Eating Heaven (11 page)

I have never been lucky in love.

My last attempt was seven years ago when I got that “cushy” job my dad was so fond of, working for the Oregon Nut Growers Board. The PR director, Daniel, and I were quick friends from the moment he briefed me on the state of nuts in Oregon (the most salient points being that Oregon is the largest hazelnut producer in the United States and the word “filbert” does not play well with the demographically desirable).

We shared a cynical sense of humor and grew closer over the next few months, dreaming up silly nut slogans and campaigns that bordered on subversive. One night, working late over a “101 Ways to Savor Your Nuts” brochure concept, the inevitable happened. We became lovers in
his office, on the floor, in a breathless rush of deadline tension and hormonal proximity. It was our secret.

Technically my boss, Daniel didn’t feel comfortable letting anyone know, so we rendezvoused undercover for the next three years, usually in my apartment late at night. The secrecy was exciting at first, fueling our risky groping sessions at work, our kisses stolen in the hallways, the too-long eye contact in meetings. When I started to complain that we didn’t really have a relationship, he agreed to movie dates if we arrived at the theater separately, and we occasionally escaped to his family’s Cannon Beach cottage on long weekends.

One day in our third year together, he hired Alicia as his assistant, for no apparent reason other than her proclivity for high heels and artificially induced cleavage, somehow always revealed in tight, barely buttoned blouses. To be fair, she did have a slavish quality that must have been part of the equation. I knew something was up. Daniel’s late-night work sessions no longer involved me; he’d given me a research project that required hours alone with statistical data. He was too tired to come over to my apartment after work. When I reached for his hand in the hallway, he stiffened and swiveled his head angrily to make sure no one had seen.

Within two months, Daniel and Alicia came out of the doing-it-on-the-floor closet and announced they were an item. To everyone except me. I found out sitting in a stall of the third-floor restroom, the too-tight waistband of my pantyhose binding my knees together.

“Don’t they look great together?” our receptionist said to the controller’s assistant as they sneaked cigarettes in the stall on the end.

“Yeah,” sighed the other woman. “But she has to transfer to another department now. Company rules. I hear marketing has an opening.”

When I finally worked up the nerve to leave the bathroom, I walked with superhuman tunnel vision to my cubicle, gathered my personal things, and left without a word to anyone. I called the board president the next day to announce my resignation, effective immediately.

I couldn’t imagine going on a job search with my permanently puffy eyes, my propensity to cry at radio songs I previously considered sappy, and those damn black-and-white diamond commercials on TV. I began
to freelance, hidden from the world in my little cave on Eighteenth Avenue. I realized what a dead-end nut PR had been, in so many more ways than one. I ate everything I could find but hazelnuts.

That was four years ago. Mostly, I’ve gotten over it. But since then, I haven’t been touched by human hands other than my own.

There are torturous moments of unrequited horniness. There are times when I miss the feeling of a warm body on top of me, breathing into my neck, making primal utterances no one else is allowed to hear. I can take care of the physical-satisfaction part myself, but I miss the company.

My Stefan fantasies are supercharged now, his cocksure voice growing needy and urgent as we writhe together in the tangle of my sheets, his neatly clipped hair mussed by the rake of my fingers. There’s no way I’d ever let him see anything of me other than my doctored head shot, but I figure he’s safe as a mental partner. Love is easier that way. No risk of rejection, no messy breakup. No three months spent burrowed under the blankets, still air growing stale and rank, unanswered phone calls and e-mails piling up along with bills and empty Chinese food and pizza boxes. If only Ben & Jerry delivered.

Of course, I could have it all wrong. In his e-mail, Stefan was kind and sensitive. He clearly likes me, or he wouldn’t have sent it. And just because he speaks with the cadence and vocabulary of someone straight out of a 1940s musical doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gay.

When it is officially morning, I roll out of bed, foggy and grumpy from sketchy sleep. My mission today is to finish as much work as possible so I can devote my day tomorrow to Benny.

Dear Mr. Bouche,
I type to one [email protected]. A Frenchman, to boot. I already see him in my mind: He is spruce and wiry and quick with his hands, in his late fifties and impeccably dressed beneath his chef’s jacket. Single, obviously, or he wouldn’t have just spent two years in Tibet. Not gay, but happily divorced from his beautiful French wife of twenty years, dating women half her age and dress size now. I grit my teeth and type:

I hit
SEND
, then try to work on the chicken soup piece, but all I can think of are those sappy books about medicating your soul with the stuff. Suddenly, they sound appealing. Comforting. Maybe there’s one for the cancer-patient soul or the niece of the cancer-patient soul. I could order it online, so no one would see me with that distinctive cover, like a billboard shouting
SENTIMENTAL NITWIT LOOKING FOR ANSWERS IN PAP
!

