nothing like soaking up the sun on a nice patio day. Summer goes by so fast in Chicago.
As they settle in, I start to grow more uncomfortable with what’s happening on our side of the street. If I go forward and say yes, I’ll never again get to be like any of those ladies who lunch. Randolph Street won’t be a place I meet my friends for special occasions. It won’t be a destination for Benji and me to be wined and dined. It’ll be the story of Benji’s life, and so the story of mine, too. It’ll be a beast.
Maybe I just say no and tell him if he really wants this, he’s going to have to figure it out himself. I mean, that’s certainly the cheaper option, although it may mean I wind up single and gossiped about in FoodFeed for the foreseeable future.
“Yoo-hoo.” Craig ducks his head out from the front door. “Is there a problem out here, ladies?”
There are several. But Angela cuts me off before I have a chance to let the first one bubble up.
“It’s all good, Craig! We’re just discussing possible loading zones for deliveries. Tell Benji we’ll be in in just a minute.”
He winks and points at us before disappearing back into 900.
“Al-Dog, we need to get back inside. What are you thinking here?”
As I ponder the question, I’m back to being transfixed by the patio table across the street at Rosalind’s. The ladies are now imbibing a bottle of rosé, the remaining few sips of which are comfortably resting tableside in a stainless-steel white wine cooler waiting for whomever is brazen enough to claim them. It’s common knowledge that there are four glasses to every bottle, so I always wondered how there could be any left after a waiter pours for a party of this size. That’s when Benji told me a server will always leave a little in the bottle and set up a complete wine display on the table to inspire other diners to order similarly. Meanwhile, a food runner has brought out a tower of bread—Rosalind’s is famous for their cheddar biscuits—and the gals are clinking crystal wineglasses and laughing. Can we please trade places?
“Listen, Angela. I can’t cook for shit. I hate oysters. And I don’t know why wineglasses have different shapes. Beyond appreciating some good Indian food, I really don’t have any ties to this industry.”
“You do know who you’re dating, right?”
“Yes, of course. And I love Benji—don’t get me wrong. But why would I invest all of my hard-earned money into something that has virtually nothing to do with me? This isn’t my dream. It’s Benji’s. And yours. And Craig’s. Something... I don’t know. Something just doesn’t feel right about this. It feels like a pyramid scam or something.”
The stress of the moment washes over me. It’s the first time I’ve voiced my feelings out loud, which makes it real. The fact my confession is to a woman I hardly even know causes me to start crying, apparently my favorite thing to do when I can’t handle life anymore.
“Allie, let me explain something to you.” She removes her sunglasses and looks me square in the face. Her eyes look like greenish-brown kaleidoscopes as her pupils adjust to the light.
“People make investments because their money comes back tenfold, and usually without them having to do much. Now that man in there, Craig, he’s a super successful businessman who wouldn’t waste his lunch hour doing something that wouldn’t put money in his pocket, so you should take that as a really good sign. And then that other man in there, your boyfriend, well, he’s a genius in the kitchen. I don’t care how tired you are of hearing that, it’s true. And then there’s me. Now, I know you don’t know me from Eve, but I’m pretty damn good at what I do, too. Okay? You’re basically looking at the dream team, Allie. If anyone else knew what we were up to right now, they’d jump at the opportunity that’s in front of you—to be a partial owner in what we’ve got brewing. Take a look around you. This is fucking Randolph Street! Pardon my French, but every patio table in a three-block radius is sat. You’ve got the expressway right here, the river right over there, Google headquarters here, McDonald’s there and four El stops within a half mile...we’re going to get eaters from every angle. You see dollar signs going down. I see dollar signs going up. Way the hell up.”
She jams a finger to the sky to drive her point home.
“How do I...make my money back?” I choke out through some pathetic tears.
“When the restaurant makes money, you make money—simple as that. And the restaurant is going to make a lot of money. Trust me, okay? Do you trust me?”
That is the million-dollar—or rather, thirty-thousand-dollar—question.
Angela’s vague explanation falls somewhere between pep talk and matter-of-fact. I try desperately to allow a nugget of confidence to work its way into my brain but nothing transpires to words. I shrug my shoulders and wipe my nose with the top of my hand.
“Are you still crying? Jesus, you’re still crying.” Angela digs a tissue out of her bag and hands it to me. “You need to put your big-girl panties on here and pull yourself together, okay?”
“I’m sorry I’m a mess right now.” I blow my nose into the tissue, which I’m fairly certain has already been used.
“Okay. New tactic,” she says. “Story time. I’m going to tell you a little something about this industry that you know nothing about, that you say feels like a scam. This industry? I love it. It saved my life.”
“What do you mean?” I manage.
“I mean, eight years ago, when I was your age-ish, do you know where I lived? I’ll give you one hint. It wasn’t in some studio apartment in Lincoln Park, that’s for sure. I lived on the street.”
Truth bomb detonated.
