Kitchens of the Great Midwest (12 page)

When it finally hit Braque what was happening, she shouted and raised her green-stained fist in the air. Catching her cousin’s eye, she pushed toward Eva, reaching for her hand, just as Eva bent at the waist and vomited a flume of steaming brown and red chunks all over the cash register. It smelled like a cross between a fart and a burning tire.

The smell made Braque’s throat open and evacuate a full eight ounces of undigested green slime onto the floor. What a scene! People backed away groaning and shouting. Someone called for a janitor. In the midst of it all, glowing with rude joy and shining with vomit, Braque at last grabbed her little cousin’s hand, and raised it to the sky.

I
t was not just Will Prager’s opinion, but also unbiased fact, that in order to get girls in high school you had to have a
thing
. Maybe your thing was that your mom or dad was a lawyer and you lived in a nice house with a pool. Maybe it was rock-hard abs. Maybe your thing was that you were a computer nerd and you spent Prom Night in your parents’ basement, listening to Rush and thinking about string theory. There was someone for everyone, just so long as you
were
someone.

Until freshman year, Will Prager didn’t have a thing. He was smart, but not a super-genius, and played sports, but not well enough to ever get a scholarship somewhere. Then some seniors who were in a band called Smarmy Kitten invited him personally to one of their shows. Their lead guitarist, Brandon Spencer, who always wore T-shirts of really obscure stuff like Merzbow and Tzadik Records, and was the coolest guy in the band, looked Prager in the eye and said, “Hey man, you should come to our gig. You’d like it.” Well, he did, and that was it. Ever since, Will Prager’s thing was music.

 • • • 

In the summer of ’05 alone, he drove the forty-five minutes from River Falls, Wisconsin, to Minneapolis ten times, and saw Built to Spill, Drive-By Truckers, Spoon, Heiruspecs, Dillinger Four, Boiled in Lead, Maitiera, Tapes ‘n Tapes, the Owls, and Atmosphere with Brother Ali, mostly
with his friends Vik Gupta and Ken Kovacs. He also started a band called the Lonesome Cowboys, with Vik on drums, Ken on bass, Zach Schmetterling on pedal steel, Erick Travis on violin, and Will on lead guitar and vocals. Their thing was that they played sad cowboy music, and played cover songs in the style of sad cowboy music. Their cover of “No Diggity” was off the chain! It made hot girls forget you were a dork, which is the point of all music. Girls were lucky, they didn’t have to have a thing. They just had to look nice and come to your shows and not call you all the time about stupid stuff.

 • • • 

But the new girl in the back of Killer Keeley’s fifth-period American History class, first day of school, junior year—she for sure had a thing. She had on oxblood Doc Martens, black nail polish, a black miniskirt, bright red Manic Panic hair, and a white T-shirt that read
THE SMITHS
and
MEAT
IS
MURDER
. Total Goth.

“What was North America like before the Europeans arrived?” Killer Keeley asked. Will Prager raised his hand, and Killer Keeley continued looking around the classroom. It was time for Prager to set the tone for how the year was gonna go.

“Anyone else?” Mr. Keeley asked. He somehow already knew better than to call on Prager, but no one else had his hand up. It was fifth period, right after lunch, so everyone was in a food coma, and it was eighty-five degrees outside, and the question was insultingly broad.

“I just want to be in love,” Prager said. “Will you help me or not?”

“I didn’t call on you, William,” said Keeley.

Prager sang the first lines of “Where Is the Love,” and the cute new girl in back, the Goth, laughed.

Rumor was Killer Keeley had gone soft over the last couple years. Now, thanks to Prager, he was losing his new batch of juniors in record time.

 • • • 

At the end of class, Prager got a good look at the girl who’d laughed at his heartbreaking rendition of the Roberta Flack/Donny Hathaway soul classic. She was even hotter than at first glance. She had boobs and an ass that looked too amazing for mere Wisconsin boys and their cold, jittery hands; he imagined her in Miami, riding a dolphin while wearing a bikini, capsizing sailboats full of horny men. Plus she was tall, at least six-two, which was cool with Prager, because he was six-four. And she thought he was funny, which was also pretty sexy.

