Cleaving (26 page)

Josh hands me a CD in a case labeled
A GOODBYE MIX FOR JULIE--
JUAN
. "He was in the store the other day. I told him you were following him, back out into the bad old world. He dropped this
by."

"How is he? I miss him."

"You and me both, sister. But he's doing good. The new charcuterie job pays more than I ever could. He'd have been crazy to
pass it up. Onward and upward, y'know?"

"I suppose so." Last night I had a dream that I was about halfway up a sheer cliff, endlessly high. Up ahead of me was, it
seemed, everyone I'd ever known--the guys at the shop, my family, Gwen, Eric, D--and they were pulling ahead, climbing fast,
leaving me behind. I tried to call out but found I had no voice, that my words slurred and died in my mouth, that I could
not be heard. I awoke with a terrified lurch, unable to scream. I have this dream all the time.

In addition to the candle, Aaron has also presented me with a small, ornate gilt frame in which he has placed a picture of
a cow, and over it the same motto that he says hangs on the wall of the office at the slaughterhouse where he has been training
for the last couple of months: "If we are not suppose to eat animals, why are they made of meat?"

"It took me forever to get that right, just like it is in John's office. Spell check kept switching 'suppose' to 'supposed.'
But I had to have it exactly."

"How very you. Well, it's fantastic. Thank you. Will go right on my desk."

My desk at home, I mean, which has become a cluttered altar to at least one of my obsessions. A vintage Spanish poster is
pinned up over it--an advertisement with an image of Don Quixote riding a hog, a fat ham skewered on his lance. The surface
is stacked with butchery manuals and cookbooks and stacks of papers held down by a black stone, carefully shaped, round, concave
on both sides. It's called a "chunkee stone."

"C'mon. There have got to be like a thousand of those in that cabinet."

Eric remained firm. "Nine hundred and seventy-seven, actually. You know how I know that?"

"No one is going to miss one itty-bitty ancient artifact. It would be really romantic..."

"Julie. I can't."

"You can't, or you won't?"

"I can't because I won't."

"One early Native American field hockey puck. It doesn't seem so much to ask."

It was his first job in the city, at the Museum of Natural History; he catalogued their North American archaeology collection.
Lots of beads, lots of chunkee stones, which are in fact exactly what I say--ancient field hockey pucks. I coveted them, loved
the way they felt, heavy and cool in the hand
.

Eric wound up hiring a stoneworker to make one for me. Which was a beautiful, touching gesture. Part of me still wishes he'd
just stolen one
.

I
LOVE
all the gifts I've been given today, but the best one came hours ago.

All morning I'd been "helping" Aaron make a
porchetta
he was giving some friends for their wedding reception. A whole pig, boned out, seasoned, and stuffed with an insane melange
of indulgence--garlic, onions, truffles, and several brined pork loins wrapped in bacon--then rolled up around a huge spit worked
through the hog's open mouth and down the length of the creature. I'd done nothing much more than help slice garlic and watch,
agog, as he took all of the bones but for the skull out of the animal, keeping it all in one piece, until it was a gigantic,
limp shawl of pork flesh. I did help roll the loins in bacon, and line them up end to end inside the carcass, and strew the
entire thing with garlic and truffle slices; did help pull the pig around the spit and truss it tightly, a loop of heavy-duty
wire in the place of the usual twine, every six inches, yanked until we had produced a long hog-cylinder, six feet of it,
the head on one end the only variation to what was otherwise a completely uniform, skin-on, yellowish pink tube of meat. It
looked so much like a penis that there was no joke to be made among even these embracers of the obvious. All you could really
do was raise your eyebrows at it, and say, in high-pitched Josh style, "Oh-kaaaay..."

Aaron had headed back to try to clear out a space in the cooler for the giant thing, a neat trick given that the cooler was
overflowing with meat as it was. It took him a while to reemerge, and when he did it was just to poke his head around the
steel door and call to me, "Hey, Jules, come back here for a sec. Need some help."

