one end of the hall.
“What’s the soup?” Shea wanted to know.
“Just the chicken noodle and the tomato bisque. No soup of the day right now.”
In all the times she’d eaten at The Big Spoon, there had been a soup of the day only twice.
“How’s the dinner special today?” Shea prodded.
“Beef barley stew,” came Trudy’s response. Not answering directly was what Trudy did when she didn’t want to speak badly about a dish.
Shea wouldn’t be worth her salt as a food critic if she couldn’t deconstruct food. The flavors varied greatly, depending on the day. Her theory was that The Big Spoon rotated through three very different chefs. Thankfully, today was Tuesday.
On Tuesday nights, she always ate in. The chicken pot pie was always exquisite. It was their best dish, but impossible to take out. The wine selection wasn’t bad, but it didn’t gel with the menu. Most of the rest was just mediocre, and Shea liked a sure thing. She closed her menu.
“I’ll take the pot pie.”
“And your usual to-go order?” Trudy plucked the menu from Shea’s outstretched hand. Shea was so predictable Trudy didn’t need to write anything down.
“That’d be great.” Her standard order consisted of a triple order of the smoked trout—naked—and a double plate of trout amandine without the sides, both of which were fished locally from Grand Lake. She always took one bison burger—deconstructed—an order of the lamb stew, and two slices of a caramel-apple coffee cake.
Trudy plucked up Shea’s menu and made to walk off. “I’ll have it ready to go whenever you’re done.”
This was the part that Shea hated. She’d never gotten used to eating alone, even after years of doing restaurant reviews. She’d done everything to avoid it when she could. It had been a bone of contention between she and Keenan: he didn’t like the idea of her traipsing around the city out to dinner with her friends every week. But he rarely ever agreed to be her plus-one. Since her chat with Carrie, Shea had successfully compartmentalized troubling thoughts about Keenan and his private eye. But she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Kent.
Her alter ego had come from the name “Clark Kent,” the moniker she’d used for her original blog. Head Over Meals had launched her writing career. It had started out as a hobby—an outlet for her to speak her own impressions of the restaurants she went to socially with Keenan’s circle and some of New York’s very best.
In some ways, Kent had been a byproduct of being shut down by Keenan. He’d always dismissed her when she talked about food. But Shea had grown up in the kitchen. Her father’s restaurant had been regionally-renowned. When she’d found herself married to someone who neither understood nor appreciated food but was eager to posture as if he did, Shea had started Head Over Meals.
A year-and-a-half into her venture, The Times had approached her to become their new critic. Her reviews were incendiary and fresh. At a time when The Times was losing readership, her blog had earned an enormous following. When she’d accepted, she’d dropped the “Clark” and shortened it to “Kent.”
Even with Head Over Meals, she’d been vague about her identity. No one could know you were a critic if you wanted to be served a typical meal. Speculating about Kent’s identity had become part of the appeal for the fans. The most popular theories profiled Kent to be an ex-chef, possibly a disgruntled former head chef from a defunct restaurant and, based on “his” bold and confident tone, likely a 50-year-old man.
In none of the theories about who Kent was had Shea ever seen a correct profile. None of Kent’s fans thought “he” was a “she” or even a “they,” Let alone a Black “she” in her early thirties with a filmmaking degree from NYU. If Shea ever were to out herself as Kent, she might not be believed.
“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Shea looked up from the magazine she’d brought to kill time while she waited. She’d been reading Variety for years. Keeping up on industry developments seemed particularly wise if selling a screenplay was part of her plan.
The man who had stopped next to her table lagged behind friends who still seemed en route to the door. He didn’t look like anyone Shea remembered meeting, though her heart did skip a beat or three until her brain confirmed it was a mistake. He was dark-haired with two days’ worth of stubble, dull green eyes