 • • • 

An hour later, walking into Madame DuPlessis’s seventh-period French class, he saw her seated in the back, and probably smiled when he saw her, but tried not to in case she saw him. The seat to her left was open, and even though he didn’t like sitting in the back row because his vision wasn’t so good, he took it.

“Hey,” he said, glancing in her direction.

“Hey,” she said brightly, and even welcomingly, he thought.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Eva,” she said. “You?”

Uh-oh. He had to think for a second how to phrase it in a way that sounded memorable. “Will, Will Prager,” he said. Now he had to keep the conversation flowing somehow. “So, you like the Smiths?” he asked, looking at her shirt while simultaneously trying not to stare at her chest.

“Yeah, they’re OK,” she said.

“You a vegetarian?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I just wanted a Smiths shirt. You?”

“Yeah, just started,” he said. He’d seen a documentary about chickens at Ken Kovacs’s house the week before that had converted both him and Ken. It was now another thing they both had, in addition to their band.

Madame DuPlessis stood in front of the class, dressed for the heat in a sleeveless sundress, straight brown hair glistening under the fluorescent lights. She was kinda cute but she was also the mom of a kid who was a freshman, so that was weird.

“
Regardez ici, s’il vous plaît
,” Madame DuPlessis said.

“
À bientôt
,” Will Prager said to Eva. Damn, that was smooth, he thought, as he turned his attention to the teacher.

 • • • 

They had to speak and write things in French for the next fifty minutes and there was limited time for meaningful interaction until the bell rang, which, after a burning eternity, it finally did.

“You like Radiohead?” Will asked Eva. He was hoping that she’d linger and talk with him, but she was clearing her desk too quickly, sweeping her books into a black shoulder bag.

“Yeah, they’re cool,” she said. She seemed to be in a hurry.

“My band does a couple Radiohead covers,” Prager said. He had to work in the fact that he was in a band before it was too late. “We have rehearsal tonight.”

“What’s the name of the band?” she asked, standing up.

“The Lonesome Cowboys.”

“Cool, maybe I’ll check you guys out sometime,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”

“What are your plans tonight?”

“Going to make French onion soup with my dad,” she said. “Catch you tomorrow.” And with that, she was gone.

 • • • 

That night when he got home, Prager found this recipe in a cookbook in his dad’s kitchen:

French Onion Soup (Serves 8)

¼ cup unsalted butter

5 medium onions, thinly sliced

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon dried thyme

2 tablespoons dry sherry

3½ cups beef stock

1½ teaspoons kosher salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

8 slices of French bread, toasted

1½ cups Gruyère cheese

Heat the butter in a soup pot over medium heat until it is melted. Add the onions, bay leaf, and thyme. After 15 minutes, or as soon as the onions begin to brown, reduce the heat to medium low and cover, stirring frequently, until the onions assume a deep brown hue, about 30–40 minutes. Take care to not overcook the onions; patience is essential for perfect caramelization. Stir in the sherry.

Increase the heat to high, stirring vigorously, until all the sherry has cooked off. Stir in the beef stock, bring to a boil, and then simmer for 20 minutes while partially covered. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Remove the bay leaf before serving. Place eight ovenproof bowls on baking sheets. Fill each bowl with soup, top the bowl with one thin slice of toasted French bread, and gently cover each with 3 tablespoons of cheese. Bake in an oven at 450°F until the cheese is melted and becoming just a bit brown. Use Gruyère from Switzerland, or you’ll be wasting your time.

 • • • 

It was so beautiful, and strict, and complicated! Prager could never conceive of making such a meal. That someone his age would make this, a hot girl he liked, no less, made him feel inadequate and lustful.

 • • • 

Will Prager’s father, Eli, was in the living room, watching the first
Monday Night Football
game of the season, while Prager sat on the kitchen floor, about ten feet away, on the linoleum, still poring over the recipe. Eli was shorter and skinnier than his son, but somehow took up more space in a room; his scarred face, long biker beard, and the sharp greasy smell from his motorcycle shop had the effect of wet wood tossed on a campfire, and no one blocked his path, even at home.

“Hey, Dad,” Prager asked, “can we make French onion soup sometime?”

