“So . . . I happen to know a certain baby-faced waiter-turned-chef that don’t like wheat.”
Lenny poked his tongue out. “I’m not baby-faced, so I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Cass pushed off the counter and started to turn away. “Just get yourself together and have a sample dish to me by eleven thirty.”
Cass left Lenny to his pasta, and seemed halfway impressed when Lenny presented him with a bowl of roast squash and lemon-sage scented papardelle a little while later. The dish went on the menu and flew out all through lunchtime service. Lenny had barely had time to blink before Cass was turning the order screens off.
“Clean down, folks,” he said. “Lenny, come and find me in the office when you’re done.”
Lenny knocked on the office door. “You wanted to see me?”
Cass spun around in his chair. “I did . . . I do. Take a seat.”
Lenny sat in the spare chair, which was actually a three-legged stool that wobbled a lot. “Sacking me?”
“Far from it. I’ve been talking to Nero about the Vauxhall project. He said you might want to go with him?”
Lenny nodded slowly. “Maybe. I don’t know what I’d do, though. I’m not much of a baker. Nero carries me here. It’d be unfair to expect him to do it over there too.”
“So work out front. Run the serving team for us.”
“Run it?”
“Why not?”
“Er, ’cause I’ve never run anything in my life.”
“Not true. You ran every shift you worked at Misfits. Couldn’t help yourself.”
Lenny winced. “Didn’t make me any friends.”
“That’s because you had no authority to boss people about. I’m offering it to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve a chance to put your life back together.”
It sounded so simple, but to Lenny’s jaded ears, even with the memory of Nero’s arms still burning a path around his waist, it seemed like a distant dream. A pipe dream. “What if I fuck it up?”
Cass sighed. “Mate, do you honestly think me and Nero ain’t sat in this office and fretted about every step forward we’ve ever took? But we’ve both done bird and come out the other side. If we can do that, you, my friend, can do anything you want.”
It took Lenny a moment to translate the East-End slang. “. . . done bird.” Nero had been in prison? Jesus. What the fuck for? But instinct told him that once Cass realised he’d let slip something that Lenny hadn’t known, he’d clam up, and the painful ignorance that surrounded Lenny’s infatuation with the man who’d saved his sanity would remain.
Lenny sighed. “You’re as dark and mysterious as Nero.”
“No, I ain’t. That motherfucker’s got shades on me.” There was laughter in Cass’s eyes, but it faded fast enough for Lenny to worry what his own face was doing. “How you two getting on, anyway? Nero’s a grumpy sod, but he’s salt of the earth, really. I’d trust ’im with my life.”
Lenny didn’t doubt it. Reticent and obtuse Nero might have been, but his kind, gentle ways had carved a path to Lenny’s heart. “We get on great when I’m not being the world’s worst agoraphobic veggie, and he’s not in one of his growly moods. I just . . .”
“Just what? Wish you knew him better?”
Lenny wondered when he’d become so easy to read. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. We’re . . . close, but I don’t know how long that can last if he won’t let me in.”
Cass was silent for a long moment, tapping his fingers like an ex-smoker with an itch to scratch, and then his own sigh echoed Lenny’s. “I can’t tell you shit about Nero, ’cause I don’t know the half of it, but be patient with him. He’s not used to letting people in.”
“He lets you in.”
“Yeah, but only so far. I reckon you already know him better than I do.”
