He said the words as if he’d just had a profound realization. I stared at him, trying to make sense of his bizarre reaction. “Yes. I want to make my dinner. So—where are your pots and pans?”
He rubbed at the back of his neck.
“They’re . . . um.” He paused, glancing at me, before turning his attention back to the distressingly white tile kitchen floor. And then, his eyes lit up, and he met my gaze again. “Oh! I am having my pots and pans repaired.”
Was that even something you could do with pots and pans? “You’re having them repaired? Really?”
Maybe his had extra features that required regular maintenance. In fairness I didn’t cook much myself and hardly kept up with the latest trends in cookware.
“Yes.” Frederick grinned at me, looking extremely pleased with himself. Goddamnit if his megawatt smile didn’t just light up his entirely too good-looking face. “My pots and pans are at the shop. Being repaired.”
“All of them?”
“Oh. Yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. “All of them.”
“So . . .” I trailed off and looked around the kitchen in confusion. “What are you cooking with until they get back?”
“I . . . don’t cook often,” he admitted, quietly.
“Ah.” I could have kicked myself for dropping off my crappy pots and pans at the consignment shop. Eating out three meals a day might be an option for someone like Frederick, but it wasn’t an option for me. “I guess I’ll run by Target and pick up a few after work tonight.”
“No, Miss Greenberg,” Frederick said. “I told you the apartment would be fully furnished. I gather that your expectations were that the kitchen would have everything you needed to cook your meals.”
“I mean . . . yeah. Sort of.”
“Then I will purchase cooking implements when I am out this evening.” He smiled at me, a little sheepishly. “Please forgive the oversight. It will not happen again.”
I opened my mouth to thank him. But before I could get out the words, Frederick sprang away from me and bolted from the apartment, ostensibly to get me something to cook my meals.
FOUR
Text messages between Mr. Frederick J. Fitzwilliam and Mr. Reginald R. Cleaves
Can I bother you for a favor, Reginald?
I thought you weren’t speaking to me anymore
Soon you will be rid of me forever.
But I need help one last time, and fairly urgently.
What is it
Where does one purchase cooking equipment in the twenty-first century?
And can you tell me how to get there?
Oh SHIT
We forgot to get pots and pans didn’t we
I also need to borrow your little plastic money card thing one last time.
I suspected the owners of Gossamer’s had originally wanted the place to be an artsy hipster coffee shop, with indie bands performing on the weekends and local art on the walls. It was in an old building Chicago tour guides would have called architecturally significant, with pretty, stained-glass windows facing the street and Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired clean lines. The furniture was thrift-shop funky, and all the coffee drinks had names starting with We Are and ending with an inspiring adjective.
None of us who worked there understood why a coffee shop that mostly served finance bros bothered with hipster naming conventions for their entirely generic drink offerings. Because despite what I suspect were the owners’ original plans, Gossamer’s neighborhood was much more suit-and-tie than hipster. Its location—right by a Brown Line stop—meant most of our customers were commuters on their way to or from their jobs in the Loop, with the occasional college student thrown in for variety.
Of course, I’d rather have worked at an actual hipster coffee shop. But a job was a job. And this one didn’t pay half bad.
Even if the food sucked and the drinks had silly names.
The dinner options were extra limited when I got there for my evening shift. Usually, by six o’clock most of Gossamer’s pre-made food had long since been sold. The only sandwiches left were a sad, soggy peanut butter and jelly and a hummus and red pepper on wheat bread. Whoever supplied Gossamer’s pre-made food really needed to learn how to make friends with flavor. And texture.
My shift didn’t start for fifteen minutes, so I had just enough time to scarf something down. I grabbed the hummus and pepper sandwich—the less tragic of the two options—and made my way to one of the tables near the back.
There was only one customer there—a guy who looked about thirty-five, with dirty-blond hair and a black fedora tilted so far forward it covered half his face. He had a mug of something hot and steaming in front of him.