The Review

By Quill

He lost his reputation, his career and his family. Now Damen was determined to destroy the man he blamed for his demise, and he will not stop until the job is done. In this modern day fatal attraction, Max and Damen start out as promising business partners, but success has a dark side. After Max sees Damen’s true character, the relationship turns toxic, and Damen is willing to stop at nothing to see everything taken away from Max.

“People who claim that they're wicked are usually harmless... It's people who claim that they can save you from the wicked that you have to be wary of.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quill
• Release date: Jan 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311995025

Quill

Quill is obviously my pen name. I use this because I never want my work to influence my family in a negative way. As I discuss in the book, I believe that we are inherently kind but can be swept up in the negative rants of others. Please enjoy my work and please comment on it in a truthful way. I look forward to your feedback and with the anynomity I am afforded, I can use your feedback in more useful ways.

Book preview

For Max and Viv, Dena and Mark, Kurt and Kate, and especially Damen. Without you, this story would have never been written.

He lost his reputation, his career and his family. Now Damen was determined to destroy the man he blamed for his demise, and he would not stop until the job is done. In this modern day fatal attraction, Max and Damen start out as promising business partners, but success has a dark side. After Max sees Damen’s true character, the relationship turns toxic, and Damen is willing to stop at nothing to see everything taken away from Max.

The Review

By Quill

Copyright © 2015

Chapter 1

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

-Epictetus, Roman Philosopher

He didn’t realize how much he missed open spaces. After adjusting to his freedom and recuperating from the work of packing up their lives, the humid Pacific wind roaring through the window of the moving van was cathartic. It felt like it could finally rinse away the experience of the last few years. His body tingled with the thought of starting life one more time in a fresh, new town with new friendships and new plans. Success can only come when failure acts as a motivation. With goals as strong as Damen’s, tempered by the experience he had accumulated, it was his time now. He was the full package, and as the distance grew between him and Seattle, the heaviness of the life he left behind was replaced by thoughts of his future.

Two years ago, life in Seattle was full of promise. He managed to pull together the financing to open his small restaurant, MyTable, in early spring, giving himself six weeks to work out the kinks before the season kicked in. It was located in the heart of Pioneer Square, a richly historic place, known for its Renaissance Revival architecture, First Thursday art walks, night life, eateries, and quirky retailers. He created a menu that reflected the best the Northwest had to offer, including salmon and shellfish, game meats such as moose and elk, and unusual plants such as wild mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns. There were house items on the menu with plenty of room to offer farm-to-table specials every day. Each was sourced from the farmers markets and specialty shops that were, and still are, an established commerce of the city. Every dish was expertly paired with locally brewed beers and wines. It was perfect but for one man’s opinion—an opinion that spread quicker than the news of a jailbreak and as devastating as a ptomaine outbreak.

This one opinion presented a challenge to Damen’s planned trajectory. It tripped him up and distracted him from his goals. That was his fault. But this path may all have been part of his fate: a serendipitous story that had already been written. This chapter was his chance to redeem himself. The goals stayed the same of course, but the plan would have to change. He could still establish himself as a leader in the culinary community. This time, it would be on someone else’s dime. He could offer his expertise and his West Coast flair to a restaurant that needed that edge in a town that was hungry for diversity. The small city of Albany would be perfect to regroup but still big enough to gain some traction and close to New York, where he could set a trend and make a name for himself.

Albany couldn’t keep him forever, but it was a perfect place to convalesce, rebuild, and reenter the exclusive ranks of culinary stars and tastemakers of New York City. It could be bigger than his reach in Seattle would have ever been. If he could just get some traction in Albany, he was one train-ride away from New York. He just needed to get there. And then his influence could be felt worldwide, not just the West Coast. With a few strategic moves, his smoked salmon with crushed cherries in a sweet wine reduction would be featured in the New Yorker. It was certainly good enough and he had the personality to bring it home. His elk steak rubbed with a special spice blend and served with blackberry port sauce would pass the lips of the most well-respected critics on the coast. The sway these people had on a global scale dwarfs the impact of Guy Doxin. He was small time. His cronies were nothing more than wannabe connoisseurs of the Seattle area. They probably don’t even know who Doxin was in the Meat Packing District.

Cailey saw the good in Damen, even though his experience over the last couple of years sometimes gave him a bitter edge. She understood he was an artist and what it meant to realize his dreams. His ideas were good, his food was excellent, and his following was at one time strong. It would be again. He just needed to start fresh in a town that wouldn’t punish him for one moment of bad judgment. Although he couldn’t control his temper, she saw something sweet and needy in him. She loved him and even after all that has happened, she had faith in him. Besides, after his mother’s passing, she was the only family he had. With the move back to Albany and preparing for a new life on her own, she had shown she was strong enough to handle that responsibility of taking care of them. This move would be good and, as she sat by Damen in the van, she felt reborn. This was the second chance they needed to build a new life, a new family, a new career.

