Page 14 of Best Served Hot

I hesitated with my fingertips on the menu, then flipped it back open. “Can I send a dish as a gift to another table?” I asked.

Maybe because it was only one dish versus many, it came out before either of our real orders. The waiter set the plate down on Bennett’s table and said something I couldn’t hear; Bennett glanced over at me. Our eyes met again; only this time, his were crinkled at the corners, unable to meet the force of my serious ones. His dropped away first, his laughter dying, which gave me a sense of victory.

Though it might have been less due to the force of my gaze than the pulpo I’d had sent to his table. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d written in his review. I don’t personally care for octopus; I find it unpleasantly squeaky against the teeth when cooked well, and even more unpleasantly rubbery when not.

He looked back up at me. I smiled wide, then mouthed, A gift for you.

He scowled. In return, I smiled wider. His companion exclaimed, her shoulders jumping, and pulled the octopus to herself. His face relaxed as he watched her enjoy the dish, which, in turn, made me scowl.

“So how is Emerson’s business coming along?” Alice asked. “Is she taking investors? Because I’m considering investing in some—”

“Not Emerson—Emerson Leigh,” I said reluctantly. “And no, I will not allow you to even joke about that. But she is planning on throwing herself a big party to celebrate her launch.” I perked up a bit. “I bet she’d let me invite you if you want to come.”

Alice perked up, too. “A room full of absurdly rich people being ridiculous? Yes, please.”

Anything else she was going to say was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, a tray on his shoulder. “Wow, that was fast,” I said, impressed, ready to take a note on my phone as soon as he walked away, except when he lowered the tray, none of the food I’d ordered was on there. Just two goblets of bloodred wine. Which we hadn’t ordered. “What’s this?”

The waiter set them on the table, then nodded toward the entrance. “They’re a gift from the gentleman over there. The one you sent the pulpo to.”

I took a deep breath. I was not going to rope the waiter into this battle. Bennett must have overheard me right before he confronted me, when I was talking about my distaste for wine. And what lurked beneath: the uncertainty around it. Because it wasn’t just that I didn’t like it; it was that I couldn’t tell the difference between wines. And that made me feel like a little kid who didn’t know anything. Especially given the company I kept. I stared at the goblets, my forehead growing painfully hot. He was doing this to get back at me for the octopus, to embarrass me. To rub it in that I would have no idea whether these glasses he sent were the good stuff or the cheapest stuff on the menu. Whereas he’d probably grown up with his own personal sommelier.

To make things worse, Alice was nose deep in her goblet. “Mmm, smells fancy,” she said. “Very rich and full-bodied. The kind I . . .”

She probably kept talking, but I didn’t hear her, because I’d finally looked up. Bennett was looking at me with a cheesy grin. His companion had turned around, too, and was grinning in our direction as well. Great. They were both mocking us. Should I make a big show out of drinking it? Or of ignoring it, pushing it all the way to the side of the table like I didn’t even care?

I didn’t really want to drink it. It wasn’t like he’d eaten the octopus. But I didn’t want to leave it on the table, either. Every time I looked at it, it would be like it was mocking me.

I pulled the goblet away from Alice before she could take a sip, so violently a few drops sloshed over the edge of the glass. I stood, one goblet in each hand. It looked as if I’d cut myself and bled on the table. “I’ll be right back.”

I just want you to be aware that stomping across an entire New York City restaurant is not an easy thing to do. They’re always packed with people, the tables and chairs shoved as close to one another as possible in order to fit even more profit margins into the day, and of course they’re also filled with the obstacles of restaurants everywhere: waiters carrying precarious trays of food and drink; bussers clearing off tables full of breakable porcelain and glass and sharp silver tines.

But I did it. I stomped across the whole room, not breaking my heavy stride as I twisted and squirmed between tables. Waiters and bussers jumped out of my way.

And all without spilling another drop.

“I think you left these at my table,” I told them from a few feet away. That definitely sounded like more of a burn in my head. “We don’t—”

Something slammed into the back of my legs. A chair? My knees buckled. I shrieked.

And the goblets of wine went flying. My mouth dropped open in horror, and it all played out in what seemed like slow motion. The pink-haired girl clapping her hand to her mouth, her fingernails a vibrant shade of neon green. The waiter’s howl of NOOOOOOoooooOOOOOOoooo. Bennett’s eyebrows shooting up to his hairline as he dived to the side.

All in vain. Because the wine found its mark: all over them. Splotching the pink-haired girl’s orange dress into a sunset. Drenching Bennett’s sharply creased khakis so that he looked kind of like he’d peed himself. If he had a severe kidney infection and he was peeing blood.

Oh my God. What had I done? I opened my mouth, ready to vomit apologies all over them, horrified by their wide-eyed looks of panic and . . . was that fear?

Maybe . . . I could use this.

I stood up straight, clearing my throat. “That’s what I think of your wine,” I said, and then I turned tail and ran away. Yes, ran away. I couldn’t handle their eyes on me anymore, or having them believe I’d thrown those glasses of wine on them. In theory, yes. In practice, no, because they made me feel kind of like I was going to throw up.

But the look I got from Alice when I got back to our table wasn’t any less horrified. “Why did you do that?”

“It was an accident,” I said, stumbling over my words even though it was the truth. “Somebody hit me with their chair, and I just rolled with it.”

Her shoulders relaxed slightly. “I knew you weren’t the type,” she said. “I just didn’t have a good view from over here.”

“If you knew I wasn’t the type, why’d you ask?” I said, and probably she would have answered if her mouth hadn’t fallen open like she was trying to fit a double club sandwich in there. I turned to see what she was looking at, and my mouth dropped open, too. I could’ve stuffed a double-double club in there when I noticed the pink-haired girl had climbed on top of her chair and was now addressing the entire restaurant, her voice a megaphone.

“I would like everyone in this restaurant to be aware that it was Julie Zee Eats NYC who dumped goblets of wine on us!” And like the hand of God descending from the heavens, she pointed at me. Everybody turned at once.