Aftertaste (36 page)

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Authors: Meredith Mileti

BOOK: Aftertaste
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“So,” I say, while Jake busies himself with preparing topping for the pizza. “Interesting meeting yesterday.”
“I thought you'd think so,” he says. “I assume you're in?”
“Probably. I want my lawyer to look things over first, and assuming everything checks out, we'll send over an addendum to the proposal.”
Jake looks up, his hand poised over some fresh arugula. “What kind of addendum?” he asks.
I shrug. “Hopefully, it won't rock the boat, but if I'm going to take creative control over Grappa, I need to know that I'll have the freedom to make the kind of decisions I need to.”
Jake takes the warm pizza from the oven, spreads it with a wedge of softened, oozing Taleggio, scatters a few slices of fresh apricot, some prosciutto, and a handful of the arugula over the top. He anoints it with olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon. The combination is one of my recipes, and it's been a seasonal favorite at the restaurant for years. I wonder if Jake even remembers it's mine. He picks up his wine and the pizza, and we take our seats at the table.
“Bravo! This looks beautiful,” I tell him as he places the pizza onto my plate.
“They won't be into redecorating. I can tell you that right now,” Jake says, frowning.
“That's okay. The dining room is fine the way it is. I'm talking about staffing, purchasing, choosing suppliers.”
“I know you're talking about Brussani Imports, but there are some things you should know—” Jake begins.
“Look, it's not just Renata, and I haven't made up my mind about anything yet. AEL has promised me creative control of Grappa, and I need to know I'll have the power to make decisions that I think are in Grappa's best interests. That's all.”
Jake pauses and then nods slowly. “Good idea,” he finally says. We eat in silence for a minute or two.
“I was cleaning out the storage unit at Perry Street, and I found a couple of boxes of your things. Do you want to come and get them?” I ask.
Jake looks up at me, surprised. “What? Oh, sure. Thanks for saving them,” he says.
“No problem.”
Jake leans his forearms on the table as if he's about to say something.
“So?” I ask.
“So what?” Jake says.
“What else do you want to talk about?” I ask. “You said yesterday you had some things you wanted to discuss.”
Jake picks up his wineglass and pushes his wooden bar stool back a couple of inches. “Remember when we took that trip to Puglia?”
He knows that I do. We'd gone for our anniversary a few years ago. We had stayed on the top floor of a small hotel impossibly cantilevered over an expanse of rocky shore. We'd eaten burrata, a Pugliese specialty, every morning for breakfast, with a slab of bread—arguably the best in Italy, still warm from baking overnight in the dying embers of the ancient stone oven. The cheese would arrive each morning on a tray outside our room, still warm, and wrapped in the customary thick blade of grass, swollen like a ripe piece of fruit. I can remember the sun-dappled roof tiles outside our private terrace, where we'd made love in broad daylight overlooking the Adriatic Sea, licking the thick cream from each other's lips.
My mouth is suddenly dry. I reach for my wine, nodding, I hope not too vigorously.
“Do you remember Silvano's?” he asks.
“Of course, I do,” I tell him. We'd eaten at Silvano's three times in our weeklong stay there. Usually, when we traveled we tried never to eat at the same restaurant twice, but we'd met Silvano on one of our first mornings in Polignano a Mare. He was picking mussels from the sea floor at low tide on the beach near our hotel. Jake and I stopped to watch him, and after a while we got to talking. We told him we were chefs on holiday. He told us he owned a tiny restaurant a quarter mile or so up the beach, and he invited us to come for lunch. By the end of the meal we were in the kitchen helping him prep for dinner. He did everything himself, from the cooking to the dishes, relishing all the tasks with the intensity of a person who is uniquely content with his life. We'd enjoyed his company and his food so much we kept going back.
“I was thinking,” Jake continues, “about the concept of a cooking holiday. Not just a cooking school, but an actual working restaurant, where people come to work for an afternoon, an evening, even a week.”
It's an interesting idea, but an impractical one. When I tell him so, he shrugs.