A new e-mail pops into my mailbox:
RE: Oregonian Interview.

Dear Eleanor,
it reads. After I addressed mine to
Mr
. Bouche!

I wince at the typos and the exclamation point and the English-as-a-second-language syntax. At least he doesn’t sound too snobbish. I hit
REPLY
and answer simply:
I’ll be there at three p.m.

Despite my reluctance, profiles are truly the simplest form of journalism. Make the subject a chef, and it’s even simpler. Once you get one talking, you don’t even have to ask questions. Though they may feign humility at first, they love to talk about themselves, their personal manifestos, mission statements, and what they consider utterly unique outlooks on the art of food preparation and its (and their) importance in the world. Most could spend hours talking about their influences alone, all the way back to nursery school, when they made that first mud pie using a delicate blend of sand, soil, and dried grass for just the right consistency.

Bearing this in mind, I don’t bother to prepare questions for the interview. I just hope I’m home in time for
Cooking with Caprial
.

At two o’clock, I pull myself away from explaining the intricacies of homemade chicken stock to get ready. I haven’t had to dress for business
in so long I don’t know what to wear to the interview. Why must he be French? Any regular Portlander, and I could wear khakis and a T-shirt and look dressed up. I rummage through my old PR suits, hopelessly outdated and stuffy-looking. And no doubt too small. Why have I never thrown them out?

At the back of my closet, I find a dusty pair of black slacks from a fat period. The dust shakes out and they zip almost all the way up. Luckily, I’m not a big tucker-inner, so the gaping waistband is easily concealed. I pull on a eucalyptus-colored top—I did listen when Mom taught me about setting off my eyes—and heels, and feel almost sophisticated. Hair twisted and clipped, a pair of earrings. Lipstick. I look in the mirror. Fake smile. Stick out my tongue.

I let down my hair and pull on a bulky cardigan: camouflage, armor, I know. But familiar, anyway, and at last I can go out into the world.

PanAsia is a Portland institution, the first restaurant here to fuse Asian influences back in the 1980s—although certainly not the last—and they’re still packed every night. They were innovators when they opened and they continue to be, although the fact that they’ve hired a new head chef is worrisome. Will the arrival of Henry Bouche be the beginning of something wonderful, or will he break the hearts of PanAsia’s devoted clientele, as hot new chefs so often do in established restaurants?

It wasn’t raining when I left home, but in the four minutes it takes me to drive east to the Pearl District, the clouds have decided to wring themselves dry with a light but decisive pelting rain. An April shower, in Northwest vernacular. Sure, it may not last all day, but it will definitely drench me before I even get near PanAsia, so I circle endlessly, looking for a parking spot close to the restaurant’s front door on Northwest Twelfth and Glisan.

One block past the restaurant, I turn right on Hoyt, home of my favorite bakery and its sumptuous chocolate chip cookies. Any other time in my life and I wouldn’t be able to drive past without stopping, but somehow even cookies don’t excite me at the moment. All I can stomach besides crackers is cereal and milk, the occasional bite of banana.

Around the block, and then I’m cruising by PanAsia again. Ahead about a half-block, a woman with a newspaper over her head inserts a key into her car door, so I gun the engine, determined to cut off the rusty Jeep in the next lane that’s also making a beeline for the spot. I look over at the chubby young guy driving, like,
What, are you nuts?

He’s not paying attention. He’s talking or singing, gesticulating with his hands, and he’s gaining on me. There’s no way he’s getting there first. I’m already five minutes late, so I floor it until I am nearly at the spot, then throw on the brakes as the woman pulls into the street. The Jeep flies by, chubby guy waving his hands; the woman’s face appears in her rearview, eyes and mouth wide in horror.

“Sorry!” I yell, then slip into the spot and walk quickly back to the restaurant, feeling my hair frizz at each drop of moisture.

Inside, the restaurant is dark and lacquered with gold highlights, sparsely furnished, elegant. PanAsia serves only dinner, so there’s no one on the floor yet. I walk back toward the kitchen, my heels loud on the glossy black-washed floor. “Hello?” I call out, pushing open the swinging door. “Mr. Bouché?”

A small Asian man looks up from the prep table, where he is mincing herbs into six-inch-high piles. “He not here yet, lady,” he says. “You have appointment?”