“Yeah, I lived in whatever little nook in between two buildings I could squeeze my fat ass into to keep warm. To keep from being raped in my sleep. Because that’s what it’s like to be homeless in this city.”
I can’t picture Angela homeless. But I also can’t picture her fucking with me right now so I try to ignore the big Chanel sunglasses and expensive-looking mod haircut as she goes on with her story about more desperate times.
“You want to know what’s funny about being homeless?”
“There’s something funny about being homeless?”
She smiles, a wry kind of smirk. “All the good spots get taken by the people who have been homeless longer than you. You know, like in the alleys, behind the Dumpsters? Kind of like where the two of us are standing right now. Yeah, good luck claiming a spot like this. You’ll get knifed by someone a little more senior, if you will, if you even look like you’re trying to settle in.”
Angela moves closer to a nearby Dumpster and starts to circle around it like she’s eyeing a luxury car on a showroom floor. I worry the stink will latch onto her clothes, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
“A spot like this blocks the wind. It’s a place where chefs throw away day-old bread or the unserveable ends of a rump roast. It’s where yuppies toss last year’s Marc Jacobs sweaters. I never could get a spot like this. So one day, I grabbed an empty Starbucks cup, one of those clear ones they put the teas in, out of the trash. It still had hot-pink lipstick stains on it, probably from an ad executive or a Macy’s makeup artist. Do you know that cup is the reason I only wear red now? Anyway, I held it out and begged for change. I only needed enough to buy myself a ticket to ride the Red Line. Took me three days.”
I do the mental math. A ride on the El is three dollars. How can you afford anything making a dollar a day?
“Once I got that ticket, I felt like a new woman. I boarded it, tucked myself in between a girl who looked kind of like you and some Asian guy in scrubs. I didn’t know where I was going, I just wanted to take the train as far as I could go. Pretend for just a minute I was on my way to work, or to lunch with a friend, or to a new boutique on North and Clybourn. I ended up getting off somewhere up by Evanston. It was one of the last stops. I figured the further up I went, the less I’d have to compete with the meth heads and hookers jonesing for space by a Dumpster downtown. Are you following me, Allie?”
I nod once, barely noticing that my tears have dried.
“I wound up in Ravenswood. Have you been? People don’t walk around there like they do in the Loop. What took me three days to collect in my cup downtown would take me a week in Ravenswood. So while I felt safer and more comfortable, I knew I couldn’t stay there unless I got a steady job. So I went to a UPS Store and I asked the lady working if I could borrow a marker to write on a box they had thrown in their recycling bin. I wrote ‘Second Chance Wanted. Please leave job applications instead of money. God bless.’ I’m not religious, just so you know, but people respond well to the whole God thing.
“Anyway, I held that sign up at the El stop every day around 6:00 p.m. when I knew businessmen who worked down at the Board of Trade would be getting off the train and heading home to their perfect little families. Most were too exhausted to even acknowledge me standing there. Not one person talked to me for six straight weeks. But I kept going back to the tracks every day at 6:00 p.m. And then came Craig.”
“Craig, like, the Craig inside?”
“Yes, sweetheart. That one. Craig stopped in front of me and pulled out a folded application from his Jack Spade briefcase. It was for a restaurant called the Rainy Day Pancake House. ‘A few of our servers quit this week and I’m shorthanded. Fill this out, and bring it back tomorrow for an interview.’ He said something like that. It was so matter-of-fact, so business as usual. He needed a server. I needed a job. So then guess what?”
“What?”
“I cashed out my change cup, got a train ticket and aced my interview. Granted, all I had to do was show I could balance four plates on my arms and could accurately describe what was in the Rainy Day Scrambler. But regardless, they hired me on the spot. And guess what else?”
I just lift my eyebrows this time. She knows I want to know—need to know—every detail of her story.
“I worked breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every day. This whole time, no one but the head honcho, the owner, Craig, knew that after I clocked out, it was back to my secret little hiding spot in an alley in Ravenswood. Three months later, I could finally afford cheap rent and moved in with another server. Six months later, I got promoted to shift supervisor. A year later, assistant manager. Two years later, I left the Rainy Day Pancake House for Florette.”
“The fine-dining place in Hinsdale?”
“That’s the one.”
“To serve?”
“Hell no,” she says, putting her sunglasses back on. “To run the show! Come on, I know you’ve read my LinkedIn profile. I was the general manager...in charge of twenty people front-of-house, twenty people back-of-house, ordering, payroll, marketing, floor managing, you name it. I did it. Guess how many Michelin stars they had when I started?”
“One?”
“Zero. Now guess how many they had after one year of me on the floor?”
“Three?”
“Okay. Are you serious? No. No one’s that good. We got one. One Michelin star, which is still a really huge deal. You’ll learn more about that later.”
“Congrats,” I say, wiping any residual mascara from my tearstained face. I tilt my head slightly to peer through the clear garage door. Benji and Craig are both zeroed in on their cell phones, no longer fazed by our absence.
