3:41 p.m.
Last I knew, George lived in a brick-front town house, one of the overpriced ones that ballooned like mushrooms around a Whole Foods in a busy northern suburb. I don’t remember the exact address—after Flavio sent George packing, I blocked his number and deleted every trace of him from my phone—but I’ll recognize the place when I see it.
Waze detours me around the perimeter’s bumper-to-bumper traffic and dumps me onto Roswell Road, where I run up against a sea of brake lights in Sandy Springs proper. Nothing but gridlock, wall-to-wall cars in both directions.
My blood pressure, already flirting with the danger zone, spikes into dizzying territory. Especially once the light up ahead flips to green, but not a single tire moves because there’s nowhere for any of us to go. How the hell do people live in this town?
I stew in the gridlock, while George’s last words play on repeat in my mind, hurled over his shoulder on his way out the door.
You’ll pay for this, asshole. When you least expect it, I’m going to make you pay.
This was back in the spring, when the weather finally warmed up enough for us to haul the extra tables out of storage and line them up on the terrace—and thank God because the investor notes for two of my shops were coming due, and these are the type of people who don’t like to wait. I needed to fill every table and turn it multiple times because I was still plugging the hole from the last note and the ones before that, pulling profits from one shop to pay the debts on another like a demented game of Whac-a-Mole. Seventy-two cents of every dollar that I earn goes to my investors, which means (a) I’m an idiot; (b) at any given time, I don’t have more than a couple thousand bucks in the bank; and (c) I’m a damn idiot.
So there it is, ladies and gentlemen, the truth. Cam Lasky is broke. Despite five booming restaurants, despite the big Buckhead mansion and the custom cars and the hot wife dripping in diamonds, Atlanta’s Steak King is in hock up to his rent-a-crown. Lasky Steak is a house of cards. My success is a sham. I am literally and figuratively drowning in debt.
And no. I don’t miss the irony. Celebrity chef known for feeding Atlanta’s wealthiest bellies can barely feed his own family.
So back in March, when the evenings finally turned balmy, I couldn’t afford for George to throw a fit so epic it became known in Lasky kitchens as “pulling a George.” I couldn’t afford for him to break all those plates and glasses or destroy three crates of hundred-dollar wine, pitching bottle after bottle onto the concrete floor. And I definitely couldn’t afford for him to leave in the middle of the dinner rush and take three of the line cooks with him. After I deducted all the damages, his last paycheck was -$1.23.
So yeah. George has a couple of reasons for wanting to take a torch to my best performing restaurant. He would have known how to jig the alarm, too, working it so it didn’t trigger at the first sign of smoke. He would have known exactly where to toss the match.
And like Flavio reminded me, he still has a key.
Traffic loosens, and a few minutes later, I screech to a stop at the curb and eye the corner unit on a block-long stretch of townhomes. Three stories of boring brown brick and creamy siding above a monster garage door. Tall and angular, with concrete steps leading to a covered entrance so shallow, you could press yourself to the door and still get a backside soaked with rain. I take in the windows, dark glass obscured with plain white blinds, the leggy plants in the window boxes and on either side of the front door. This is it, all right. The place looks exactly the same.
On the doorstep, I ignore the Ring and rap the door with my knuckle—the kind of knock a friendly neighbor would use to borrow a cup of sugar, maybe, or a delivery person with a package. This is a moment that demands an element of surprise.
I wait, the seconds thumping in my chest like a drumline.
Then again, the Ring would have alerted him to my arrival, which means he probably knows I’m here. I step back and scan the upstairs windows, half expecting to see him grinning at me through the blinds, but there’s nothing.
I head back down the steps to the sidewalk, jogging past the truck and around the side of the house, where a six-foot wooden fence surrounds a backyard the size of a postage stamp. I follow it around to the back, stopping at the first gate I come to. Behind it, George’s town house looms in a leaden sky.
I push on the gate, but it holds. I’m guessing some kind of latch on the inside where the wood is thin and kind of soggy. I lean on it with a shoulder, and the latch releases with a pop.
Bingo.
I swing the door wide and step inside.
Except for a green trash can, the yard is completely bare, a scraggly patch of dirt and grass with not a stick of furniture. No table, no potted plant, not even a ratty lawn chair. The emptiness of it gives me pause, just a fleeting second where my conviction fades.
I haven’t seen or spoken to this guy in more than four months. It’s possible that George doesn’t live here, that he didn’t just storm out of Lasky but also this house, this city. What if I’m about to go storming through the backyard of some poor, unsuspecting sucker or worse—a homeowner running for their gun? This is Georgia, where most people have one.
The wooden door bangs shut behind me, followed by a dog starting up next door, muffled barks from a big dog. German shepherd big. I wait, trying to decide.
And then I spot a pair of kitchen Crocs, black and male-sized, just inside the sliding glass door.
I take off across the yard, and this time I’m not the least bit subtle about it. I bang on the doors, peer through unshaded windows onto furnishings I recognize, oversize furniture done up in leather, most of it brown. Not so much masculine as uninspired, plucked from the pages of a sales catalog.
The living room is a disaster—rumpled pillows and more discarded shoes, a coffee table piled with magazines and books, their spines cracked and the pages dog-eared. Definitely George, who reads more than a librarian. Sci-fi mostly, with an occasional mystery mixed in for fun.
