Garlic and Sapphires (42 page)

Ghosts

I
t was one of those brutally hot days, the air so still it seemed to snatch the breath from your mouth. Heat waves vibrated nauseatingly off the sidewalks, ghostly snakes waiting to strike. The tar on the streets was a sticky river that sucked at your shoes, threatening to devour them each time you crossed. “It's too hot,” my friends all moaned when I asked them to join me for lunch.

Carol, however, was game. “Union Pacific?” she said. “Finally! Tell me who you're going to be.”

“Oh God,” I said, “it's too hot for a wig. I can't bear the idea of makeup, layers of clothing . . . Would it be terrible to come as myself ? I'll make the reservation in your name, but I don't think I'll even eat. I just want to bask in the air conditioning and stare at the food.”

But when we got to the restaurant, we found ourselves in a darkened vestibule so deliciously icy that the memory of the burning sidewalks was instantly erased. As the hostess led us around a small pool and past a serene curtain of water, Carol stuck out her hand, letting the falling drops splash onto her skin. “I have a good feeling about this,” she said.

The restaurant was hushed and high-ceilinged, luminous with pale muted light. The hostess tucked us into a booth in the back. Golden sunshine streamed from a skylight, radiance stripped of heat. One waiter bustled about plumping pillows while another covered the table with bowls of lemons and glasses of iced water.

“I think you've been made,” said Carol.

“Why would you think that?” I asked. “Just because we've got the biggest table in the place and—” I stopped, startled by the woman at the next table who had begun an audible moaning. “Mmmmm,” she keened, her mouth full, her eyes wide, “mmmmm.”

We both stared at her, but she was oblivious, hearing secret harmonies as she concentrated on what was in her mouth.

“I wonder what's she's eating,” I said.

“Foie gras with wild strawberries,” said our waiter, who had suddenly popped up. “It's divine. So rich and intense. Let me bring you some.”

Carol sighed. “I love it when you're recognized,” she said. “It's so much more fun than going out with poor Betty. But here's a question: Do you think that woman is a plant?”

“What?” I asked.

“A plant,” she said. “You know, someone deliberately placed there to act out that little scene for you.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” I said.

“Sometimes,” she said with a certain asperity, “I think you're too trusting. Hasn't it occurred to you that every time you're recognized the owners fill the tables all around you with their friends?”

“They do?” I asked.

“Oh please. Of course. They call everyone they know and invite them in for a free meal. They're supposed to rush right over, eat a lot, and rave loudly about the food. I hear those stories all the time.”

“You never told me!” I said.

“How could you not know?”

I might have replied, but the foie gras had arrived and I was beginning to understand why the woman was moaning. It was a pale pink cylinder with deep red berries and tiny fava beans the color of new spring leaves skittering across the top. The first bite was a shock; the pâté had been soaked in Armagnac and spices, and they ignited the tongue. But with the second bite the intensity segued into something more muted as the strawberry-balsamic emulsion came forward to temper the taste. With the third bite the fava beans began to show themselves, their sleek smoothness shining against the velvet softness of the pâté. It was a dish that robbed you of conversation. For a long time neither of us said a word.

Carol broke the silence. “Tell me,” she said, “about Rocco DiSpirito.”

I had first tasted Rocco's cooking in 1995 at a restaurant called Dava, and it stunned me with its originality. But he was young then—not yet thirty—and unable to handle the crowds that came flocking to him. I heard so many rumors about food costs spiraling out of control that I was not surprised when the restaurant closed. A year or so later, when he turned up at the brand-new Union Pacific, the food was fabulous, but so slow coming out of the kitchen that I gave him only two stars. His fans howled in protest. “Rocco,” they wrote in a campaign I suspected he might have orchestrated, “wuz robbed!” Even the food warrior, Mr. Shapiro, weighed in. “Go back,” he wrote. “DiSpirito is a major talent. You've obviously made a mistake; this is a three-star chef.”

And so here I was, undisguised, on the hottest day of the year, once again succumbing to his magic.

We ate a cool, bright summer salad—lengths of crimson watermelon interlaced with shiny strips of avocado. Pale lavender rings of calamari were woven across the top so that the slick avocado bumped up against the crunch of the watermelon and then collided with the slippery slices of squid. Encountering them in your mouth, you couldn't help focusing on the sensation of texture. After a while I tried letting go of the feelings on my tongue to simply concentrate on taste; that was when I discovered that the three had a startling similarity, a common tempered sweetness. The flavor was so seductive that it was a while before I realized that Carol had gone silent too.