“Some people are fascinated by what we do, and I bet we could get them to pay big bucks for the chance to walk in our shoes for an afternoon. I think it might be an interesting idea for a television series, actually. Didn't you ever fancy yourself a star?” he quips.
“No!” I tell him, shocked at the suggestion. He laughs, and I finally figure out he's been teasing me. “Well, maybe,” I say, smiling.
Jake reaches across the table and picks up my hand, tracing his finger over the butterfly bandage Boulie placed there a couple of days ago. “What happened?” he asks. The gesture surprises me, but the roughness of his calloused hands is familiar, exciting.
“Nothing, just a cut,” I tell him, gently extricating my hand from his grasp.
“Don't move,” he says, getting up from the table and crossing the kitchen. He hefts a large cast iron pot from the oven. He lifts the lid, cups his hand, and wafts the steam upward toward his face.
Even from across the room, the smell makes me want to swoon. Jake has made my favorite dish—his signature take on cassoulet, made with wild boar sausage braised in Barolo, cannellini beans, fennel, and sweet red peppers. I can hear the hollow snap as he breaks the delicate crust of toasted bread, garlic, and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. He fills a shallow bowl and places it reverently in front of me.
“It's not exactly summer fare, but I know it's your favorite. I missed making it for you this winter. It actually works nicely with your pizza recipe, which has always been one of
my
favorites. We make a pretty good team, don't you think?” he says softly. “Go ahead, taste it.”
“Aren't you going to join me?”
“Of course,” he says, raising his eyes to meet mine. I watch as he fills his plate, picks up a bottle of wine and two glasses, and joins me at the table.
He pours us each a glass of red wine. “Well?” he asks, his eyes focused, unblinking, on my face.
I spear a piece of meat, which yields easily to my fork, and raise it to my lips. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I give Dr. D-P's anthropologist one last desperate try, but all I can taste is Jake. The flavors are at once complex and earthy. I taste every ingredient: the thick, slightly gamy taste of the boar; the subtle undercurrent of the fennel, which, when braised, releases a delicate licorice perfume; the gentle creaminess of the beans; the smoky heat of the roasted peppers; the harmonious balance of the wine.
It tastes like love.
I open my eyes slowly. Jake is still watching me. I look away, embarrassed, shamed at what I've allowed him to witness.
“I'm not sure anyone appreciates my cooking quite like you,” Jake says, his voice thick and low.
Suddenly, he's at my side. He pulls me to my feet, presses me to him, and kisses me, a deep, rich, extravagant kiss that reminds me of a bowl of late summer raspberries, warm, tender, lush, and tart. I can feel how aroused he is. He pulls my shirt free from my jeans and runs his hands across my bare back, pressing me into the corner of the counter. The pain is exquisite.
Just then a phone rings somewhere, the ringtone, Wagner's “Ride of the Valkyries.” Jake's. And mine, although Jake probably doesn't know that. Months ago, in a fit of longing, I changed my ringtone to match his and never bothered to change it back. Jake pulls away, panting. His eyes flit to the hallway where our coats hang on hooks. He looks at me, looks away again. I pull myself up, run a hand through my rumpled hair.
“Hold that thought,” he says, scurrying over to the hallway to fish his phone from his coat pocket. I reach for my wineglass and take a long, luxurious sip, but the wine lodges uncomfortably in my throat. I finally swallow, not because I want to, but because I need to remind myself exactly how bitter it tastes. The last time I tasted it was here, in this kitchen, almost a year ago. I grab the bottle and confirm what I already know. 1999 Tenuta dell'Ornellaia Masseto Toscano.
“Sorry, I missed it, and they didn't leave a message,” he says, frowning. “Now, where were we?” he says, reaching for me again.
I drain the wine. “Nowhere,” I whisper. “That's where we are, Jake. We are nowhere.” It isn't until I say the words that I realize I actually mean them. It's like putting on a pair of eyeglasses you thought you didn't need. Suddenly, I'm calm, and like that anthropologist Dr. D-P had rattled on about, preternaturally tuned into the most insignificant details. Like the stain on Jake's apron that looks like the state of Florida, the pack of Merits in the front pocket of his shirt I hadn't noticed before, the wistful look in his tired eyes. “I'm sorry,” I tell him. “I can't.” He grabs my wrist, presses my palm to his mouth, and kisses it. I pull my hand back and turn abruptly.
