Garlic and Sapphires (17 page)

“How?” I asked, watching him run a hand across his head and wondering, as we all did, whether he was wearing a toupee.

He gave his hair a final tug and said, “Last year I had to go have lunch with one of the paper's bigger advertisers to explain why, even though you are always writing about steak, you never choose to write about the steak in
his
restaurants. That's okay, that's my job, I don't mind. But you go five years without a single correction, and then you make a mistake about Sparks. Sparks!”

“Oooh,” I said, beginning to understand.

“That's not a good place to make a mistake about!” he said.

“I'm sorry,” I said, feeling a little sick. The greenies are bad; corrections are worse.

“And it wasn't even about food!” he fumed. “It was about art!”

“I'm sorry,” I said again.

“Don't criticize the art if you don't know what you're talking about!”

“Have you seen the paintings they have hanging in there?” I asked, trying to make John smile. He was not in the mood.

“You could have called them ugly,” he said. “That's an opinion, and you have a right to it. You could have called them atrocious, or repulsive, or even ludicrous. But you cannot call them ersatz, for Christ's sake. That is not a judgment. That's a fact.”

“I know,” I said, “but ersatz is such a great word.”

He groaned.

In a Diner's Journal article about the newly expanded Sparks, I had written this: “The new restaurant is huge and slightly tacky, so filled with ersatz old things that it looks more like a steakhouse designed by Disney than one in the beating heart of Manhattan.”

The owners were furious. They sent a registered letter assuring us that all the antiques were genuine and could be documented. They said that their Hudson River School paintings had been characterized as one of the better collections. They insisted that all the ugly old cabinets were made by Horner, who was not only one of the greatest American furniture makers of all time, but a New Yorker to boot. They demanded a correction.

They got one. “I'll do even better,” I promised John. “I like the place. They serve good steak. I'll write a full review.”

“Fine idea,” he said.

And so, for the first time in my life I set out to review a restaurant with my mind already made up.

Giving Sparks a good review should have been easy. It is, after all, a perennial favorite with New York critics, who are charmed by its meat, its wine list, and its background. Although Sparks is an infant in the venerable pantheon of New York steakhouses, it acquired instant history in 1985 when mob boss Paul Castellano was gunned down right in front. New Yorkers love a Mafia connection, and the restaurant's reputation was made.

“You're going to like this place,” I promised Nicky as we opened the door. He was older now, and it took more than hash browns to win his endorsement. “They do this thing with the tablecloths, a sort of magic act where they whip them off without removing the plates.”

“I
am
going to like that,” he replied confidently.

But by the time we got to the magic plates, Nicky was fast asleep with his head on the table. We had spent forty-five minutes waiting to be seated, jostled by an ever-increasing crowd of growingly disgruntled people. The maître d', who glared at us when he saw that we had a child in tow, had no sympathy for our distress.

“This is ridiculous,” said Michael after twenty minutes. “Let's leave.”

“We can't,” I pointed out. “I've
got
to review this place.”

“But I'm so hungry,” he said morosely. “If we aren't seated in fifteen minutes I'm going to call and order a pizza. I'll have it delivered right here.”

“You can't,” I pleaded, thinking of John. “Please don't.”

Fortunately our table beat the deadline. Unfortunately the service was terrible, the steaks were worse, and Nicky found the hash browns so sad that they put him to sleep. He woke up in time to taste the tartufo, took one bite, and put his head back down on the table.

“Are you telling me,” said Michael as he carried our sleeping son out the door, “that you're going to write a good review of an ugly restaurant that doesn't honor reservations and serves terrible food?”

“This was just a bad night,” I said optimistically. “Every restaurant's entitled to one. It's usually much better.”

“Okay,” he said, “we'll give them another chance.”

But things got worse. One night we were seated next to a group of drunken stockbrokers. Another night I showed up for my confirmed reservation only to find the restaurant closed. At other times the food came undercooked, overcooked, and overdressed. In the end I took a fellow critic along, hoping that he'd be recognized and get a great steak. He was, and he did—but mine was terrible. The two of us sat there, tasting the two steaks side by side, completely flummoxed by the experience.

“You told me that you liked the place!” cried John when he read the review.

“I thought I did,” I said, “but further investigation proved me wrong. You wouldn't want me to pull my punches, would you?”

“Of course not.” He sighed and let the matter drop.

But a few months later John called me back into his office. “I just had a meeting with the owner of Sparks,” he said.

“Uh-oh.”

“You can say that again. He told me to, and this is a direct quote, ‘order up a positive story and put it on the fucking front of Dining.'”

“You're kidding!” I said.

“No,” he said, “I'm not. He even had the chutzpah to tell me when to do it. He said I should blame it on ‘the old man.'”

“The old man?”

“Yeah, to tell my subordinates that the senior Mr. Sulzberger told me to do it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“After I caught my breath and counted to ten,” said John, “I told him we simply don't operate like that. And you know what he said? He said, ‘Oh yeah? Don't be fucking naive.'”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he replied wearily. “But do me a favor, okay? From now on, stay away from steak.”

Chloe

I
liked the black satin suit the minute I saw it at Michael's Resale. The jacket was simple, tight, cut low, with a little flare at the bottom. The skirt was short, with three tiers. It fit me perfectly—more than perfectly. It made me look elegant, thin, put together. Glancing in the mirror, I caught a flash of leg. Then my eyes moved upward and I witnessed an instant metamorphosis. What I saw was a woman who stood up very straight, so she appeared taller. Her hands had long red fingernails and her smooth, pale face was framed by silky, champagne-colored hair. As I watched, the person who belonged inside that suit invented herself. She even told me her name. When I took off the jacket, it said “Chloe.”

I went straight from Michael's to the wig shop on Fifty-seventh Street. I'd never been inside, but I'd often walked past the elegant showroom, with its long spills of human hair, and I felt that Chloe deserved the best of everything.