Damen did have two brothers that still lived in his native La Conner, a small town about an hour north of Seattle in the Skagit Valley. La Conner offered a rugged lifestyle that just was not suited for Damen and his ambition. His father had left early on, disappearing into the Alaskan outback, and Damen’s mother saw him as a protégé, doting on him constantly. She overtly favored him over his siblings, creating a molten layer of sibling hatred between Damen and his brothers. Damen didn’t care. His determination to realize his dreams superseded any family loyalty. His only personal connection to the family was his mother. The rest were no more than strangers that shared the same DNA. His mother knew Damen needed more than the rest to fulfill his dreams so she worked a day job at the town offices and nights at the local bar at the end of the street to scrape together the tuition to The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, one of the finest culinary schools on the West Coast. Located in the premiere wine-making region of the Napa Valley, the school had a reputation for teaching students master-chef techniques as well as business skills, perfect for the goals Damen had for himself. Regrettably, his mother never saw Damen graduate. She would have certainly been proud of his accomplishment if she hadn’t passed away from a heart attack the winter before graduation. After her passing, Damen’s brothers had no use for his shining star and the family disbanded before the grass had germinated in the dirt that lay on her grave.

Although Cailey had a strong family and solid friends back home in Albany, she didn’t have any friends in Seattle because Damen didn’t like to entertain beyond the guests of MyTable. He said he got enough of people at work. At home, it should be about him and her. She liked that. It made her feel special. It made her feel important to the man she loved, although the challenges they had endured as a couple in Seattle at MyTable would have been easier to handle if she could confide in someone.

It wasn’t that long ago that life with Damen was a romantic thriller. Together, Damen and Cailey took what was once a spaghetti house that catered to the economy traveler and willed it to be more. It took them a few months of tireless work to get the space ready to be MyTable but with the right paint choice, lighting and furniture, late nights, and hard work, the restaurant emerged as a charming yet arrogant bistro that drew the same kind of patron. As the more sophisticated visitor began to discover MyTable, the stylish and comfortable seating accommodated the most refined pallets that Seattle hosted.

Once they opened, word traveled fast. Within a few short weeks, it seemed they couldn't fail. Every night, the tables were full with a list of reservations that ensured a sellout performance. Damen was in his zone, producing perfectly seasoned steaks and seafood that were served expertly with delicate or hearty sauces—whatever the plate demanded. As the kitchen created the best in gastronomy, Cailey played the role of the supportive wife and hostess. She had chosen her staff well and she kept the front of the house in order by tending to the whims of their high-maintenance patrons, maintaining control of the floor and diffusing the occasional tussle between the wait staff and the kitchen. She was good at her job at MyTable, and it seemed she was building some respect in Damen’s eyes.

Her other role with the restaurant was as the in-house technology expert. She was given the title by being the only one that knew how to use a computer with any proficiency and understood how to access Facebook. The couple had put every dime they had into the restaurant itself and had very little budgeted for marketing, so social media became paramount in getting the word out about the latest specials or a recent rave review. Although Damen did not understand how to navigate social media, he knew it was one of his few promotional options. He was more than a little uneasy about Cailey being the primary knowledge base on their window to the world. He also knew he did not have the proficiency or the time to get it, so he was forced to defer to her for all things social media. He did, however, demand to see what Cailey was posting.

Cailey found the promotion of the restaurant an empowering experience. It was a skill she continued to cultivate and something she could call her own. Soon, her area of expertise grew in the minds of Damen and the staff and she began to be consulted on all matters pertaining to advertising. Although her heart felt strong with pride, she was careful not to be too self-assured, as it might spark a tantrum from Damen that would take the rest of the week to recover from. It would have to be enough that she knew she commanded this space. Damen did not even have a Facebook account, and she was happy to take on the tasks of building social media pages, constructing messages, sending newsletters, and posting the latest quip. She loved being his support system, but as with any artist, Damen could sometimes be obsessively myopic in his thinking. He would get onto an idea or a task and you were either part of the passion or a liability. Her contributions in these areas were one way she could support his craziness without being in the middle of it. It was at these passionate moments of brilliance or artistic frustration she felt most fortunate that Damen didn’t understand how to use social media.

It seemed perfect, and it went on for months; she playing the skilled hostess, he producing beautiful plates. Local foodies and transient snobs began to appreciate and recommend his artistic renderings. As the story is told, all good things can be disrupted by one man's opinion and another man’s moment of madness.