Partly, it's the wine, but mostly it's the way Jake's body had tensed the instant the phone began to ring. I know, without Jake's having to tell me, that he isn't finished with Nicola—not nearly—and I can't see myself dodging phone calls, meeting clandestinely, being another in a long line of women wooed by Jake and his bag of recycled tricks.
I pick up my sweater on the way out the door.
Don't turn around,
I repeat until I'm safely out of the alley and onto Grove Street.
Regrets? A few, but the biggest one is that I didn't get to finish the cassoulet.
Dolce
I've set the board: henceforth 'tis yours to eat.
—Dante,
The Divine Comedy
chapter 31
The great gourmand, Auguste Escoffier, once said, “Good cooking is the essence of true happiness.” Did he mean that happiness is to be found in the act of cooking? Or in the appreciation of the result? If the former, it should follow that all good cooks are happy. But most of us aren't, at least the ones I've known. Most of the cooks I know are looking for something. The lucky ones, people like Boulie and Silvano, seem to have found it, while the rest of us soldier on, searching for love, or adulation, or affirmation, gathering scraps wherever we can find them.
Maybe what Escoffier meant was that true happiness is to be found in one's ability to satisfy a basic human need so spectacularly. Those of us content to take our happiness secondhand cook because what we want, what we crave, is to be needed. Nurturers extraordinaire, brokers of comfort, we hope to turn the tables on our own needs by filling the stomachs and souls of the world.
Jake had needed me. Maybe that was what I loved about him. We'd been companionable, compatible, in small ways; our dreams, professional at least, had been shared. Perhaps he even loved me, insofar as he was capable of loving, but I suspect what he really loved about me was my caring for him completely, loving him to the exclusion of everything else. Until Grappa; and until Chloe.
One thing I know for sure—Jake's infidelity won't end with Nicola and Zoe.
Some men are just built that way, I guess. It should give me some satisfaction, but it doesn't. It no longer even makes me angry. When I examine just what's worth salvaging from my life in New York, what I keep coming back to is Grappa, some reminder of the reason I became a cook in the first place. That, and Chloe, should be all I need.
 
Arriving home, I find that Richard has covered one wall of the apartment with irregularly shaped splotches of yellow. At least a dozen different shades, beautiful, rich hues—the deep golden of a mellow aged Gouda, the color of burnished wheat on an autumn afternoon. And not the whole wall, just a small section, maybe four feet square. Some of the splotches look like he has just waved the brush back and forth a couple of times, and one of them, the last one in the row, is just a single stroke of ochre, barely the width of the paintbrush. He's dumped the brushes in the kitchen sink without rinsing them and is lying on his bed in a paint-spattered sweatshirt, sound asleep with his shoes still on. He looks still and peaceful, his fingers interlaced, the tops of his knuckles smudged with paint.
He stirs as I remove his shoes. “Welcome home,” Richard says, his voice raspy with sleep.
“Looks like you've been busy,” I say, nodding toward the wall.
“I remembered you said you always wanted to live in a yellow house,” he says, taking my hand. “Do you like it?”
I do, and the fact that Richard remembered this touches me. I put my arms around him and lay my head on his chest. “I love it. Yellow is a happy color, don't you think?”
“Yes, and there are many shades of happiness. You can take your pick,” he says, sitting up and gesturing toward the wall.
“Looks like we've got plenty to choose from,” I tell him.
“It's a miracle I was able to get anything done, what with the parade of hovering visitors you lined up to save me from myself,” he says.
“I didn't want you to be lonely.”
“Lonely would have been a luxury,” Richard says, smiling.
“Hungry?” I ask.
“No, thanks. That nice young man stopped by and brought me some dinner.” Richard reaches over and pulls a grease-stained bag from his bedside table and takes out half a corned beef sandwich. “A cup of tea would be nice, though, if you're making it.”
