The Cookbook Collector (8 page)

Yes, he thought, I’m inviting you, but he did not say yes. He was her employer. She could act with a certain plucky independence, but he would always be the big bad wolf.

“I have a theory about rare books,” Jess said. “Here’s what I think. Rare books—any books—start to die without readers. The words grow paler and paler.”

“Not true,” George said. “Unread words don’t fade at all.”

“I meant metaphorically,” said Jess.

“You’d rather see them all in public libraries?”

“Ideally, yes,” said Jess.

“I’ve got a signed
Harp-Weaver.”

“Really!”

He had to laugh. She was so eager.

She saw that he was in a good mood, and took the opportunity to ask, “Could I put up a poster outside the door?”

“No.”

“Wait. You haven’t seen it.” She hurried to the storeroom where she kept her backpack and brought out a poster, which she unrolled over his desk. Comically, with hands and elbows, she tried to hold down all the corners at once. Failing in the attempt, she weighted them with George’s books:
Gulliver’s Travels, The Good Earth
, an old thesaurus.

George saw a woodblock print redwood against a cloudless sky. One word in green:

BREATHE

“Sorry.” George pushed his books away. The poster rolled up instantly.

“It’s a limited edition,” Jess said.

“I don’t collect propaganda,” he told her.

“How is the word
breathe
propaganda? You can’t object to breathing.”

“I don’t object to breathing. I object to being told to breathe.”

“There is no agenda here,” she said.

“This is Save the Trees warning me that without redwoods I won’t breathe much longer. Therefore I should support the cause. I hope this is recycled paper, by the way.”

“Of course it is.”

“No posters anywhere near my store,” said George. “This is a poster- and leaflet-free zone.”

“Okay, okay,” she said.

“I’ll have to add that to my questionnaire:
Are you now or have you ever been involved in an evangelical, Messianic, or environmental cult?”

“Save the Trees is a registered nonprofit,” said Jess.

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said George. “Yorick’s is a nonprofit too.”

“And ‘Breathe’ is actually the title of a poem.”

Breathe now
.
Breathe soon
.
Early and often
.
Between times
Before it’s
Too late
.

“Sorry.” George handed her the rolled-up poster. “No.”

“You don’t like new poetry?” said Jess.

“I don’t like bad poetry,” said George, and then with some horror, “You didn’t write that, did you?”

She shook her head.

“I’m relieved to hear it.”

“I used to write poetry when I was younger,” Jess said. She had kept a notebook by her bed, in case some line or image came to her in her dreams, but she had always been a sound sleeper, and no Xanadus or nightingales woke her. She read Coleridge or Keats and felt that they had covered the great subjects so well that she had nothing to add about beauty, or immortality of the soul. “Now I just read.”

She spoke cheerfully, without a hint of wistfulness. She was indignant sometimes, but never wistful. Opinionated, but still hopeful in her opinions. Oh, Jess, George thought, no one has hurt you yet.

7

J
ess saw that George detested Noah, but she thought nothing of it. George disliked Noah because he disapproved of Noah’s cause, and George hated causes, unless they were his own. He seemed to think that other people’s efforts to change the world were doomed.

Whenever the tree movement got bad press, George cut out the article for Jess. He was a regular clipping service, convinced that Save the Trees had ties to extremists who spiked redwoods with steel rods. He had no hard evidence, of course, but the news was full of loggers spooked and occasionally injured by some radical’s idea of altruism. “I suggest,” he told Jess on her last day before Thanksgiving break, “that you look at this discussion of possible links between Save the Trees and the incident in Humboldt County.”

“No one at Save the Trees would support spiking,” Jess exclaimed, as she glanced at the article from the
San Francisco Chronicle
. “I’ve been volunteering for three months and I’ve never heard of anyone in favor of spiking.”

“How about people in favor of bankrupting and maiming loggers?”

“The loggers are exploited by Pacific Lumber,” Jess said. “They’re being used.”

“So are you.”

Someone else would have taken offense, but Jess wondered how George had become so sour. She reasoned that it had to do with being rich, that George had accrued so much that his life became one long struggle to conserve his property. How strange to live that way, like a snail, inside your own wealth.

And yet she had a little money now and liked it. She owned one hundred shares of Veritech, the hottest stock ever. Jess often checked Veritech’s progress on her computer, where she loved to watch the stock price bob and float on the buoyant market. At first, watching made her feel guilty, but she quickly rationalized. The windfall wasn’t for herself, or her paltry bank account, or paying bills. She would give her stock to a great cause, or perhaps, if its value rose even higher, to several: the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and Greenpeace, as well as Save the Trees.

“Three months,” George said as he was locking up. “I didn’t realize Save the Trees had been around that long.”

“Are you, like, a neo-con?” Jess asked him.

“No!” George shot back, surprised.

“You’re so cynical,” said Jess.

George considered this as they stood outside the door. “I’ve been around the block.”

“You’re very disapproving,” she chided gently. “It’s not like I’ve done anything to you. It’s not like I’ve done anything you mentioned on your questionnaire.”

“Not yet.”

Six o’clock. A light rain fell, and a pile of blankets stirred in the doorway across the street. As the shops began to close, new salespeople emerged.