“French onion soup?” Eli asked. “What the hell you want that for?”

“I don’t know, something different,” Prager said. “But what’s the deal with Gruyère from Switzerland? This recipe is super anal that the cheese has to be from Switzerland.”

“Who the hell knows? That cookbook’s from the early seventies. I don’t think farmers in Wisconsin made that kinda cheese back then.”

“Who got this cookbook?”

“The damn thing belonged to your mother,” Eli said. He sometimes talked about her as if her death were a jackknifed semi on the road ahead. Will viewed it more like the giant crack in their concrete driveway; he felt it, saw it, and walked over it every day, but it was too big and strange to fix.

“Then we should keep it,” Prager said.

His sister, Julie, jogged into the kitchen and took a protein shake out of the fridge. She was in her usual summer outfit of cotton T-shirt with the neck and sleeves cut off, sports bra, and running shorts. It had been six months since their mom’s death, and Prager was a little worried about how his little sister was handling it. She and their mother hadn’t been getting along when their mom died. Since then, Julie had quit the softball team, which was weird, and now only did cross-country running, and hardly had friends over anymore. People kept asking Prager if his sister was depressed, and he wasn’t sure what to say. She was a
thirteen-year-old girl, the most puzzling and mutable creature in the known universe.

“Dad, you make anything, or are we on our own for dinner?” Julie asked.

Eli didn’t look up from the game. “If you want to order something, knock yourself out.”

“God, Dad,” Julie said. “You can be so indolent.” She was super into big words all the time, for no reason.

“If you don’t like it, you can skedaddle,” Eli said.

“What are you doing for food?” Julie asked Will.

“I’m gonna heat up a microwave burrito,” Prager said. “Then I’m gonna eat it over the sink like a total baller.”

“You’re so frickin’ lazy it kills me. You won’t even wash one stupid plate.”

“Nope,” Prager said, watching the three-minute digital timer start its countdown.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Eva for some reason. Her face. Her awesome, beautiful height. The things she said and the way she said them. Damn. Will Prager liked a girl. And her thing was cooler than just being a Goth. It was food.

 • • • 

Hanging out by the vending machines before school the next day, Prager asked his drummer, Vik Gupta, where to take a girl out to eat in Minneapolis, if she’s into food. Vik’s dad was a tenured professor at UW–River Falls and took his family to some real nice places.

“Let’s see. I liked Goodfellows,” Vik said. “Café Un Deux Trois. Hutmacher’s. Locanda di Giorgio. But they’re all
très cher
.” The French sounded fine coming from Vik. He was one of those guys who wore a tie to school, and the Nils P. Haugen Senior High standards of taste only required that you wore a shirt with no swear words on it. “Who’s the girl?”

“She’s new, her name is Eva Thorvald.”

“New blood,” said Vik. “Go big, Prager, blow her away. A first date calls for the most opulent luxury.”

“Well, that’s kind of the opposite of what I’ve been doing my whole life,” Will said. “I thought you didn’t want to set the bar too high right away.”

“You’re single now, right? That means that all of your previous plans have failed. Do you like this girl?”

“I think the most ever.”

“Then you, sir, have no choice.”

 • • • 

It took forever for fifth period to come around. She looked even more amazing than he remembered. She had almost the same outfit on except a Nick Cave shirt this time.

“How was the French onion soup?” he asked. He had figured this out with his last girlfriend—women love it when you remember shit they tell you, and love it more when you repeat it back to them. But in this case, he was genuinely curious about the soup.

“Oh, it was OK, thanks for asking,” Eva said.

“Just OK, huh?”

“Yeah. My dad bought me blue cheese by accident instead of Gruyère, because it was cheaper. So it wasn’t exactly how it’s supposed to be, I guess. The cheese really overpowered the broth.”

“You know, for French onion soup, the Gruyère from Switzerland is the best.”

“Wow,” she said. “I wouldn’t know.”

Will had thought for a long time about how he was going to phrase his next question, the big one. He wasn’t dealing with his freshman ex-girlfriend anymore; this girl was a sophisticated junior, and she was seriously into food. He took a deep breath. “How’d you like to go on a culinary adventure?”