“What nice young man?” I ask, getting up to put the kettle on.
“Ben. Fiona's nephew,” Richard says, his mouth full of corned beef. “He's been working in the building, and he's taken to stopping by, probably on your orders, I'm guessing,” Richard says, sitting up and donning his glasses, just so he can look superciliously over the top of them at me.
“I didn't tell him to come. Maybe Fiona did,” I tell Richard.
“Or maybe it wasn't me he was coming to see,” Richard murmurs, raising the newspaper to his face.
The last time I saw Ben was the night he kissed me on the balcony. It hadn't been much more than a week ago, but it felt like months. I was afraid I'd hurt him, which I probably had. Given where my life is now heading, for once in my life, I've managed to do the prudent thing.
Make that twice. I'm instantly reminded of Jake and our aborted tryst in the kitchen. Jake's kisses were so full of urgency—so different from Ben's, which had been tender, sweet, tentative. Nothing like months of fitful ruminating, and the elegant foreplay of a terrific meal designed, I can now see, to push all of my buttons. The difference? A long and complicated history—which actually had turned out to be the problem.
While I'm waiting for the water to boil, I stop to peek in on Chloe again, asleep in my bedroom. My flight had been delayed for several hours, and I'd gotten home too late to see Chloe awake. But, because I'd insisted, Fiona and my father had dropped her off and put her to sleep in my room. I didn't want her to wake up one more morning without seeing me. Back in the kitchen, I measure the tea out and put a few biscotti on a plate.
“Mira, I want you to do something for me,” Richard says, startling me. I hadn't heard him get up and am surprised to find him standing at the kitchen counter leaning heavily on his cane.
“Of course, Richard.”
“I want you to take me to an AA meeting,” he says. It's the first time either Richard or I have acknowledged his, so far as I know, one and only period of transgression in over twenty years.
“Of course I will, Richard.”
I keep Richard company at the kitchen table while he sips his customary nighttime herbal tea. It has wild nettle root in it, which Richard swears helps him sleep a deep and dreamless sleep. It also tastes like dirt, which is why I'm drinking silver-tipped Darjeeling with extra milk and sugar.
“Richard,” I begin. “About Nate—”
“It's okay. It's over, Mira. It's been over,” he says, reaching up with a paint-spattered hand to brush a piece of hair from his eyes. His hair is the color of dust, and the way it hangs over his ears in ragged tufts makes Richard look old.
“It's funny,” he continues, resting his chin in his hands. “I think you get to a certain age, and what you want from someone becomes very different from anything you've ever wanted before. But it's hard to let go of your youthful sense of what love is. You want to hold onto it for as long as you can, even though it doesn't fit. Even though it is,” he hesitates, “ridiculous. Let's face it, there's nothing romantic about Depends and three-pronged canes and sweat suits,” Richard continues. “But I've got to start thinking about the long haul, Mira. My chief requirement should be someone who is willing to see me through to the end.”
“Richard, what are you talking about? You've got years still. Besides, you've got me. Remember, we made a pact?” Richard rests his cool palm on my hand. His skin is translucent, the intricate network of veins running like tiny rivers beneath the surface, the remnants of a tired-looking bruise, left over from the IV, encroaching across the back of his hand, the bluish purple of a deep-water sea.
“So,” Richard says, taking a sip of his tea, “when are you leaving us?” Richard raises his hand to my face and strokes my cheek. His eyes are sad.
I sigh. “I just bought this place. Even if I can get a loan to cover the initial AEL investment, I'll have to sell this place quickly to rent again in New York.”
Richard flaps his palm at me. “Don't worry about it. If we stage it right, it'll sell in a minute. Who knows, I might even buy it from you,” Richard says, looking around with his practiced decorator's eye, which finally comes to rest on the yellow wall.
“You?”
“Yes, it might be time for a change—for both of us,” he murmurs.
“Richard—”
“I fully intend to get back out there and begin combing the geriatric wards for the unattached, the infirm, any eligible gay man of a certain age who can't outrun me. And I suggest you do the same—age and appropriate sexual conventions considered, of course,” Richard says, raising his teacup. “You know, I think I like Caribbean Sunset,” he says, flicking his chin in the direction of the living room wall.