“I'm listening to my mouth,” she said. “Caramelized sweetbread with sorrel and muskmelon—it's the most amazing dish. Here, try it.” She passed me a forkful, and my mouth closed over the surprising combination. Sweetbreads and melon were shiny, lustrous, and sweet against the faintly citric sourness of the sorrel. “I feel as if I've crawled into some magical food cocoon,” said Carol, “where only good things could possibly happen.”

“I know,” I said. “That's exactly how I feel.”

All afternoon we sat there, reveling in tastes and textures. A pristine white square of cod arrived, looking like an enormous marshmallow strewn with scattered cracklings. Biting in you expected ocean brine and got something altogether different, something rich and deep and mysterious. The fish, poached in goose fat, had absorbed the taste of the bird. It was a sensation both dizzying and exciting, as if you were flying and swimming at the same time. Chicken had also been transformed, slowly poached in a lemon-strewn bath until it lost its barnyard character. Torn into long strips, it was barely meat, just all soft tenderness, a vehicle for conveying spice and citrus and the plump flavor of the summer truffle puree upon which it perched.

The waiter set the plates down so lightly, he might have been tiptoe ing through a room of sleeping people. Unwilling to break the spell, he didn't even ask what we wanted for dessert. I barely noticed when he removed the chicken, barely saw him replace it with passion fruit crème brûlée. All I knew was that the flavors had changed, that what was now in my mouth was sweet, soft, intense, and tropical, unlike anything I had experienced before. Without speaking Carol reached out and switched our plates, and now the taste in my mouth was raspberries and lavender, and I was in a wild garden with the wind blowing through my hair.

“Coffee?” asked the waiter. The sound was startlingly loud, the finger-snap of the hypnotist, bringing you back to yourself. Carol and I both looked up, surprised. “Yes,” we both said, “coffee, yes, coffee.” And then we just sat and stared at one another.

“That,” said Carol, “was an out-of-body experience. I don't think I've ever had food that seemed so psychedelic. Do you think it's the chemo?”

“No,” I replied, “because I'm not doing chemotherapy, and I had the same experience. It was amazing.”

“How will you ever manage to write about it?” she asked. “How can that possibly be explained?”

“I won't,” I said. “It can't.” And even if I were capable of describing this meal, I thought, I'm not sure that I'd try. A critic has no business creating unreasonable expectations; setting your readers up for disappointment is the surest way to lose their trust. “Besides,” I told Carol, “I don't think this can ever be repeated. It feels as if we're here at some magic moment.”

“But you'll come back?”

“Oh sure. This is only the first visit. You know the drill: Never fewer than three visits, usually more. Always anonymously.”

“But you're not anonymous now!” she said.

“I know,” I said morosely. “That's the problem. I suppose I'll have to come back as Betty or Brenda or something.”

“I thought you liked dressing up.”

“I did,” I said. “It used to be fun.”

“What happened?”

I looked at her, unable to explain the impact of that meal with Marion. Thinking about what had happened, I saw that when I became Emily I had played with fire. If there was an Emily inside me—and now I knew there was—I needed to acknowledge her. Pretending she was someone else was no longer enough; it was time to stop playing games and be myself. It was time to think my own thoughts. But when I tried gathering the words to explain this to Carol, I found they were not there. So I just stared at her, silent.

Carol didn't press me. “So you're going to give up the disguises and go out as yourself ?”

I shook my head. “That wouldn't be right. You know what it's like when I'm not in disguise: the steaks get bigger, the food comes faster, and the seats become more comfortable. No restaurant can change the food on the spur of the moment, but when the critic of the
New York Times
shows up, they can certainly show her a swell time. The kitchen selects its largest raspberries. The maître d' gives her the quiet table in the middle of the dining room with a dedicated waiter all her own. The sommelier makes sure that every wine she orders is a good one, and that her glass is never empty. The pastry chef makes an extra effort.” I gestured to our large booth. “You
know
I can't let this happen every time I go out to eat.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Do you hear what you're saying?”

I nodded. The words Marion had tossed so casually across the table at the Box Tree had been reverberating in my mind ever since, becoming louder every day. But how would I live if I couldn't be a restaurant critic? “I don't know what to do,” I said. “There must be an answer. But I have yet to figure it out.”

Carol offered no advice, and we sat there, drinking our coffee and eating the icy little chocolates that the waiter brought, reluctant to go back to the burning sidewalks waiting outside in the real world.