Social media was only to promote the business, but Damen came up the ranks at a time when you could see your customer, interact with them, gather feedback from the expression on his face, and address it right then and there. Although there have always been professional food critics, it was more of a gentlemen’s game. It was a small, tight-knit, albeit dysfunctional family. There were rules of engagement—like the press club keeping the extent of Roosevelt’s paralysis out of the public view during his term. Now, everyone with a connection is a critic, a critic that is all too happy to uncover, or in some cases fabricate a flaw or shortcoming. Damen now had hundreds of commentators with a keyboard that had no pedigree, no mercy, no understanding of what it takes to serve a perfect fig, stuffed with just the right cheese and served over only the freshest arugula that you would pick yourself if you could but instead you are forced to rely on the day worker in the fields to get it right.

Damen was absolutely disturbed and a bit obsessed by this trend toward every shithead that was bored with either his privileged life or, worse yet, underprivileged, spending the meal noting what they see as failings, later to be culminated into a masterful diatribe of insults and slander. He commented often that it was like giving a baby a loaded gun. The customer becomes the bully that could at any minute heave his opinions onto Yelp! or Tripadvisor before he even leaves the premises. He became frighteningly skilled at spotting a Yelper at the door. It was never good news because Damen’s mood would go dark until the table turned over. He thought there should be some vetting on who is allowed to have an opinion and who is not. How does the reader know the context in which the review is written? How are they to know the qualifications of the author? The idea that somebody can express their assessments about the sum product of a man’s lifetime of work is insane, but it is the new reality of the culinary universe. Hotdog stands to the finest restaurants are all susceptible to the random disgruntled, unhappy, unfulfilled fuck that shows up at the door. God forbid you get lemon juice in your eye and squint at the customer or push the plate too forcefully at the waitress. Before they hit their table Yelpers have already checked in online to tell their audience that the chef gave him a dirty look and was beating the waitress with a hammer—even though it is likely she deserved it.

The public kept proving Damen right. It is as if they seem to take a certain comfort in the fallibility of those that appear to be successful—like the collective consciousness trying to correct a flaw in the sameness. The cutting words and bullshit feedback make others feel good about their own little, meaningless lives, as if to say See, he sucks too. The better you become, the more the haters hate, so he took most of it as a testament to his progress. No one talks about a nobody, and honestly, Damen could live with the ankle biters. There was so much noise from the general public that any one nasty comment packed less of a punch—unless it came from a celebrity. Damen just rose above it and let Cailey take any body blows. Being with Damen, Cailey had grown tough and she could take it but she knew better than to share anything but the occasional positive review.

Cailey spent most of her free time scanning through social media sites for new places to post, feedback on competition and of course, reviews about MyTable. She saw the review from Guy Doxin on a Thursday afternoon right before dinner service. It first appeared in the online version of West Coast Living, a trendy, high-end magazine that was a must-read for the well-off and the wanna-be’s. She saw it but hoped it would get buried in the feeds. It was a scathing, utterly awful review by Doxin, the only restaurant critic with any sort of station for miles. He annihilated the experience with his server, a poor soul that lasted a week and would have never survived even without Doxin. His first course was, in his opinion, a drawl and boring salad camouflaged by a few medallions of overly processed elk and dry, tasteless cheese. His entrée was a disappointing slurry of unrecognizable fishes drowning in a red Diablo sauce served over store-bought pasta. It didn’t improve with dessert and coffee. It was outright devastating.

Damen was oblivious to the bloody mess his reputation was rolling in as he prepared for dinner. The night came and went and he didn’t really need to know of the storm brewing to see that Thursday was lighter than the recent trends. At the end of the night, the numbers confirmed his suspicions. Perhaps there was another function that pulled the crowd a different direction. It was a one-off. Tomorrow it would be on track. Tonight, he was out early, still full of piss and vinegar, and decided to burn off the energy he did not use behind the line with Patrice, the lovely legs behind the bar. As always, she was happy to oblige.

After spending the night with Patrice, Damen stumbled into his own house at 5 am, crashed on the couch, and fell into a hard sleep till mid-morning. As with any typical Friday, he got up, showered, and mentally made a list of the things that needed to be done. A quick cup of coffee later and he was out the door, nearly knocking over Cailey on the way in from a run. One kiss, a pleasant Good morning, and he was off. Even if she was going to tell him about the review, there wasn’t a chance. He was always so busy that getting any conversation time was a privilege she did not want to waste on a meltdown. It was, however, painfully clear that she would have to come clean when she opened her social media feeds and found that the review did not go away. In fact, it had started to spread like a virus.

Damen began to realize that night after night the crowd became thinner and thinner, and the week closed with an unapologetic thud. This was the first week during the season they fell short of their goals. There must be more to this. The food was going out perfectly. There weren’t any