Aftertaste (41 page)

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Authors: Meredith Mileti

BOOK: Aftertaste
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Suddenly, Ben is standing behind me, his hands lightly massaging my neck. “Thanks, Mira,” he whispers. “You were great.”
I don't know whether it's Ben's hands on my neck or his breath in my hair or the exhilaration of being back in the kitchen, but I'm suddenly in Ben's arms kissing him, and I'm pretty sure that it was my idea. He presses his body into mine, which is a good thing because my legs are suddenly weak, and were he to let go, I'd surely fall, but he doesn't. Instead, he reaches behind me and grabs a handful of my hair in his hand and gently, effortlessly removes the clips.
Ryan makes a lot of noise coming back into the kitchen and says loudly to no one in particular that he thinks he'll be going now.
Richard is still sleeping in my living room, so we go to Ben's apartment, which is much closer anyway. We only half undress before we start making love in Ben's living room, frantically gasping and clutching at each other. Afterward, we both fall into an exhausted sleep on the couch. When I awake the next morning, I'm alone. It's early; the sun is still on the rise, sending its diffuse rays through Ben's old glazed windows. He has covered me with a blanket and slipped a pillow underneath my head. I feel such a sense of relief, both physical and sexual, and I'm tempted to give in to it, to roll over and fall back asleep. But I can't. Chloe will be awake soon, and I don't want her to wake up wondering where I am. I throw off the covers and search the floor for my clothes, which I can't even remember removing, trying not to think about having to explain to Richard, who will be waking soon, where I've been.
“Don't move,” Ben says from the doorway, holding a tray, the morning papers tucked beneath his arm. I have no idea how long he has been standing there watching me. “I've been up for an hour, making breakfast for us. You have no idea how intimidating it is cooking for a chef.”
I'm suddenly shy, and then, remembering my lust last night, I feel my face begin to color. Embarrassed, I draw the blanket up around my breasts.
Ben sits down next to me and lays the tray on the coffee table in front of us. He doesn't look at me, but instead busies himself with its contents, sorting silverware and plates.
“I couldn't move you,” he says. “You were out, and I couldn't sleep, so I got up and cooked. I figured you'd be hungry.” Ben pours me a cup of coffee and hands me a chipped china mug.
“Thanks,” I whisper, my voice breathless and scratchy. I sit up and arrange the blanket to cover myself.
“Don't,” Ben says quietly, reaching over and gently pulling the blanket from my breasts. “I didn't get to—last night, I mean. I didn't get a chance to look at you.” He reaches over and traces my nipple lightly with one finger, and I moan softly as he cups my breast. The breakfast is forgotten. Ben takes the lead now, taking me by the hand and leading me to the bedroom where he makes love to me again, this time slowly and carefully.
“You know, this would have been much better if we'd eaten it hot,” he says later, munching a forkful of eggs. We're lying together in a tangle of sheets, the remains of the breakfast, now cold, lying on top of us.
“That's okay. You're really good at making”—I pause for effect and gaze lasciviously at Ben—“coffee.”
“Thanks. You were great last night, by the way,” Ben says, leering at me in return, “. . . in the kitchen.”
“Touché,” I say, pulling the covers up over me.
“That's really what got me going. You made it all seem so easy. You were formidable, commanding, quick. It was very, very sexy,” Ben says, softly nuzzling my neck and kissing me lightly on the ear.
“Hey, how come you never mentioned before that your friend's brother had a restaurant?” I ask.
Ben pulls away and busies himself sorting through the morning newspapers we'd scattered in a heap on the floor. “I don't really know the guy,” he says, picking up the Food section and tossing me the rest.
Confused, I raise myself on one elbow to look at him.
“Okay, look, he didn't actually call me. Well, he did, but not about the restaurant exactly. Jim and I were supposed to play racquetball last night, and he called to say his brother had this accident and that he was going to take him to the emergency room instead. When he told me what happened, I suggested you might help. I thought it would be good for you to get back into a kitchen.”
I should have suspected as much. Ben had been doing me the favor, not the other way around.
“You aren't angry, are you?” Ben asks, kissing me.
“No. Well, maybe. I haven't quite decided,” I tell him, feeling a little silly that I allowed myself to be so easily fooled. Partly, I'm relieved. I haven't cooked professionally since Grappa, and it felt good to prove to myself that I still can, even if it was only burgers and onion rings. I'm also touched that Ben took the trouble to help me like this. But mostly, I think, reaching for him, I'm grateful, grateful that cooking isn't the only thing I haven't forgotten how to do.
“Hey, did you see this?” Ben says.
“No. What?”
