Page 89 of Single-Minded
“Did it really?’ I ask. “That’s humiliating. Wait… forty percent? That’s astounding. We were aiming for twenty.”
“Well, you overshot it. The flood story ran on the front page, below the fold, with a photo of you and the skinny socialite. Fabulous dress, by the way.”
“Thanks. You mean Olivia Kensington Vanderbilt, the Wildlife Foundation chair?” I ask. Darcy nods.
“She fired me last night. Publicly. She screamed, ‘You’re fired,’ across the grand ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton.”
“Well,” snorts Darcy, “apparently she counted all that money and this morning she was singing your praises.”
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There’s little Sarasota loves as much as a new restaurant opening. The steady stream of tourists, spectacular weather, and availability of fresh seafood from the Gulf draws a much higher caliber of restaurants than one would generally find in a town this size. Boudreaux has the added appeal of a waterfront location and a celebrity chef with movie-star looks.
The first seating at seven-thirty is packed rail to rail. I make my rounds to watch the crowds, look for flaws in the traffic flow, and observe the diners’ experiences to make certain that Boudreaux is providing the unique culinary experience Daniel aspired to.
Genevieve and Gabriel are the consummate hosts, welcoming every guest like an old friend. With Chef and Miss Georgina supervising the kitchen staff for the night, Daniel is free to ingratiate himself to his guests, ensuring their experience is perfect. He’s tirelessly charming, and I watch him move about the restaurant for hours, making personal connections with every guest. It’s brilliant. These diners feel like friends, and they’ll return for years to come.
I’ve tasted everything on Daniel’s menu, due to his charming habit of feeding me whenever I’d stop by the boat to work, and the fact that he and his new staff ran through the entire menu multiple times during our final week of preparation. As I watch the food come out to each table, I’m impressed with Chef and Miss Georgina’s execution of Daniel’s original recipes. They’re exactly as he envisioned. Prepared as though Daniel had plated each meal himself.
As I make my rounds, Daniel and I keep finding each other’s gaze in the crowd, even from across the room. The connection between us is captivating, galvanic—as though we’re bound together by some powerful force perceptible only to us.
Later, I’m standing near the wall, waiting for the crowd to pass so I can return to my table. Just a few steps away, Daniel charms some guests with a tall New Orleans tale. He reaches backward, unobserved, and lightly touches my hand, a simple gesture that sends shivers over my body as powerful as on the first night we danced.
It will be hours before the last guest will leave. Daniel’s opening night is a resounding success. The patrons and the media are raving about the food, the view, the wine list, and especially, the chef.
As the crowd finally begins to thin out around 1:00A.M., and no new guests are arriving, Daniel appears at our table.
“Do you have a minute?” he asks.
“Do you?” I laugh. He takes my hand and I follow him through the kitchen, to his studio upstairs.
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“Are you exhausted?” I ask.
“I’m energized. This is the biggest night of my life so far, and all I could think of was spending it with you,” he says, still holding my hand in his. We stand in the dark, near the doorway of his studio, the only place on the boat where we can talk privately.
I feel like a live wire, being alone with him.
“I’m so sorry. I can only imagine what you must have thought, yesterday,” he says.
“I thought that I trusted you, maybe too soon, and that trust had been betrayed,” I say. “Is that what happened?”
“You haven’t known me long, but I’m loyal as the moon is to the sun,” he says.
That’s sweet, sort of old-fashioned and poetic. But I’m not sure I’m buying it.
“So who was she?” I ask.
“Her name is Sasha,” says Daniel. My heart sinks. This isn’t off to a good start. I was praying for something along the lines ofmistaken identityorFood Network groupie.He brings my hand to his cheek, and I take a deep breath. Just listen, I think to myself.Just listen.
“She’s a restaurant critic at theTime-Picayune.We were involved for about two years; it was stormy, toxic, painful,” he says.
“The thing is, I should have known better. My mother and Gabriel both warned me about dating her. I didn’t listen. She’s very intense, torrid, passionate, emotional, which truth be told, was what initially attracted me to her. She was beautiful, she could be incredibly charming. But she became enraged easily, she was highly jealous, and created huge scenes at Chevalier and Royale more than once. My family wasn’t having it; obviously, a screaming fit in the middle of the dining room during the dinner rush was unacceptable,” he says. I nod and listen, unsure of what to believe.
“I’d break it off, she’d follow me—show up where I was working, call me over and over again all night long, scream at me for hours, appear at my apartment in the middle of the night whenever I tried to break it off. We’d get back together and sometimes it would be good for a while, and sometimes we’d just get sucked right back into this vortex of a constant, poisonous cycle of fighting and making up, fighting and making up.”
“Why did you stay?” I ask.