So I headed back to the cooler, where I found Aaron, Josh, and Jessica all crowded in among the shelves of bagged subprimals,
great heaps of bottom rounds and chuck eyes. They were all three atwinkle with anticipation. "Close your eyes." I did. Waited.
"Okay, now you can open them."

When I did, Josh was holding out a black canvas cutlery case, with a shoulder strap, the kind every culinary student possesses,
as ubiquitous as chef's checks and clogs.

"Ah, thanks, guys."

"Open it."

I tore open the Velcro fasteners and unfolded the thing, laying it out on the table. There were three knives inside. A five-inch
boning knife, a foot-long scimitar, and a hugely heavy cleaver. "Oh!" I breathed. "These are great!"

Josh was practically bouncing up and down. "Read the inscription."

Each of the knives had words engraved on the blade, in delicate letters.
Julie Powell, Loufoque
.

"It's
louchebem.
You know, what Aaron was talking about, French-butcher pig latin? It means 'crazy lady.' "

I burst into tears.

"Oh no. You are
not
going to start bawling on me like a little bitch." Josh turned on his heel and marched out of the cooler.

Jessica hooted. "He is such a pussy."

"Jules!" Aaron pulled me in for a hug. "You're a butcher now! The apprenticeship is over."

"Thank you, guys, so, so much. Really."

"And look!" Aaron took out the cleaver and pointed at the brand name carved into the other side of the blade.

"Awesome. Just what I always wanted, my own big Dick."

"Ba-da-BUMP."

"I'm here all week."

"Yeah, I wish."

I teared up again, just a tad. "Yeah, me too."

"All right, all right," said Jessica. "Enough already. Back to work, guys. It's not even three o'clock yet."

N
OW IT'S
close to eight p.m., and we're well on our way to finishing off the champagne. I eye the rapidly emptying bottle, knowing
I'll not be able to avoid the inevitable much longer, the good-bye speech, the drive home, the moment when I acknowledge that
I don't have a place at this table anymore. I'm afraid I'm going to cry again. In fact I know I will; I'm just hoping I can
wait until I'm alone in the car to do it.

"Julie, it's been really great having you here." It's getting to be toast time. Jessica holds up her mug. "Just having another
woman around, for one thing. My
God,
the testosterone overload around here sometimes,
Jesus
." She gives me a tight hug. "Seriously. We're going to miss you."

"Nah, she'll be back. She can't stay away." Josh pours me a refill. The champagne is cheap and pink and I wish I could stay
here all night drinking it. Wish I didn't have to go home.

"So, Jules, what did you learn today?"

"Um... that Josh is a big wimp who freaks out at a few tears?"

"That, and?"

"That, and... oh, well, there was the porchetta. But I didn't really learn how to do it. I just watched you."

"I promise, next time you need to bone out a whole pig and tie it to a spit, you'll be able to figure it out."

"I suppose so. Man, I've seen some
pretty
phallic things around here, but that took the cake, I have to say."

"Sometimes a six-foot-long tube of pig is just a six-foot-long tube of pig."

"Uh-huh. And then sometimes not."

Hailey, sweet little strawberry-blond Hailey, sips with responsible conservatism at the wine she is too young to drink legally.
"So you're going to be coming back, right?"

"If you guys'll have me, yes. I don't have a place to stay anymore, but I'll come visit."

Josh flipped his hands at me dismissively. "There's always our couch to sleep on, until you buy your own place."

"Buy my own place?"

"Real estate shopping, you and me. Next time you're up. And you know what else, crazy butcher lady?" Josh points at the time
sheets in their slots hung on the wall just behind the counter. "From now on, you're on the clock."

"Oh please."

"Fuck you, 'Oh please.' I'm not having any unpaid slackers on my table. I'm going to put you to serious work. None of this
an-hour-to-break-down-a-shoulder crap."