Jess didn’t seem to notice. “Good night,” she said, and tugged the bottom of her jacket.

George wanted to zip her up himself. “Where’s your bike?”

“It’s in the shop,” Jess said. “I’m getting a tune-up.”

“I’ll give you a ride,” he offered.

“No, that’s okay, I’m just going to catch the bus …”

“The
bus?”

“It’s hardly even dark,” she protested as George took her arm and steered her across the street to the garage where he parked his Mercedes.

“You drive this big car all by yourself?” Jess asked, as he unlocked the door for her.

“Yes,” George said. “I drive unassisted. Where are we going?”

“Derby Street,” she said.

That surprised him. He hadn’t pictured her there. Then he realized that she was going to Noah’s place.

“A bunch of people live there.”

Ah, the Save the Trees Co-op. George glanced at her quickly. He wanted to ask, Do you have any idea who owns this property? Have you checked the nonprofit status of this organization? Have you considered that Save the Trees could be a shell for something else? But she was a grown woman, apparently.

He drove to Derby Street with its big old houses and tall fences and brambly gardens. “Thanks for the ride.” Jess dragged her backpack after her. “See you later.”

George considered the brown shingled co-op on the corner. A great shambling Californian manse, probably as old as his, maybe even a Maybeck with its picturesque peaked roof and diamond-paned windows. There was a garden too, possibly a double lot. Now he was a little jealous. He saw a cottage peeking out above the slatted fence. Jess turned and waved. She seemed to be waving him away, but he stayed until the door opened.

Jess had never been invited to a party at the Tree House before. Quickly she closed the door behind her. She didn’t want to introduce herself with a Mercedes idling in the background.

“Hi. I’m early,” Jess apologized to the tiny woman who stood before her.

“Hi. I’m Daisy.” The woman wore overalls and she had a buzz cut. She seemed both delicate and fierce and wore a T-shirt with
HERE I STAND
printed on it.

Jess wondered if Daisy was the woman’s real name, or one of those forest names old-timers took in the interest of anonymity and protection. Names like Butterfly or Gypsy or Shakespeare, evoking expeditions, dangers that had passed, inside jokes from long ago. “Is Noah here?” Jess received no answer as Daisy led her down some stairs and up others, through open fire doors and finally into the depths of the house, where Daisy disappeared to answer her phone.

She had never seen the Tree House at night. Vast and dark, lit with candles for the occasion, the rooms looked magical, the staircase a citadel, with its own strange inglenooks and deep dusty treads. In the fireplace, instead of wood, a great gong and mallet hung from a stand. The rooms were filled with couches and mismatched armchairs, and floor cushions, some with cats, and some without. Living ivy climbed to the ceiling and outlined every aperture. In the candlelight the ivy-framed bay window became a bower, the leafy doorways passages to secret gardens.

“Didn’t anyone give you a drink?”

Startled, Jess recognized the founder of Save the Trees. Leon was famous in his world, and famous for his look as well. He was over thirty, wire-thin, with black unruly hair, dark skin, and eyes startlingly blue. His jeans and faded T-shirt hung on his gaunt frame. She saw him on occasion leafleting, but she knew him from Brandeis, where he had been a graduate student briefly, her freshman year.
Knew
was probably too strong a word. She’d had a serious crush on him, but he had never spoken two words to her then, and he didn’t seem to recognize her now. She had heard the others talk about him, of course. He was a brilliant organizer, a heartbreaker, supposedly, and also somehow rich. He owned the house and rented it for nothing, a dollar a year, to Save the Trees, as headquarters and training camp and experiment in communal living.

“I’m sorry I’m so early,” Jess said, as Leon got her a rum and Coke. “I’m Jess. Noah’s friend.”

“Oh, good, I’m Noah’s friend too,” said Leon coolly. “Did he give you the tour?”

“I’m not sure where he is.”

“Come take a look.”

“This woodwork is incredible,” she said as she followed him up the stairs.

“This is all old growth,” said Leon. “A lot of trees gave their lives in 1905.”

“How did you find this place?”

“Real estate agent,” Leon said.

“You just asked for listings of fairy-tale houses?”

Leon smiled.

The second floor had a sweet musty smell of old wood and dust. The air was heavy, almost felted with smoke and dust motes. Hushed.

“This landing here is so big we made it into another room with curtains. It doesn’t have a door, but it’s got a great view of the garden.” Leon pulled open a heavy drape spread over a brass rod and revealed a little room with a window seat the size of a twin bed. Noah and a couple of other guys sat there passing a joint.

“Oh, there you are,” said Jess, and everybody laughed except for Leon, who watched her quietly. Forgive me, but he wasn’t worth it, Leon seemed to tell her with his eyes. Or was she imagining his response?

Noah stood to greet her, but instinctively Jess stepped back. “I’ll be downstairs,” she said lightly.

“Don’t go.” Noah followed her.

The living room was louder on reentry, pulsing with music.

“Let me get you a drink,” shouted Noah.

“I have one.” Jess raised her glass to show him.

