Garlic and Sapphires (32 page)

Even so, I knew I was pressing my luck the day she dined alone at La Côte Basque. I had been to the restaurant four times in total anonymity, but my most recent visit had been with a couple who had bought me at a charity benefit, and I had gone as myself.

Charity dinners seemed to be part of my job. I don't know which charity first realized the secret yearning of many people to watch the critic at work, but once they discovered that they could auction this opportunity off for thousands of dollars, the requests came pouring in. How do you say no to worthy causes when so much money is at stake? How do you say no to your child's school, your doctor, the American Heart Association, the public library, the James Beard Foundation . . . Although these dinners with strangers were a terrible nuisance, I rarely had the heart to turn them down. Every once in a while I'd end up eating with someone so offensive that I'd swear off charity dinners, but that never lasted very long.

The Côte Basque couple had in fact been lovely people. And everything was fine until, halfway through the appetizers, Mr. Stewart inadvertently blurted out how much he had paid for the chance to dine with me. It was such an embarrassing amount of money that I summoned the sommelier and ordered an insanely expensive wine. I shouldn't have done that: the sommelier, who had ignored me up to that point, looked at me long and hard and then went running off to the maître d'. Suddenly the hoverage increased. Could I really expect to get away with being Betty now?

But I had to go back. As I wrote the review, rhapsodizing about the duck, I realized I had tried it only once, and that it had been with the Stewarts. What if the chef had cooked me something special? I imagined angry readers looking down at their duck and saying, “That woman liked
this
?” Once was not enough. I put on the wig, the too-tight shoes, and the frumpy blue dress and headed for the subway. Nobody paid me the slightest attention.

But when I walked into La Côte Basque, every eye in the room turned. And then, of course, politely looked away. I walked slowly toward the maître d'—the shoes were really uncomfortable—and said hesitantly, “Excuse me?”

The man gave me a kind but slightly pitying look. “Yes?” he said. “May I help you?”

“I don't have a reservation . . .” I began. He surveyed me quite openly, not disguising the fact that he was trying to make up his mind. He didn't know me, I was sure of that; I could almost see him wishing that I were a man so he could wrap me in a borrowed jacket and tie.

“Just yourself ?” he asked. I nodded. It was still early, and the restaurant was not full, which may have been why the decision went in my favor. “Right this way, please,” he said, and I wondered where he would put me. He wouldn't want to parade me through the dining room, but he wouldn't want me in one of the high-visibility seats up front either. I wondered how he would solve the dilemma. In the end, he tucked me off to the side, handed me a menu, and scurried quickly away. This was not exactly celebrity treatment, but it could not be faulted.

The captain who took care of me was entirely correct; he neither fawned nor ignored me. The food was just as I'd remembered. Better, actually. I had finished my first course, a caviar-studded seafood salad, and was halfway through the delicious duck when a flutter of energy swept through the room. I looked up to see a female of a certain age moving in my direction. Swathed in red satin, she looked like Peter Ustinov in drag, and she was moving so slowly that she resembled a carnival float propelled by hidden wheels.

She came nearer and nearer, and then the maître d' was pulling out the table to seat her on the banquette next to mine. The woman shot me a look of undisguised horror and turned to the maître d'hôtel. “Don't you have anything else?” she asked, waving a fat paw in my direction. I thought how much she resembled one of those ugly Chinese lap dogs. “I don't like this table,” she blared. The maître d' hastily pushed the table back toward the banquette, smoothed the cloth, and turned on his heel. “But of course, madame,” he said, leading her away.

I had had enough. I asked the waiter if he would pack the remains of my duck in a doggie bag and bring me the bill. He hesitated for half a beat, began to say something, changed his mind, and said, “Certainly.”

I paid the bill in cash, counting out the change, dollar by dollar. I added the tip; then, thinking of old ladies everywhere, added some more. Clutching my doggie bag, I scurried out of the restaurant, convinced that the diners in their fancy finery were watching my departure with both relief and disdain.

I boarded the uptown subway, thinking how happy I was going to be to get the wig off my head and the Enna Jetticks off my feet. I was thinking up ways to describe the duck when a homeless man came shuffling through the car. His pants were torn and his army jacket was layered with the filth of too many nights on the sidewalk. A sad woolen cap was pulled down over his reddened ears and a moth-eaten gray scarf twisted around his wattled neck. He looked so ragged that people tucked their feet beneath them as he passed, hoping to avoid his touch. When he got to the end of the car he turned, took a breath, and began to speak.

“I'm hungry,” he said, his voice rusty from disuse. “I'll take anything. If you have half a sandwich you didn't eat at lunch, or the core of an apple, I'd be happy to have it. Maybe you've got a few crumbs of potato chips left in the bottom of the bag. That would do too.”

I noticed that as he walked down the aisle the other passengers looked down or buried themselves in their papers. Hunger is embarrassing. When he reached my seat, I handed him the bag from La Côte Basque and he stared in disbelief. Grabbing it, he walked to the end of the car and sat down in the seat that says it is reserved for the handicapped. I expected him to tear into the food and stuff it into his mouth, but he did not. With great dignity he spread the scarf on his lap as if it were a napkin, then pulled the container from the bag and set it on the scarf. Removing the wrapping, he examined his windfall. “Roasted duckling!” he croaked. And then, very delicately, he picked the leg up in his fingers and ate it slowly, savoring every morsel.

I did not take a shower when I got home. I did not remove the wig. I sat down and began writing a piece called “Why I Disapprove of What I Do.”

In March, when the article was published, people who had never spoken to me before made a point of telling me how much they liked it. I was happy about the response, but remembering what it felt like to be Betty, I understood that my piece was actually a cop-out. In my mind's eye I saw the woman in red at La Côte Basque, and the man on the train waving his duck leg, and deep down I knew that there was something basically dishonest about what I had written. The feel-good ending nagged at me; I was making excuses, and the Betty inside me knew it.

A FRUGAL REPAST FOR BETTY

W
hen I trailed Betty home, she bought cereal and dog food, but I like to think that she is the kind of person who makes herself a nice meal every once in a while and savors it slowly, over the course of a few days. This is the meal I imagine her making at the beginning of spring, when she wants to celebrate having survived yet another New York winter. It is a perfect little repast that provides wonderful leftovers that are good hot or cold.