Page 8 of The Beach Shack Legacy

Bernie held the door. Margo walked in and the smell hit her—butter and sugar and yeast, the feel of a kitchen with its ovens on since four in the morning. It was a smell she knew from somewhere deep and not recent, like a word in a language she used to speak.

“Table for two,” Bernie said to the girl at the counter, who looked about Stella’s age and had flour in her hair.

“Anywhere you’d like.”

They chose a table by the window. Bernie pulled her chair out first, then took his own. Margo set her purse on the empty chair beside her and did not comment on the chair-pulling, and he did not comment on her not commenting, and the new era survived another small negotiation.

“Across,” Bernie said.

“What?”

“We’re sitting across from each other. At the Shack you sit next to me.”

“At the Shack there’s a booth. This is a table.” Margo unfolded her napkin.

“I’m just noting it.”

“Note it quietly.”

A young man brought menus. Margo put on her reading glasses and studied the offerings, written in a handwriting so elegant it was nearly illegible. Quiche Lorraine. Croque monsieur. Pain au chocolat. A section called “Les Viennoiseries” that she had to tilt the menu to read.

“What’s a viennoiserie?” Bernie asked.

“Pastries. Laminated dough. Croissants, that sort of thing.”

Bernie laughed. “Who wants to eat laminated dough? Joey might, but not most people.”

Margo sighed “That’s what layering butter and dough is called, Bernard. For croissants. Laminated. Not like Joey’s procedures.”

“You know this?”

“I know a lot of things, Bernard.”

She ordered coffee and a plain croissant. Bernie ordered coffee and the quiche, because he was a man who ordered the most substantial item on any menu, every time, everywhere. The coffee arrived in white cups, smaller than the mugs at the Shack and without chips on the rim.

Margo picked hers up. Set it down. Picked it up again.

“It’s strange,” she said.

“The coffee?”

“Being here. Eating somewhere else. I’ve mostly been at the Shack every day for—” She stopped counting in her head because the number was too large and too heavy. “A long time.”

“A lifetime.”

“A long time.” She took a sip. The coffee was good. Not Joey’s, but good. “I feel like I’m cheating on my own restaurant.”

“You’re retired.”

“I’m not retired. I’m painting.”

Bernie cut into his quiche. “You’re painting instead of working. That’s retirement.”

“That’s a creative sabbatical.” She turned her cup a quarter in its saucer.

“From a whole career.”

“You’re very argumentative this morning.”