Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 43920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
She crossed the room and sank into one of the two overstuffed brown leather Chesterfield chairs on the other side of the desk, facing me.
“So,” she began, “I think we need to talk.”
I squinted at her.
“We need to be honest about our girl.”
That was what she called La Belle Vie. Our girl. I’d always liked it. And no, we weren’t partners, though I’d offered her part of the business on more than one occasion. She told me that when she was ready, when she saved the money to buy me out of half my investment, then she would accept half. Not until then. She was not looking for a handout, and yes, she knew I loved her. What was most important, she told me, was that she wanted us to be equals in all parts of the business, especially money. And though I didn’t think it was necessary—it was as much her blood, sweat, and tears as mine—she had laid down the law. This was not about friendship; this was business. I was looking forward to the day when she said that yes, she was ready and here was her partner buy-in. Having her take on half of everything would relieve a lot of the pressure of taking care of both the business and the people.
“In what way?” I asked.
She was silent for a moment and then finally said, “We could change who we are.”
“How do you mean?”
Her smile was soft, and I could see it written all over her face, how much she loved and cared for me. “You know how. Unlike a lot of other clubs, we have good traffic during the day.”
I groaned. She meant food traffic. People coming in simply to eat.
“We do,” she insisted. “Opening every day at two, that was a great change you made. This way we capture the late lunch crowd and then the people getting off work for happy hour, and for the last six months, we’ve been swamped for dinner every night.”
“We’re not a restaurant,” I reminded her.
“And yet, the last four Friday and Saturday nights, we’ve had a two-hour waiting list.”
That surprised me. “We did?” I saw the crowds, but I was always moving, doing something, checking, helping, and I missed things.
She nodded. “You’re very lucky Georgine loves working here.”
I knew that.
“But she’s also very fortunate that you saw her potential,” Simone reasoned. “I certainly didn’t see it, and you know kids freak me out.”
My chuckle was soft.
She lifted her hands in the air. “You were smart to hire a young single mother and let her bring her kid to work with her. No one else would have done that.”
When I’d first talked to Georgine Joseph about the job three years ago, she said her husband had recently left her, and that she’d moved in with her mother, who could pick up her three-year-old daughter, Camille, at five when she got off work, but not before. That meant, if I wanted Georgine, she had to bring her kid to work from noon, when she started prepping for our two p.m. opening, until around five thirty, depending on traffic from the LSU College of Science, where her mother taught developmental genetics.
Dr. Alberta Wallis had wanted Georgine to be a scientist. Georgine wanted to cook. I was happy about that and so said yes, please, make every day bring-your-child-to-work day. There was a small office right off the kitchen that became Georgine’s, and we turned half of it into a wonderland of educational toys and books. And yes, there was a TV in there, but there was nothing wrong with the occasional Disney movie. I had watched Finding Nemo with Cami far too many times.
Now, three years later, Cami was in first grade, and her school was close to La Belle Vie. Georgine had added four of us on the pickup list: me, Darcy, Xola, and Conner. Whoever was free when Georgine was busy would go get her. The little girl preferred anyone but her mother because the rest of us stopped for snacks, drinks, and ice cream in the spring and summer months, and hot chocolate and beignets in fall and winter. Only her mother walked her straight back to the club for freshly cut fruits and vegetables. With me, we normally split a muffaletta with homemade sweet-potato fries and had strawberry sodas. There was also the occasional cookie. Georgine would give me the look of death when her daughter was dancing around the office when we got back.
I told Georgine often, because I never wanted to hold her back, that if she wanted to take any of the many people up on their offers to open her own restaurant, she had my blessing. Always, she would smile at me kindly and say, “Yes, I know that, Christopher.”
Her name was on all our advertising, on a plaque on the wall above the bar so you couldn’t miss it and so you were sure who was making your meal, as well as in all our press packages and announcements on social media. She set the menu, hired her own people for the kitchen, and her budget was separate from the club’s.