“The point here is this industry literally saved my life. And don’t get confused. This isn’t the food industry or the restaurant industry. It’s the service industry. Do you get what that means? Because I don’t think you do. It’s not the whole ‘we’ll pamper you and pretend to care about you while seething and hating you behind the scenes’ thing. It’s the business of making other people feel warm and welcome. The hospitality business is what Craig showed me that day on the platform, and I’ve been committed to living it ever since. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t honor what that man did for me by loving what I do.”
I can hardly believe that under that spray tan and behind the veneers, there lies a big heart. While I have no doubt Mr. Moneybags is still in it to win it, I now understand why he’s not afraid to give Benji this chance. On one hand, Angela recommends him. And after proving herself for the last eight years, I’m sure that what she says, goes. On the other hand, if Craig’s done it before, he’ll do it again. Meaning, if he gave a chance to someone who on the outside looks like a person you wouldn’t want coming within ten feet of your front door, Benji’s sordid past or hard exterior doesn’t really weigh much on whether or not Craig pushes forward. So, at this point, it’s just me. I’m the only one afraid. I’m the only one clogging this thing up. I’m the only one with hesitations. And maybe...I shouldn’t be.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to fill the silence between us now that her story is over. Of course there’s a part of me that wants to ask how she wound up homeless in the first place or if she ever asked Craig why her, but I realize those are questions I don’t need answers to. They are sprinkles of the past that should be left exactly there because everyone and everything is alright now. Hell, Angela’s driving around in a brand-new Volkswagen Jetta and has a multimillionaire on her speed dial. The woman is a baller in disguise. I can’t help drawing a parallel between her rock bottom and Benji’s. If the industry saved her...
“Allie, let me ask you this. Do you remember the best meal you’ve ever had? Now, I’m not talking about anything Benji’s whipped up for you, but rather your best meal out on the town?”
“Republic,” I say, without hesitation.
“Ross Luca’s place. Excellent choice. On track for two Michelin stars this year. Why was it so good? And don’t say a word about the chocolate cake, even though I know it’s better than sex.”
“Benji took me. We were invited by the chef. He cooked us probably fifteen different courses. We were the only two people left in the restaurant after, like, six hours of eating crazy-good food. It felt like some weird Bachelor-style date or something. Who gets Republic all to themselves?”
“So correct me if I’m wrong here,” she says. “But nowhere in there did I hear it was the best night ever because of the unlimited breadsticks. Or because they let you sub fries for a salad. Or because you had a coupon. This is the big leagues, Allie.” She gestures to the door of 900 Randolph with an expansive wave. “There are going to be people who come through this door—this very door—and experience the best night of their lives. They are going to transcend reality and live to tell about it the next day. We’re going to do that for people. No, let me rephrase that. We get to do that for people. Remember, it’s a privilege. It’s our pleasure.”
Benji looks up from his phone and sees us outside. He smiles and waves. We wave back.
“You’re the lucky one, Allie. You’re the lucky one, because all you have to do is sit back and watch the fruit of your investment change people’s lives. I, on the other hand, have to do the dirty work. I’ve got to deal with the people who complain that they don’t like the brand of toilet paper we stock, or that there were lipstick prints on their wineglass when really that’s just part of the crazy pattern that Benji picked out. I have to try to schedule a horde of twentysomething servers who are just in it for the cash and who all request Fridays off so they can go clubbing. I have to worry about whether our dishwashers can prove they are legal citizens. I have to make sure our sous chefs reek of BO and not whiskey.
“Okay? That’s the fun shit I get to do on a daily basis, but let me tell you this—I love it. It’s what makes me get out of bed in the morning. The hard stuff. The stuff that no one else wants to do, like...” She looks down at her watch; it’s a Rolex. “Like get a contract for this place drummed up in the next five hours before everyone takes off for the weekend and wrangle all you fuckers to sign on all the lines where you’re supposed to.”
I laugh a little bit at the absurdity of all of this. Of Angela once being homeless. Of me currently dating some rock-star chef. Of there being a bazillionaire ten feet away who wants to own a sick piece of real estate in Chicago with me so we can start a restaurant. Of signing away $30,000 to be to Benji what Craig was to Angela. To give someone a much-needed, well-deserved second chance and let them run with it.
“Grab my hands and look me in the eye,” Angela commands. “I need your commitment. Are you in?”
Angela’s touch sends a surge of energy through me. It’s like I’ve plugged myself into an outlet in the wall. All of a sudden, it dawns on me that I can relax. She’s the Coast Guard circling this sinking ship that I am on with Benji, ready to make a rescue. The onus isn’t on me and me alone to save him anymore—not if I sign on the dotted line. It’s a huge financial investment, but is it a huge risk? Everything in me believes in Angela. And if Angela believes in Benji, well, then I should, too.
And so I inhale deeply, breathe out and say, “Yes. Yes, I’m in.”