I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (34 page)

Spiced Roast Beef

(Adapted from
epicurious.com
)

Your meat won’t be tough unless you have a withholding Scotsman living in your house.

1 teaspoon whole cumin

1 teaspoon whole coriander

1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon cayenne

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

1 (3-pound) beef eye roast

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Crush cumin, coriander, and black pepper in a mortar and pestle, process them in a food processor, or put them in a paper
or plastic bag and crack them with a rolling pin or hammer. Mix in salt, ginger, and cayenne with crushed spices. With a paring
knife, make several small slits all over the meat; inset garlic into them. Brush meat with the oil and rub spice mixture over
it.

Roast until a meat thermometer inserted into the center registers 120 degrees for medium-rare; this should take 50 minutes
to 1 hour. When it is done, remove the meat to a cutting board, tent it with foil, and let it rest for 10 minutes or so. Slice
thinly and sprinkle with cilantro.

Serves 6 to 8.

Yorkshire Pudding

1 heaping cup flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

4 tablespoons butter, melted

In a bowl, stir together flour, salt, and milk until well mixed, then add the eggs and stir until batter is smooth. Let it
stand at room temperature for 1 hour.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Distribute the melted butter among 8 muffin molds, then evenly distribute
the batter into the molds and bake until puffed up and golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately.
Yorkshire puddings deflate rapidly, like expectations.

Yield: 8 puddings.

It rained on New Year’s Eve and then again on New Year’s Day, two of the dreariest days of my entire life. Ginia gave a dinner
party, and at midnight I did not receive a kiss from my date. I told myself that maybe in Europe people don’t kiss their girlfriend,
or friend, or career manager, or whatever the heck I was, to ring in the New Year. I went out on the terrace to smoke a cigarette
and tore my new skirt while climbing over the windowsill to get out there. I focused my vexation on that for the rest of the
night.

The next morning, we awoke to more rain. I could barely drag myself out of bed, let alone to the party I planned to attend
(hosted by more friends who couldn’t wait to meet Lachlan). Ginia was supposed to go, but she backed out. Anne was wavering.
I didn’t want to go to the party, but I sure didn’t want to spend the day at home alone with Lachlan. I was paralyzed under
the covers with my phone, trying to cajole someone into coming along.

Anne reluctantly agreed to join us, and while Lachlan was consumed with charming some obese lady, she and I stuffed our faces
with Rice Krispies treats painted green and shaped like wreaths. That’s when I finally came clean to her about what was going
on at my house. When you’re stuck in a situation like the one I was in, you don’t want to tell your friends because that means
admitting to yourself that it’s really happening—but once you do, it becomes so much more bearable. The melted marshmallow
and unburdening made me feel a little less alone. On the way home, now that I was thinking myself slightly less doomed, Lachlan,
Anne, and I talked about resolutions for the coming year. You know what Lachlan’s was. Anne and I talked about writing our
own books, something we had been talking about for a few months, though neither of us had any idea what we would write about;
we just had the nagging sense that we should be writing something. “You’re such an amazing cook, you should write a cookery
book,” Lachlan said. That idea wasn’t “daft,” as Lachlan might say, if only I could come up with a cookery book idea. I had
no clue how one would come to me, but on that dark day, I felt a glimmer of hope that I could. Then I forgot about it for
a while.

While I drowned in rain and agony, Lachlan and I continued doing everything together. We visited museums, ate dinner, went
to the movies. Watching
The Last King of Scotland
was like seeing a twist on my own predicament; I felt as if I were being hung by my skin, only not by Idi Amin, but by the
cute Scotsman. At the Guggenheim on a Friday evening (when it’s free), Lachlan kept his arm around me as we ascended and descended
the curving ramp. He bought me a postcard of a painting I liked of monks eating dinner and propped it up on my bedside in
front of one of an Annunciation he had bought me in happier times at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Lachlan used a variety of terms to refer to himself in regard to me. Sometimes he was my “boyfriend,” sometimes he was my
“friend.” When he became “the guy living in your apartment,” I had to make inquiries.

“Could you please explain our relationship?” I asked one Saturday morning after the Hibs game.

We sat on the settee in the foyer, where he put his arms around me and said, “We have a very warm friendship.”

I pushed him away. What did I need with a warm friendship? I had more friends than I knew what to do with, and I certainly
didn’t handle their careers.

I cried every day after that conversation. We talked about him finding someplace else to live for his last few weeks, but
I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving. Either way I was going to be miserable, so why inconvenience Lachlan, too? It
was Stockholm syndrome all over again, no cure on the horizon, no plans for a benefit.