The next window looks onto a spotless kitchen, further proof that George lives here. Chefs are obsessive about their workspace, and this one is uncluttered and gleaming, with a floor clean enough to lick. A digital clock blinks on the coffee maker, but otherwise no movement, no one home...though the beast next door is still going strong.
Above me, a whoosh of temperature-controlled air followed by a familiar voice: “Yo, asshole.”
George’s cheeks are a little fuller than the last time I saw him, his head a lot shinier on top. Looks like he finally gave up on that receding hairline and shaved the whole thing off.
He leans both forearms on the second-story windowsill, tipping his chin to the grass I just walked through. “You do know this backyard is private property, yeah?”
“Yeah, but so’s my steak house.”
“So?”
“So there’s a detective looking at the security footage right now, and I gave him your picture.”
A double-barreled lie. There’s no detective, no picture, but it gets my point across. An accusation, bright and sparkling.
He tilts his head and frowns. “Why would my face be on your security feed? I haven’t set foot in the place for what—five? Six months?”
Four and a half almost to the day. George knows this as well as I do.
“Stop fucking around. If you did what Flavio and I think you did, then you’re going to jail. Arson’s a crime, and you better believe I’ll be sitting in the front row at your trial. I’ll be the one cheering when they cart you away.”
I try not to think about what suspected arson will mean, but it’s impossible. It means the insurance money will get tied up in subpoenas and courtroom drama. It means attorney fees I can’t afford to pay. It means long waits that end in jail time. My heart fires up, and my insides churn. I can’t afford any of this.
George’s frown digs in. “Mind telling me what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Oh come on. The fire. At the Bolling Way shop. The same shop you swore to burn to the ground.”
“There was a fire? For real?” His brow clears, and his lips spread into a smile. “How bad?”
“Why else would I come all the way up here?” I lift both hands, let them slap to my sides. “Bad.”
“How bad?”
I stare up at my former sous-chef, a crick tightening on the right side of my neck, the heat bleeding from my body in a single, bracing instant. When I drove here, I was operating on instinct and rage, but George was never that good of an actor.
The wind sends an icy blast up my back. “It’s torched, man. A total loss.”
He smacks the sill and whoops, a full-bellied laughter that drowns out the birds overhead, the cars on the street, the dog still going berserk next door.
“Dude. Dude. Are you serious right now? Are you kidding me?” He pauses to catch his breath, a long stretch of silence to enjoy the hell out of my expression. He laughs some more, all jolly hilarity. “Oh my God. This is too damn good.”
“Shut up.”
“For real, man. And though I appreciate you coming all the way here to tell me the joyous news in person, what kind of idiot do you think I am? An arsonist would have to be really incompetent to give his former boss a six-month warning. I mean, come on. You and I both know I’m not that stupid.”
“It was four and a half. March 24.”
“Aww, you remembered our anniversary.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what? Forget it. I’m out of here.” I turn and march for the gate.
“Wait. Where you going? Who are you going to accuse next—Drew?”
The name slams me in the back, and I stop, my soles sinking into the grass. Drew is a fellow chef, a former employee who I lured to the Lasky brand with the promise of him running his own restaurant. One of the three chefs I fired in an ugly dispute last year because his food wasn’t good enough to fill the tables.
“Drew signed a contract, dickhead. Same as you.”
A contract that multiple attorneys on both sides agreed was legit. No hidden clauses, nothing sneaky or underhanded buried in legalese. The terms were spelled out in bulletproof, easy-to-understand black and white. I even cut Drew some slack, gave him some extra time to fine tune the menu to appeal to the Perimeter Mall crowd, but I couldn’t keep bailing him out when sales were already slipping. A couple more months and we’d be laying off waitstaff, slashing food quality, defaulting on bills. I didn’t like it, I didn’t want to do it, but it was Drew or the restaurant, that’s essentially what it came down to.
So yeah. Drew might have lost his job, but I’m the one who almost lost his shirt. The one who had to pump in a buttload of my own cash and energy to fix Drew’s mistakes, who had to work harder and longer to patch up the holes his bad management blew in the place.
But George is not wrong. It’s not like Drew wouldn’t be more than happy to strike a match to the Bolling Way shop, too. And so would—
“What about Fred and Kelly? Have you been to see them yet? Because they hate your guts as much as Drew and I do.”
Fred and Kelly. Once upon a time, chefs at the West Side and Inman Park shops, until sales at those restaurants started sliding, too. Just because you’re a chef doesn’t mean you should be running your own shop. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.
“And what was the name of that line cook up at the Forum? The one you fired when his wife was about to get deported because he was spending too much time on the phone with his lawyer. Simon or Christian or something. Oh, and remember that mixologist you brought down from New York City to revamp the cocktail menu, only to send him packing as soon as he was done? Last I heard, he was slinging gin and tonics at the Dunwoody Country Club up the road. Any one of them would love to see Bolling Way blow up in smoke. Any one of them would have a reason to want revenge.”
“You’re a real asshole, do you know that?”
“You gotta admit I have a point. You really are your own worst enemy, aren’t you? And assuming all those people didn’t actually light the match...” He points a stubby finger at my face. “You know what they’d say about the fire, right?”
I shake my head and take off for the gate, not because I don’t know but because I do. I know exactly what they’ll say about the fire, just like a tiny part of me wonders if they might be right.
George’s answer chases me out of the yard: “They’d say it’s karma.”