"All right, all right..." Finally I raise my glass, reluctantly. "You guys, thank you so much for letting me stick around here.
I've... this has been just the greatest... I..." I'm not going to start bawling, I'm not. "I don't want to leave."

Josh pulls his lips down and his eyebrows up into a sad clown face that he manages to make at once mocking and sincere, almost
a little teary himself. "Awww... now if you cry again, I'm going to bitch-slap you with Aaron's
porchetta.
"

It's completely dark outside now. I have my duffel bag and my big grocery sack of meat, my candle and my marble egg and my
little picture frame and my inscribed knives. It's getting late. Eric is waiting. I've got to go home. My throat constricts.

I sit in the driver's seat with one hand on the wheel and the other fitting the key in the ignition, in the parking lot around
the corner from Fleisher's. My eyes cloud with tears as I begin to turn the key, and then I just allow myself to sob, forehead
on the wheel, shoulders hitching as I suck in air. I cry and cry.

There's a knock on the passenger seat window. I straighten up with a start; it's Jessica. Hurriedly wiping away tears, I reach
over to open the door, and she climbs right in.

"Okay. Are you seriously crying in a parking lot because it's your last day?"

"Uh-huh. Or, no. I don't know. I just... I can't even... I just want to... to run away, I guess." I squirm in embarrassment at this
childish, childishly cruel, admission.

"So run away."

"No, no, I can't. I don't want to, really. I just--" I sob again, twice, ashamed of it. "I feel like I'm boxing myself back
up or something."

"Julie, I know we haven't really talked about this since, you know, dinner that time. But maybe you ought to, I don't know--"

I surprise myself with a vehement shake of the head, don't even let her get out the sentence I know she's forming, my words
coming in a rush through harsh breathing. "No! I mean... yes, maybe... but... look. I don't want to... I don't know... lose... anyone.
It's just... I don't want to lose myself either. That's just so horrifically cheesy, God." My forehead falls back onto the steering
wheel. After a minute I feel Jessica's palm light on my back.

"Why don't you take a trip? Just by yourself, I mean. You know I spent, like, six months in Japan? Best thing I ever did.
Stay in a love hotel. I'm telling you, you haven't
lived
."

I sniffle. "A love hotel?"

"Oh, yeah. They're great. These hotels where you can go for just an hour or the whole night. You pick your room from a panel
of buttons, like a vending machine or something. And the rooms are all decorated with, like, disco balls and anime and shit."

I start trying to steady my breathing. "Do you know I've never been to a foreign country by myself?"

"Well, there you go! That settles it. I know what you need to do. You need to go on a Grand Meat Tour. Go to Japan. Try horse
sashimi or, like, feed some beer to a Kobe beef steer or some craziness. Go to Vancouver, Josh knows a guy who does great
charcuterie there, or--wait! Argentina! One of the chefs we sell meat to, Ignacio, used to live in Argentina, I think. He could
totally hook you up down there. Where have you always wanted to go?"

"I don't know. Eastern Europe maybe? Africa? Tons of places."

"Well, I think this is the time to do it. You're going to miss the butcher shop? So go find more!"

I shrug, wipe my face smearily. "I couldn't leave Eric like that."

"Julie? You're leaving him now. You think he can't feel that?"

Jessica climbs back out of the car once I've gotten myself cleaned up a little and we've hugged our good-byes. I finally start
the car. The drive goes by quickly and uneventfully, the usual slide, down through the dark across the Tappan Zee, into the
sodium orange haze of the Bronx, over the Triborough, where, instead of heading into Queens as I should, I take a right, making
a detour into Manhattan. I trawl past D's building, peer through the windows into the foyer. I put the car into park for a
moment or two but don't turn off the ignition. It's an old, torturing comfort of mine to idle there, half cringing in anticipation
of actually catching sight of him, of him catching sight of me, imagining some world in which I take what I want, where I
could do more than just pine, where I could walk through that door, ring up to his apartment, find him there for me with a
ribbon around his neck like a puppy.