“Okay.” He looked slightly nervous standing there, as though unsure if she was really angry. Something was dawning on him, the very thought she’d had upstairs: that they’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks; that their friendship was rather tenuous; that they hadn’t spent much time together.

“Do I even know you?” Jess asked suddenly. The question might have been devastating in a quieter room, but Noah couldn’t hear.

Comically, he cupped his hand behind his ear.

“You look like an old man asking ‘What’s that, dear?’” Jess told him.

He couldn’t hear that either.

“I’m leaving,” Jess mouthed at him.

He tried to take her hand, but she was tired of him and slipped away, escaping to the back of the house, wandering into an old-fashioned kitchen crowded with cooks and hangers-on drinking beer.

“He’s got this humanist, class-warfare streak,” one of the guys was saying. “It always comes down to ‘other species are lesser.’”

A dozen pie shells covered a long scarred table. A small buff woman with a tattoo of the god Shiva on her bicep was pouring quiche filling into each. Jess recognized her from leafleting. Her name was Arminda, and as she poured, she talked to another leafleter, a blond, blue-eyed girl from Idaho who went by Cat.

Arminda was telling Cat, “I had one more conversation with Aisha where I said there are things that are so structural I didn’t know if we could repair them.”

“And that was it?” asked Cat.

“Well, not exactly. We’d have this post–breakup sex where it was supposed to be the last time, and then the next time was going to be the last time, but I was kind of into the idea of being single, and I thought I might have a straight moment, you know?”

Cat giggled.

“Because there was this guy who was kind of eying me. But then—you know Johanna, right? I had this thing with her, but afterward I felt so bad because she was such a sweetheart. She’s so sensitive! How do you tell someone you were just going through this crazy thing and you aren’t really interested in that person herself? I was behaving really badly. But that’s how I got the stomach flu—probably from Johanna. It was this really, really contagious, really virulent …”

Jess eyed the quiches on the table.

“I was trying to break up with Aisha and I was behaving so badly with Johanna, but I had to get everything out of my system,” Arminda continued as Jess walked out, feeling strange, and also invisible.

No one acknowledged her as she walked down the hall. She saw couples in the bathroom, but no one looked at her. She didn’t recognize anybody. Were the other guests all strangers? That couldn’t be, but at the moment she couldn’t tell any of them apart. She felt light-headed in the hazy, mazy house. The smell of beer mixed with the cloying smoke upstairs and made her queasy. She stepped out the back door and descended creaky steps for air.

How overgrown the garden was. Picking her way through ferns and banana trees, she almost stepped into a pocket-sized pond choked with lily pads. The Save the Trees office looked like a witch’s house in the dark, its peaked roof and walls overhung with ivy. Behind the witch’s house, a massive oak filled the sky. No stars pricked this tree’s canopy, no moonlight sifted through these leaves, but a swing hung down on ropes so long that, in the dark, Jess scarcely saw where they began. She tugged at one; the rope held, and the wood swing bumped her hip. Shivering, she sat down and tucked her skirt under her legs.

Suddenly Leon appeared behind her. She jumped up.

“You forgot your jacket.”

“How did you know it was mine?”

“Wallet in the pocket,” he said. “Probably not a great place for it, by the way.” He looked amused when she tried to take the jacket from him. It took her a moment to realize that he was holding it for her so that she could slip her arms inside. “Too many friends of friends in there.”

“Well, that’s what I am,” she pointed out. “Or was.”

“You and Noah?” Leon asked.

“Is that what he told you?”

Leon hesitated a moment, but only a moment, before he nodded.

“I barely know him.” Jess sat down again and pushed off with her feet to start the swing, but the ropes were so long she only swayed a little. She kicked off again.

“Do you want a push?”

“Sure.” She hoped that sounded diffident enough, as if to say, Since you’re just standing there, you might as well, but she wasn’t diffident at all. She lifted off as he pushed gently, hand between her shoulder blades. When she returned to him, he pushed lower on her back. A strange sensation, the brief contact, and then the long downstroke of anticipation. “My sister used to push me,” she told him.

“I have sisters.”

“Really?”

“Are you surprised?”

She stretched her legs and leaned back to swing higher. Her hair blew over her shoulders. Her skirt came loose and billowed over her knees. He was watching her, and as she rose and fell, she felt his gaze as radiant warmth. Of course she knew all about the male gaze, and she resented being gazed upon, but she was young enough that her resentment was purely theoretical. She was a paper feminist, just as Emily was a paper millionaire.

“You don’t look like the kind of person who has sisters,” she said.

“What do I look like?”

She thought for a moment as she swung forward. When she returned to him, she said, “An only child.”

“Too selfish for siblings?” She was almost horizontal now, leaning back as she held the ropes.

“Way too selfish.”

He pushed hard with both hands, and she shot forward, laughing. It felt so good to plunge feetfirst into the night. She felt a rush of air as she vaulted up into the dark branches. Too quickly she sank down again, the ground rose up, and the blood rushed to her head and dizzied her. She dragged her feet to slow herself, but she couldn’t stop all at once. Twice, then three times, she braked with her feet, until Leon caught the ropes from behind. He was close enough for her to feel his breath against her hair. “Are you all right?”