Even though the ecstatic promise of our union was short-lived (for me, at least; there was plenty of promise left in it for
him), I continued to think that we had a true connection and that Lachlan had shut himself off from allowing it to blossom.
“What is love if not what we have?” I pleaded with him. “We like all the same things, we’re happy eating together, living
together, watching TV together.” I just couldn’t let go of the joy I felt in our first few days together and the sentiments
enclosed in the hundreds of notes we batted back and forth across the ocean. How did he lose all desire for me? Was I too
nervous, as he had suggested? Should I have let him cook, acted a little more helpless? But then, how helpless can the person
orchestrating your literary career pretend to be?

“The only thing wrong with you is that you think something is wrong with you,” Lachlan said, which is plenty perceptive, but
served only to make me hate myself more for thinking there was something wrong with me and wondering if Lachlan would love
me if I could stop thinking that.

Lachlan, on the other hand, thought there was absolutely nothing wrong with him, an admirable quality indeed. “This is me,
this is the way I am,” he declared. “I’ve never been able to commit to a woman, and I’m happy that way.” And the itinerant
life? He was happy with that, too.

“I’m still me, I’m still Lachlan,” he said, not understanding why I didn’t want to talk to him. I holed up in my bedroom,
reading Patricia Marx, an author Lachlan discovered one day at the local bookstore. Flipping through her novel
Him Her Him Again the End of Him,
he thought he had found his literary soul mate. I got jealous when he told me this and immediately procured a copy for myself
(know thy rivals). This funny novel about an intelligent woman who over many years will not be dissuaded of her love for a
heinous cad served as a good escape in those days. Lachlan, on the other hand, found his interest waning as he read further.
It was comforting to learn that I wasn’t the only woman he quickly lost excitement for.

As I took to hiding in my bedroom and going out to dinner without him, Lachlan began to play the injured. “I feel like I’ve
lost a friend,” he said when I came home from an evening out with Anne. “I’ve waited for you for ice cream, have you had dessert?”
I loosened up a little eating Häagen-Dazs banana split and watching the Fleetwood Mac
Behind the Music
on VH-1. Then Christine McVie singing “Songbird” had me weeping all over again.

Perhaps it was my hysteria that emboldened Lachlan to venture out of the house one afternoon without alerting me or showing
up at my office as he always did, even now that things were just awful, which he always pretended wasn’t the case. I was calling
the house to tell him something or other, but there was no answer. I never thought for a moment that he had walked out—he
wouldn’t do that anyway, he had nowhere to go. I jumped to the only possible conclusion: He was dead—his bile tube detonated
or that faulty electric charge in his heart had claimed him once and for all. He was asleep when I left for work—at this point
in our relationship, I was happy when he missed breakfast, giving me the chance to sneak a cigarette and blow smoke out the
living room window—I didn’t think to check if he was still breathing.

When I finally heard from him, just when I was about to go home to collect his remains, I was livid. “Just make us something
for dinner!” I barked (odd that that’s what I would come up with as a punishment).

When I came home, he served me this delicious farfalle with zucchini and eggs. “It’s a natural combination,” he told me. I
sure hadn’t thought of it, but it is indeed delectable. The eggs give the dish a wonderful creaminess. It is another Lachlan
creation that I continue to re-create.

Lachlan’s Farfalle with Zucchini and Egg

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ medium onion, chopped

2 medium zucchini squash (1 green, 1 yellow)

1 teaspoon salt

½ pound farfalle

2 eggs

2 heaping tablespoons freshly grated parmigiano, plus extra for passing at table

Freshly ground pepper

¼ cup chopped parsley

In a medium sauté pan, warm olive oil over medium heat, then add the chopped onion and cook until opaque, 3 to 4 minutes.
Slice zucchini into ½-inch rounds, then each round into quarters; add zucchini and salt to the onions and cook until soft,
15 to 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the farfalle according to the directions for pasta
here
. Beat the eggs and add parmigiano; set aside.
When pasta is cooked, drain and add to zucchini mixture. Remove from heat, add the eggs, and allow them to cook on the hot
pasta. Serve in warmed bowls garnished with freshly ground pepper and chopped parsley. Pass extra cheese at table.

Serves 2, with leftovers.

A few weeks before Lachlan’s departure, THE AGENT finally let me know that she was going to take on his book. It was all bittersweet
to me, though I feigned great excitement, and in some ways I was excited that I had succeeded brilliantly at my fool’s errand.
I handed Lachlan a situation any writer would kill for, and I was the one being killed for it. I made him take me out for
a “celebratory” dinner at a local Italian restaurant I had been raving to him about, a newfangled mom-and-pop place like the
one we’d talked about opening in sunnier days. Lachlan wasn’t impressed with his tortelloni or his tagliata. “Your food is
so much better,” he said. Of course it is—mine’s free.