“The Nibbler strikes again! Jesus, what a bastard! Listen to this—first of all, get a load of this headline: ‘Bistro Rive Gauche Only Half-Appropriately Named.' ” Ben looks over the paper at me, an expression of mock horror on his face. “‘FON'—that's Friend of Nibbler—‘ordered the mussels. The mussels, one of the few authentically bistro items on the menu, were decent, but it is hard, some might say impossible, to ruin mussels, given the overwhelmingly excellent quality of the farm-raised product. The veal chop was overcooked, and over-sauced, but worst of all, the frites, the signature item on any bistro menu, were soggy, the result of the chef having used only a single fry method.'”
I lean my head back against the pillows and let out a laugh, a guffaw so raucous that Ben puts down his newspaper and looks at me with alarm.
Of course, I should have guessed.
“I don't get it,” Ben says. “This is the kind of thing that should outrage you! Some poor slob pours his heart and soul—not to mention his last dime—into a restaurant and then gets a review like this one!”
“So, maybe he deserved it. Look, it's a tough market out there, and there's room only for the best. Bad reviews don't close restaurants. Bad food does. You shouldn't open a restaurant unless you know what you are doing.”
“Well, then,” Ben says, taking me in his arms, “what are you waiting for?”
chapter 35
“Okay, I'm in,” I tell her.
“I knew you would be,” she says calmly.
“Well, at least we can be assured of one good review,” I tell her.
“No,” Enid laughs. “I'm afraid the Nibbler is hanging up her lobster bib.
Our
good review will have to be earned. But that shouldn't be too hard for you, my dear. Congratulations.”
We discuss the details, such as they are at this point, which amount to little beyond the fact that Enid has already begun working on the financial end. She has a friend who is connected with investments at Northwest Bank, and with whom she previously discussed financing. In addition, she's been looking for space and has already lined up a couple of possibilities that she wants me to see. My job is to decide what type of restaurant we will have, and what sort of space and equipment we'll need. As to what type of restaurant, Enid has an open mind, or so she says.
“But no tearooms, okay? My mother used to eat at tearooms. The tea is always weak, and the food unimaginative. Oh, and no retro shit. If I have to eat at another revamped diner serving chicken a la king, I'll—”
“Relax, Enid. No tearooms, no diners.”
I share my news with no one. Not Richard, who doesn't seem to have noticed that I didn't sleep at home Saturday night, and not my father or Fiona, whose generosity in watching Chloe extended to breakfast and a trip to the zoo. Not even Ben, who calls not long after I hang up with Enid to invite me out on a date. If I tell anybody, it should be him. But I don't. In fact, I don't even answer the phone when he calls; instead, I cower in the bathroom while the machine picks up, listening to Ben's sweet and slightly stilted invitation to have dinner with him.
“Hello, Mira? I was, ah, wondering if you're busy tonight. I would love to take you out to dinner. Anywhere you like. You pick the place. I'll even wear a tie. Call me back, okay? Oh, this is Ben, by the way.”
Yes, Ben, who I can't even imagine owning a jacket and tie, much less wearing one. I'm not completely sure how I feel about our backwards relationship, where the dinner invitation is issued after the fact—and with all the formality and forced cheerfulness of a date to the prom. Now that I've committed to the idea of a Pittsburgh restaurant, I'm committing to staying here, which means that any sane and reasonable person would proceed with extreme caution. Which is why, I suppose, I let the machine pick up when he called.
 
As soon as Enid gave me a list of the four properties she and her contact at Northwest Bank determined we could afford, I knew, sight unseen, the one we'd lease. Still, I've done my due diligence, trekking along with Chloe, Enid, and the real estate agent to look at the first three, paying about as much attention as my eighteen-month-old daughter and politely pretending to listen as they discussed the details of financing, offers, and contingencies.
The fourth space belonged to Bruno. He bought the building next to the bakery years ago, intending to expand his business, but somehow had never gotten around to it. He offered us a good deal on the building, but it was the location that had me sold—a long narrow space sandwiched in between Bruno's and the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company. It isn't big, but the ceilings are high, and there are two eight-foot double-paned windows that open onto the street in front. There's even a small courtyard separating the space from the bakery, just enough room for a couple of tables, a few plants, and maybe a whimsical iron fountain.
Before we'd even signed the papers, Bruno gave me the key, wrapped my fingers around it with his own trembling hands, and told me to keep it. Since then, I've been coming here in the early mornings with Chloe, the two of us getting up just as the sun begins to rise over the city, walking slowly, hand in hand, across Smallman Street to Penn Avenue, watching our neighborhood come to life.
This morning, outside Nordic Fisheries a couple of delivery guys are unloading lobsters and crabs by the case, pausing in between loads to sip coffee from Styrofoam cups. Across the street, on Penn Avenue, the green grocers are busy stacking crates of vegetables and fruits, arranging them into a still life to showcase their most beautiful produce: heads of red romaine, their tender spines heavy with the weight of lush, purple-tinged leaves; a basket of delicate mâche, dark green, almost black, and smelling like a hothouse garden; sugar pumpkins of burnished gold; new Brussels sprouts, their tender petals open like flowers.
