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“Would you like me to take a group photo?” Sharon asks.
Hollis herself answers. “That would be amazing, thank you for offering.” She hands over what Sharon can only assume is the very phone that Hollis uses to film her cooking videos. Sharon is so dazzled that she nearly fumbles it.
Get ahold of yourself, Shar,Heather thinks. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the entire restaurant is watching as Sharon directs Hollis and her friends to get closer—really close!—then snaps a zillion pictures from various angles. This goes on a bit longer than it needs to, but finally, Sharon relinquishes the phone.
“You’re a stunning group,” Sharon says, and she’s not just fangirling, she means it. There’s glamorous Dru-Ann Jones, whom Sharon recognizes from television; a gorgeous woman with a pixie cut; a brunette who, if Sharon isn’t mistaken, works for Irina Services (Sharon uses Irina Services whenever she has houseguests coming, and hasn’t she noticed this woman’s perfect figure?); a curly-haired woman who is smiling so brightly, it looks like her face is going to break open in a burst of confetti; and, finally, the golden-butter-and-sugar glow of Hollis herself.
“Thank you,” Hollis says. The other women slide back to their seats and pick up their menus. Sharon is about to introduce herself and maybe provide her Instagram handle in case Hollis wants to give her a photo credit when she feels a hand on her elbow. It’s Heather, who gently guides Sharon back to their table; their blistered shishito peppers have arrived.
“Excuse my sister,” Heather murmurs to Sharon once they are both seated again. “She has a stalking problem.”
Sharon doesn’t mind the teasing. “They all seem so happy,” she says. “Leave it to Hollis Shaw to make that crazy idea work.”
The Captain’s Table is worth all the hype and more,Hollis thinks. It screamsspecial occasion. Their server, Sean, leads them through the menu, globally inspired small plates meant to be shared and larger “feasts.” Then he takes their order. The others call out the dishes they want to try: yellowfin tuna lettuce wraps, tempura oyster tacos, Japanese street corn. Hollis throws in an order of the Thai lobster curry, the chicken frites, and, her personal favorite, the blue crab fried rice with two crispy eggs.
Hollis is at the head of the table with Gigi and Brooke on one side and Tatum and Dru-Ann on the other. She can’t believe Tatum and Dru-Ann are voluntarily sitting next to each other.
She raises her glass for a toast. “I just want you to know how much it means to me that you’re all here.” She feels her eyes misting up. “When I lost Matthew, I thought my world would collapse. But I have a strong foundation beneath me, and that is all of you.”
“Love you, sis,” Tatum says, and she clinks glasses with Hollis.
“You’re thebest,Hollis!” Brooke says, a bit too loudly.
Gigi says, “I’m sure the other women know the story, Hollis, but I don’t. How did you and Matthew meet?”
“The old-fashioned way,” Hollis says. “At a bar.” She takes a sip of her wine. Can she tell the story? Earlier tonight, the answer might have been no; it was too painful to think about Matthew in that much detail. But right now, she feels okay. “This was in Boston in 1995.”
Hollis is twenty-five years old and her life is exactly as she’d hoped it would be. She rents a studio apartment with wood floors and an exposed brick wall on Cedar Lane Way on Beacon Hill. She fills the apartment with plants and decorates it with pillar candles, throw pillows, and white fairy lights. She gets takeout Thai food from the King and I, listens to her Natalie Merchant CD, and marvels at her own happiness.
She has a dream job: assistant food editor atBostonmagazine, a position that comes with the use of the corporate credit card. In February of 1995, the real food editor comes down with mono and will be out of commission for three weeks. This gives Hollis a chance to pitch an article entitled “Are There Any Decent Restaurants on Beacon Hill?” Popular opinion in 1995 is “No, there aren’t,” but the editor in chief is willing to give Hollis a chance to prove everyone wrong.
Hollis goes to the Paramount for brunch (she waits in line for ninety minutes, but the caramel-banana French toast is worth it), to theCheerspub where everybody knows her name (not really, nobody knows her and the places is filled with tourists, but she finds nice things to say about the potato skins and the chowder), and to the Sevens (it’s a storied dive bar with a better-than-it-needs-to-be French dip). She goes to Figs for pizza, the Marliave for Welsh rarebit, and the neighborhood darling, Toscano (which, Hollis believes, has the best steak in the city). She intentionally stays away from the culinary wasteland of Cambridge Street, but then her friend Regency, who lives in the apartment upstairs from her, tells Hollis she can’t write an article about Beacon Hill restaurants and not include Harvard Gardens.
Ugh,Hollis thinks. “Even the name of the place is a turnoff,” she says. “The restaurant has nothing to do with Harvard, and there are no gardens.”
“That may be so,” Regency says. “But meeting a cute doctor there is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.”
“It turned out Regency was right,” Hollis says now. “Because sitting at the bar that night was Matthew Madden.”
“Was it love at first sight?” Gigi asks.
“I bet it was!” Brooke says. She’s leaning forward, drinking her Lemon Krush way too quickly, but who cares? She’s sitting next to Gigi and across from Dru-Ann; she feels pretty in her dress and she wants to hear this story. She has no idea how Hollis and Matthew met.
“Not even close,” Hollis says. “He only noticed me because I had a notebook.”
Hollis walks into Harvard Gardens prepared to be underwhelmed but immediately finds that the restaurant has what would in later years be called a “good vibe.” The lighting is low, there’s a lot of chat and laughter, and the air smells enticingly of French fries and bacon. Hollis goes to the bar, where the only free seat is next to a rumpled-looking guy in glasses and blue scrubs. He’s reading a textbook and wolfing down a Reuben; Hollis watches a strand of sauerkraut fall onto the page of his book. When Hollis asks if the seat is free, the guy mumbles something that sounds affirmative.
“Are you a doctor?” Hollis asks.
He nods without even looking up, but Hollis isn’t offended; she watchesE.R.and understands that residents work long hours without eating or sleeping and conduct their love lives in empty exam rooms.
“How’s the Reuben?” Hollis asks. She can tell just by the buttery grilled rye and the oozing melted Swiss that it’s exceptional. Hollis orders one even though the guy hasn’t deigned to answer her. She’s just an unpleasant buzzing in his ear.
Hollis also orders a glass of chardonnay (she has not yet discovered sauvignon blanc) and the onion soup and the strawberry arugula salad (she has to sample the menu, after all), and when her food arrives, she whips out her notebook and starts writing:Onion soup classically prepared with notes of bacon; salad is both sweet and peppery; Reuben well constructed, perfect meat-to-sauerkraut ratio, and the Russian dressing is made in-house.Surprise, surprise: Thereisgood food on Cambridge Street. This bar meal at Harvard Gardens proves it!
An even bigger surprise is when the guy next to her slams his textbook closed, turns to her, and says, “What’s that you’re writing?”
“A restaurant review,” Hollis says. “I’m the food editor atBostonmagazine.” She leaves out the wordassistantbecause she sees this guy’s green eyes behind the lenses of his glasses and suddenly wants to seem impressive.
