One of the first long articles about my show was in New York magazine’s Grub Street, which is a food diary of a notable person, following what he or she eats and drinks for a week.
If I’m remembering, they titled the Grub Street piece something like: “Sunshine Mackenzie Pairs a Mint Julep with Sweet Potato Pie.” It was a pretty accurate title considering that, one of the nights, I’d written about going with Danny on a mini pub crawl around Brooklyn in which I was searching for New York’s best mint julep. Fresh, delicate, a little sweet. The dreamer’s drink.
I secretly detested a mint julep. But Ryan liked the sound of the dreamer’s drink, so mint julep it was, even though I found it sticky and too rich and wholeheartedly believed that bourbon should be drunk with a little ice and nothing else.
After the fight with Violet, and five hours of packing, I left the studio in an Uber full of my files and belongings and proceeded directly to Red Hook—and the old bar and grill where I used to work—to drink my bourbon and ice undisturbed.
While the Uber sat outside, his meter happily running, I sat on the corner stool listening to the only other day drinker, a large tattooed guy named Sidney, who matched me drink for drink, while rattling on in detail about his wedding-planning business.
“I have an Iranian wedding tonight at Chelsea Piers,” he said. “Five hundred people.”
“You’re a wedding planner?” I said.
“I don’t seem like the type, right? It was my ex-wife’s business and then it was our business together and then I took the business from her in the divorce.”
“Why would you do that?”
He shrugged. “I could,” he said. “What do you do for work?”
“Nothing anymore.”
He took a sip. “What did you do?”
“I lied,” I said.
Before I get to this next part, I should make something clear. I don’t cry. I’m not one of those weepy-weepies. Hell, I’m not even a subtle sniffler. Danny’s father died on the operating table after a six-hour surgery. The doctor came out to tell us, and the whole family lost it. Everyone but me. I loved Danny’s father. On some days, more than Danny. But I didn’t shed a tear. Instead, I hugged everybody tight, took Danny home, and when he finally fell asleep, I took it out on a long run. Two hours. Staring off into space.
Except sitting there where the whole mess started, I started to cry. Awful, ridiculous tears. Right in front of a mortified Sidney, who motioned for the bartender.
“I’ll take a check,” he said.
Later that night, I sat on my doorstep in front of my apartment, drunk out of my mind. I was surrounded by the enormous file boxes, the entire remainder of my working life.
I knew I would feel better as soon as I dragged myself upstairs to the comfort of my apartment, but knowing that and actually getting everything upstairs were two different things. The Uber driver had no interest in helping me lug my things inside, which left me where I was: staring at the street, knocking my heels together Dorothy-style, quietly hoping that someone would appear to take me home.
“I don’t believe it! Sunny?”
I looked up to see Amber (aka Toast of the Town) walking down my block in high heels and a stunning black dress, her makeup smoky and severe, the epitome of New York chic.
As unexcited as I was to see Amber, she looked thrilled to see me.
“I thought that was you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
I drunk-reached for my keys, suddenly motivated to go upstairs, leaving the files behind if necessary.
“This is my place,” I said.
She tilted her head, as if she was trying to remember. “This is your apartment? I should know that, right? I’ve been here before?”
I nodded, noting Amber’s nervousness—her over-explanation of whether she should remember the apartment.
“It’s a shame, what’s going on with your show and everything,” she said. “Did you see my tweet?”
“I did, thanks.”
“Of course. How’s it all going?”
“Not great.”
She cringed, full of faux-sympathy. “I just don’t know why anyone would do this to you! I was talking to Louis earlier, and he was saying, we were both saying, you don’t deserve this. I mean, regardless of what you did. To be outed.”
That stopped me. “You were talking to Louis?”
“Well, yes. We’re putting together a cookbook. Tender Toast.”
“You are?”
She shrugged. “They have an unexpected spot in their catalogue. Do you think Tender Toast is too soft? We’re just rushing to get the book out and I can’t tell if it’s genius or not. Louis thinks it has a good ring to it, and he’s the best there is, but . . . I don’t know . . .”
I took Amber in, sobering up, quickly. “Where did you say you’re going tonight?”
“I’m just going to get some dinner with my boyfriend.”