“Which one is that?” I ask, shifting slightly in my chair in order to have a better view.
“The third from the left,” Richard says, pointing.
“I don't know. I kind of like the one two down, the big splotch that looks like Texas. What's that one called?”
He consults the piece of notebook paper on which he has kept a record of his splotches, all of which are numbered, along with their corresponding names.
“Well, well. How appropriate,” Richard says, laying his hand once again over mine. “New York Cheddar.”
 
The next morning I awake before five and lie in bed for an hour contemplating, of all things, the blueberry muffin. Capitalizing on the tartness of the fruit is the key, I've decided. I'm thinking about muffins because it seems much easier to think about a relatively simple baking conundrum—namely, why there aren't more good blueberry muffins in the world—than it is to contemplate the enormity of what I am about to do. Namely, sell the apartment I'd managed to convince myself just a few short weeks ago was the ticket to my getting over Jake, and move back to New York to reclaim Grappa. Chloe and Richard are still sleeping soundly, and I won't be gone long. Quietly, so as not to wake them, I pull on jeans and a sweater, pad downstairs, and let myself out the front door. I buy several pints of wild blueberries from the guy on the corner, who also tries to talk me into buying yesterday's lettuce so he doesn't have to throw it away, which he knows he should. On my way home I stop in at Bruno's, which is just opening, for a caffè latte. Bruno's grandson fires up the espresso machine, and while I wait for my latte, I order a couple of croissants for Richard and a half dozen of the tiny hazelnut cookies I've lately fallen in love with.
On my way home, I see Ben coming out of Primanti's across the street, carrying a large paper bag and a huge Dunkin' Donuts plastic coffee mug. I wave, but either he doesn't see me, or his hands are too full to wave back.
“Hey, I know you,” I call to him, darting across the street. “Had your fill of pigeon?” He gives me a halfhearted smile, but otherwise doesn't respond, although at least he slows his pace a little.
We walk in silence for at least half a block before he says, “Actually, I'm still working in your building. A couple of the last buyers changed the specs on the plumbing, and the other day some woman saw me carrying a toolbox and begged me for an estimate. Wants an upgrade on her shower and bathroom fixtures, too.” He stops to shift his bags. “Looks like I'm gonna be busy servicing the ladies in your building for quite a while.”
“Great. Richard says you've been stopping by. Come for lunch some day,” I tell him.
“Why? Something needs fixing?” he asks, giving me a sidelong glance.
“You like that place, don't you?” I ask, gesturing to the Primanti's bag.
“Primanti's? Yeah, I do,” he says, opening the bag and taking a fry. “Got them on the side today. Gotta shake things up once in a while.” He holds the bag open and offers me one.
I shake my head. “I didn't know they served breakfast,” I say.
“They don't. Same menu twenty-four hours a day,” Ben says, munching another fry.
“
Gourmet
magazine did a piece on them a few years ago. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. Food Network, too,” Ben says with a wry smile. “For weeks afterward you couldn't get near the place. Yuppie suburbanites from six surrounding counties were lined up three deep at the counter.” He shudders.
“Do you know,” he says, turning to face me, “I've been going there practically my whole life. My stepdad used to take me there when I was a kid. We'd go early in the morning, sneak out while my mom was sleeping. We'd sit at the counter and eat these sandwiches for breakfast—always with the fried egg. Man, I could barely reach the counter, and my hands were too small to wrap around a sandwich. Whenever I think about him I remember the smell of stale beer and fried potatoes. Those were good times.”
“What happened to him? Your stepfather?”
Ben doesn't say anything for a moment. “He and my mom divorced when I was about ten. We kept in touch for a while.” He shrugs. “You know how it goes.” He turns toward me. An edge has crept in and surrounded Ben's easy drawl. “This place is an institution. You want to be a food writer? Why don't you write about this—I mean the no-frills, real-life version of this place, not the high-end, food magazine, ‘isn't it so cute we're slumming' version.”

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