with Patrick, who ignored him for the most part, but every so often, Dag got through, like when the skier made a plate of blintzes for somebody’s birthday on Sunday afternoon, always a more relaxed day, the end of the workweek, since the restaurant was closed on Mondays. He served them with cherries, red and plump and sinful, and ricotta cheese whipped with lemon curd.
Patrick’s eyes widened at the first taste and he blinked at Dag. “Marvelous!” he said. “Yes, please. I’d like some more.”
Chuckling in his loose way, Dag served the blintzes. He winked at Ivan. “Would you like some, Rasputin?” The nickname had stuck, and Ivan rather liked it, but he didn’t want to touch anything Dag made. Burning inside, he nearly flipped the entire pan of cherries on the floor. Instead, he rolled his eyes in disdain and stalked outside to smoke.
He simmered through the shift, steam coming from his pores like a volcano about to blow. He felt the unrest and turbulence in him and tried to calm it down, going out to smoke regularly, staying away from Dag as much as he could. He drank some herbal tea Elena kept around, and forced himself to pay attention to his own work.
A therapist he’d been sent to after one or another of his drinking violations—driving and fighting, mostly—told him to notice how a thought wasn’t always a directive, it wasn’t even real sometimes. The woman showed him how to break it down—event, reaction, thought. He tried to practice it this afternoon. The event was Dag’s fucking annoying behavior. He needled Ivan deliberately, trying to find his weaknesses and make him crazy.
No, that wasn’t the way this worked. Ivan spun in his station, broiling lamb chops, acknowledging orders with a volley of commands, giving orders, spraying vinegar water over a flame leaping too high, and reviewed.
The event had no emotion. Dag made blintzes. Offered them to Patrick, who ate them and liked them.
Marvelous.
After that, Ivan’s reaction was to feel annoyed. Jealous. His thought was that Patrick didn’t love him and would leave him for Dag. Or someone else more beautiful or more polished or more whatever.
The dark knots of fury eased away from the back of his neck. Patrick did love him. Ivan honestly didn’t know why—Ivan was difficult and high-strung and given to wild mood swings—but it seemed to be true. Dag was trying to get to him, trying to get Ivan to react and do something stupid to mess up either his job or his relationship—while Patrick was faithful, it was impossible to miss that Dag wanted him. If Ivan allowed himself to fall for Dag’s game, Dag would win.
More tension faded. Whew. Maybe he was getting the hang of this sanity thing. Damn. He grinned to himself.
And it all would have worked out just fine, Ivan thought later, if they hadn’t stopped to have a drink at their favorite nightclub after work. The crowd was thin on a Sunday night. Patrick and Ivan found a booth in the agreeable dark and ordered an ale for Ivan, a pinot grigio for Patrick, who never, ever had more than one. “I’m hungry,” Patrick said, and glanced over the very small menu. “Maybe some mushroom caps?”
“And some wings.” Ivan wiggled an eyebrow across the table. “I’m in the mood for something sloppy.”
“It was busy tonight,” Patrick commented, leaning back with a sigh. “Good to see it.”
Ivan nodded. Music from a very good jukebox played quietly. Weariness pooled in his elbows and lower back, tingled through his knees, calves, feet. Sometimes lately, he could really feel his age. Not like Elena, though. “What’s with Chef, anyway?”
The quick shuttering fell over Patrick’s face, making it a blank mask. It irritated Ivan a little, that Chef was more important, or higher in Patrick’s loyalties, but he remembered his mantra: event, reaction, thought. Patrick had known Elena a long time, and in fact, wasn’t loyalty one of the things Ivan found so appealing about him?
“What do you mean?” Patrick asked.
“Here lately there’ve been times she can’t even stand up straight. She’s in serious pain a serious amount of the time.”
Patrick lowered his eyes. Nodded. “I’ve noticed, too.”
“What’s the deal? How does she get better?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t ever been this bad. I mean, sometimes at the end of a long week or a long trip, she might limp around a little, but…” He took a breath. “Not like this.”
Something in Ivan broke a little, thinking of the way her mouth