She pointed down the street, like proof of a restaurant. Except she was pointing toward nothing. My block was small and—at least in New York terms—far away from everything. Restaurants, cabs, stores. There was a world in which you started here to get somewhere, but there was no world in which this was the block where you ended up.
“So are you still in a tizzy trying to figure out who’s behind this hack?”
I stared at her, not answering.
“That’s why I try to be nice. I’m nice to everyone, so no one would think to fuck me like this.”
Which was when it hit me like a sledgehammer. I had been thinking that it was Violet or Ryan. But Amber had the most to gain from any gap left in A Little Sunshine’s wake. That was what she was doing on my street—my quiet, untraveled street in Tribeca. Like a serial killer, returning to the scene of the crime, she couldn’t help herself. She had to gloat.
“It’s you.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re behind the hack,” I said.
She laughed in a completely unnatural way: high-pitched and squeaky, a laugh that was trying too hard. “Have you been drinking? I have nothing to do with this. I mean, what on earth would I have to gain?”
“Seriously?”
“Okay, so I could see how maybe I have a little to gain,” she said, trying to hide a smile.
It was the strangest thing—watching her struggle between proclaiming her ignorance and enjoying her victory. Sometimes being drunk can impede your seeing things clearly, though in this case, I thought it was helping me to see how shallow and silly this all was—any issue Amber thought was between us, anything that would lead her to tear so many lives apart.
“But I’m still innocent,” she said.
Innocent. If she were really innocent, wouldn’t she have said, I have nothing to do with any of this? Innocent was a word chosen when another word was equally weighing on your mind. Guilty.
I reached out, grabbed ahold of her arm. It was the most forceful I think I’d ever been with anyone. “Would you just be honest?”
Amber smiled, tightly, removing my hand from her arm. “Honesty is what you want? That’s ironic!”
But then her faux-smile gave way to something darker. And I saw it flash in her eyes. The truth of how she felt about me; the competitive fire, the jealousy, and something uglier.
“I haven’t not enjoyed seeing your fall from grace, considering that you slept your way to where you are now, as I suspected all along.” She paused. “And the truth is you give a bad name to us real chefs who are actually trying to make a difference.”
“You make toast. You know that, right?”
Her phone rang, an annoying pop song blaring through. “Hold that thought.”
She picked up. “Hello?” she said into the phone. “Yeah, on the corner. Duane.”
I followed her eyes to a taxi making its way down Greenwich Street. “There’s my boyfriend,” she said.
The taxi stopped right in front of us, and out stepped a tall, handsome guy in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Hi, A,” he said, making his way toward Amber.
“Hi, sweetie.”
It took a minute to place him.
It was the cameraman—the one who had filmed the behind-the-scenes shoot for A Little Sunshine, the one whom Ryan had been jealous of. The one whom he had fired.
It took him the same minute, his eyes widening, as he looked my way. “Holy shit,” he said. “Hey there . . .”
My heart started pounding. I waved hello, not saying anything.
Amber looked back and forth between us, enjoying the moment. “That’s right! Don’t you two know each other? Charlie worked for you, for a couple of days. Actually, just a day, because you fired him.”
Charlie shot Amber a look. “Amber, what are you doing?”
I turned to Amber, keeping my voice low. “Amber, I had no idea he was your boyfriend.”
“Well. Now you do.”
She leaned into Charlie suggestively and kissed him hello.
“Sunny and I were just talking about how careful you have to be. Who you’re nice to, who you fire. Especially when you fire them for trying to stay loyal to their girlfriend.”
“Ryan fired him.”
“Because you asked him to,” Amber said.
I looked at Amber in disbelief. That wasn’t at all how that had happened, but she certainly wasn’t going to believe it. That was the trouble with being a liar. No one trusted your truth.
Charlie touched her shoulder. “Amber, I want to go,” he said.
She kissed his cheek. “We do have a reservation.”
“At the restaurant you can’t remember the name of? How will you ever find it?”
She smiled. “We’ll be okay,” she said.
She took Charlie’s hand, and they started walking down the street.
Then Amber turned around. “By the way . . . if you asked this person, the person who did this, I’m guessing they’d say it’s less about revenge and more about something else.”
“And what’s that?”
“Loyalty,” she said.
And with that she turned off of my block, onto another block going nowhere.