Page 2 of The Hampton Beach Café 2
A small smile crept across her face, and Frances turned to face him before she headed out the door. “Yeah, because you were the only guy in school that wasn't in love with her. She pretended you didn't exist. She always hated me, though. I nearly dropped out because of her.”
She turned to leave quickly. She hadn't meant to admit to that last part...she hadn't told anyone about that, not even her therapist.
***
Though she complained bitterly about the meetings she was forced to have with Kennedy, Frances did have to admit they were useful for keeping everything on track. She could not accept, whatever Clarkson said, that this was the normal number of meetings to have with the council over one little liquor license.
As she entered the restaurant Kennedy had chosen, Frances scanned around the room to try to pick where she was seated––not once had Kennedy allowed herself to arrive after Frances. Considering the number of times Frances had heard this ridiculous advice touted by macho businessmen in their moderately successful self-help books, she wasn't surprised that Kennedy had read and taken this to heart. Apparently, getting somewhere forty-five minutes early and waiting for the person you were about to meet was a power move in Kennedy's mind.
When she saw that Kennedy wasn't, in fact, waiting for her, Frances frowned and hoped something wasn't wrong. The concierge escorted her to the table and poured a glass of sparkling water.
“Do you want to order a drink while you wait?” he asked.
“Oh...uh, no thanks, just water for now.”
She did want to, but if Kennedy was running this late, Frances figured that if she found her haughtily sipping wine, it would put the whole meeting in a bad light from the start. Better to open her notebooks and do a final check on their progress and appear to be a studious and dedicated applicant.
The thought made her pull a face involuntarily, a scowl that was boosted by the numbers on her page.
Everything was so expensive...
“Trying to show me up?” Kennedy whined in her nasal, affected voice.
Frances took a deep breath. “Hardly. I just wanted to make sure I had my figures right.”
A soft snort of laughter from Kennedy, an awkward smile from the concierge, and a repressed comment from Frances made the whole interaction three times as awkward as it needed to be.
“Thin crust, no cheese, tomato base, no garlic,” she rattled off as she sat down. “Arugula salad on the top, no tomatoes and no dressing.”
Totting up the truly horrific pizza order, Frances smiled and shook her head at the waiter when he turned to her. The lunch would be in the fifty-dollar range, and she had no intention of spending either that much money or that much time here with Kennedy.
The next half hour passed slowly, with Kennedy second-guessing almost everything Frances said. Frances painfully allowed herself to use the “Clarkson thought of it” line a few times to smooth the way forward. The adoration Kennedy still had for him was almost uncomfortable. Frances realized and wondered how he dealt with it.
“About the signage?” Frances asked.
“No, you cannot have that hideous A-Frame thing outside. It's a tripping hazard.”
“What can we have?”
Kennedy paused as the waiter poured her a glass of white wine. “Well, that hinged sign that used to be quite charming is still there. You can have that.”
Taking a deep breath, Frances pushed. “Is there any way we could have something on the pavement? People aren't likely to look up, but they will notice a sidewalk sign...”
The long, drawn-out sigh that Kennedy let out was clearly designed to irritate Frances, or at least that's how it felt to Frances.
“You just can't take someone saying no to you, can you?”
Frances put on her most polite smile. “It's not about me or the no. It's entirely about what is likely to help the café become a successful venture.”
An idea flickered in her mind, and she saw in her memory the ugly metal recycling bin just a little way down Cherry Street. Clarkson had mentioned that the recycling program had been Kennedy's idea...maybe a little butt kissing wouldn't go astray.
“I was wondering, actually…” she said, trying to sound casual, “…you know those fantastic recycling bins around town? Maybe we could apply to the program to have one outside the shop or move the one that's a little way down the street? We could put our chalkboard on the sides and have Vince make some kind of good-looking metalwork sculpture to go around it...”
She looked up at Kennedy, hoping she'd be flattered or even smug, but what Frances actually saw there was rage.
“You seem to think everything is just here for you to dictate, to take over, to make your own,” she spat the words out and sloshed some wine out of her glass as she set it heavily down on the table. “You must get that from your father.”
It felt like a physical blow, the words hitting her with as much force as any slap to the face.