At this hour the world belongs to those noble souls who devote their lives to food. Cook, grocer, butcher, baker, sunrises are ours. It's a time to gather your materials, to prepare your
mise en place
, to breathe uninterrupted before the day begins. Chloe and I enter the restaurant from the alley, which shares a loading dock with Penn Mac. A large truck is already backed up to a delivery bay where a man is unloading fifty-pound sacks of fine grain semolina onto the floor of the storeroom. He piles the sacks, one on top of the other, sending clouds of flour into the air. Judging from the number of sacks on the floor, he's been at it a while, and the entire alley is white with flour, hanging in the air like snow. It's come to rest on his bare forearms, on his hair and eyebrows. He nods to us and smiles at Chloe, who holds out her hands and watches, fascinated, as particles of flour settle into her small palms. I catch a few grains and rub them in between my fingers, all at once remembering what it feels like to coax a pasta dough to life, the precise moment when you feel its first breath as it relaxes and expands in one long sweet inhalation into your yielding hands.
The weather has been unseasonably warm this year, and even though it is the week before Thanksgiving, humidity hangs in the air, custard-thick and heavy. Before turning on the lights, I switch on the air conditioner, which sputters and groans before finally kicking in. The din is tremendous, so I switch it off and open the windows instead. A breeze moves in, bringing with it the smell of Bruno's baking bread and the sweet and slightly pungent smell of discarded lettuce and cabbage leaves that have fallen from delivery crates to litter the alley. The old Venetian blinds covering the windows flutter in the breeze, casting inky shadows on the walls and on the odds and ends of furniture, six wooden tables, each with four mismatched chairs, left over from whatever this space used to be.
I'm taking very seriously Enid's suggestion that I be the one to decide what kind of restaurant we will have. This is why I've been coming here in the early mornings to stand in the open space and let my imagination wander over the possibilities, each one a new and different incarnation. But there's one I keep returning to, one vision that, over the last several days, has begun to assume a more specific size and shape, one that feels just right to me.
Spuntino will only serve breakfast and lunch, my willing sacrifice to motherhood. Homemade pastas, frittatas, beans and greens, soups thickened with semolina and with ribbons of egg, a pappa al pomodoro made with a bread I'm planning to coax Bruno into baking especially for me, a thick crusty Florentine loaf with no salt. No big menus, no fancy wine lists. In fact, courtesy of Pennsylvania's antiquated liquor licensing procedures, no wine at all for at least the first six months. A place with an open kitchen and a counter where people can sit and talk to me while I prepare their breakfasts and lunches, because it would be nice to know the people I'm cooking for. Rustic wooden tables that encourage spreading out, maybe a low banquette and some comfy chairs gathered around a fireplace. One day I imagine Chloe stopping here on her way home from school to eat a bowl of soup and do her homework on one of the long wooden tables, chatting easily with the regulars, all of whom will love her.
I've been gone from Grappa for almost a year, and most of that time I've spent thinking about what I missed, idealizing it because it had been ours—mine and Jake's. But it had been replete with the sorts of compromises, big and small, that make any joint venture successful. Only recently have I begun to think about what I would have changed, if I'd had the chance.
Spuntino
(“snack” in Italian) will be my chance to do something different. Enid's given me complete creative control, so why not have some fun? How often do we get a second chance?
Ben has promised to help with the repairs—a good thing because, judging from the puddles of water pooling under the air-conditioning units, there's considerable work to be done. Since Richard moved out a couple of weeks ago, Ben's been around for two dinners, three lunches, and one breakfast. Neither one of us is thinking long term, at least not yet, but our relationship is developing like a slow and steady braise. A braise might not look like much to start with—throw a bunch of ingredients into a pot, add a little broth and wine, and simmer over low heat for several hours—but the technique tends to produce the most complex and full-bodied flavors in food. One of the most wonderful things about a really good braise is that the end result is often so much more than the sum of its parts.
Chloe has pushed one of the chairs along the floor until it has come to rest against the back wall, and the exertion has dampened her curls and cast a furrow in her brow. Now that her work here is finished, she's impatient to leave. She turns to face me, raises her arms, and calls, “Mama!” I cross the room and pick her up, holding her close to me despite the heat, nuzzling her hair, still flecked with flour dust. I know she will probably resent Spuntino for taking me away from her. I hadn't intended to do this until Chloe was older, in school. And Ben—I hadn't really planned on that either. But I think that Chloe will learn to share me with Spuntino and will forgive me for doing what it seems I am meant to do.
It won't be easy. There's a kitchen to plan, menus to write, a thousand details to attend to, but it's still my cook's morning. I take a seat at one of the empty tables, pull Chloe onto my lap, and breathe in the smells that make up my tiny slice of the planet, the alley, the oven next door at Bruno's, and the apple pie sweetness of my lovely daughter as she lays her head against my chest and relaxes into my arms.

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