I nod, breathing in the smell of lemongrass and cilantro, anise, garlic. The kitchen is larger than I would have thought, orderly and gleaming. “Will he be here soon?”

“Yes, just late,” he says, and goes back to his work, skillfully chiffonading a pile of basil at lightning speed. “Always late.”

Figures. Frenchmen. I smile, lingering in the doorway so I can check out the amazing knife collection hanging on a magnetic strip above the prep table, the sheen of stainless steel cookware arranged in neat rows on wire shelving units along the wall. “Nice kitchen,” I offer. I’d give anything to cook in a kitchen like this.

“Yes,” he says, expressionless. “You wait in bar, okay, lady?”

I don’t know if he wants me out of his kitchen or if he saying it’s okay to wait in the bar, but I smile and let the door fall closed. I’ve never enjoyed being called lady, but today, in some perverse way, I like it.

I wander back toward the front, through the minimalist tables and chairs, toward the sleek black bar. In every room, there’s one of those curious offerings you always see in Asian restaurants: a tray with oranges, almond cookies, tea. Incense burning, thin wisps of smoke dancing toward the sky. My knowledge of religion is weaker even than my desire to practice it, but I always find these monuments charming, earnest. Hopeful.

Outside, a figure speeds past the closed bamboo shades, and I steel myself for Henry Bouche’s entrance. Should I call him
On-ree? Monsieur Boo-shay?

His voice precedes him through the door, singing “Just give me some kind of sign, girl, oh, my baby,” in a loud falsetto. It’s not Henry Bouche. It’s the chubby guy from the Jeep, and he’s not that chubby, just tall and built like a grizzly. Smiling, shaking rain out of his unruly ginger-colored hair.

“Oh, it’s you,” I say, not sure if he’s tracked me down to yell at me, but I don’t think so since he’s smiling, so I stammer something about being late for my appointment.

“Hell, I’m the one who’s late,” he says, reaching out a bear paw to shake my hand. “You must be the reporter. Geez, I had you figured for some little old gray-head, Eleanor Samuels. Name like that. You are most certainly not what I expected, Mrs. Leadfoot. Or should I say
Miss
Leadfoot?”

I shake his hand, which is damp and strong and almost covers mine, and stammer some more. Surely, he isn’t. Maybe he’s his assistant. “And you are?” I ask.

He laughs. Loudly. Throwing back his head. “Good thing I’m not one of those snooty chefs, or I’d be insulted,” he says. “I’m Henry. Henry Boosh. You have exactly forty-two minutes of my time, and then I’ve got to get to work. I hope you’ve got some good questions, Eleanor Samuels. I hate this interview bullshit.”

O
n Columbus Day 1963, my parents were expecting their first baby, Anne, to be born within hours. The autumn winds had kicked up that brisk morning, rustling the mammoth fir boughs that canopied Mom and Dad’s first little house in Lake Grove. As the storm worsened, so did the intensity of Mom’s contractions, and Dad worried that the trees would break and crash down upon them. By the time they got on the highway, high-profile vehicles were having trouble staying upright and on the road, and Dad held tight to the wheel, a writhing thing beneath his grip, struggling against him, jerking uncontrollably, pulling him and Mom and their unborn baby toward the unthinkable. The winds howled and screeched to well over one hundred miles per hour before measuring instruments all over Portland broke apart from the pounding.

At the hospital, four orderlies ran out to help Mom inside, to keep her from being swept away, as so many things, living and inanimate, would be that day. By the time Anne entered the world, the sky had calmed and night had descended, but thousands of acres of timber, countless houses and buildings, unimaginable wildlife and livestock, and forty-eight people had been lost.

I have loved windstorms since I first heard this story, probably before I could talk. I was always jealous that my own birth was so ordinary and modest, an uneventful delivery on a mild February day two years later. I wanted to be part of a great force of nature, unearthed from some
cataclysmic event that had nothing to do with anything that could be controlled.

Which would probably explain my fascination with Henry Bouche, né Boosh. Head bobbing, jaw working, eyes wide one moment, crinkled down the next—watching him talk is like flying around in up-and-down circles on the Spyder at Oaks Amusement Park. My neck cranes, my torso leans, my face stretches wide open to keep up with him.

The page of my notepad is as blank as when I pulled it from my purse. Beneath it the stainless steel work top is cool and smooth. Henry suggested we talk in the kitchen, and I am sitting here like a happy village idiot, grinning, nodding, not writing.

His skin glows pink in the bright light, his cheeks stubbled with strawberry growth. Dark brown eyes where there should be blue, considering his coloring. He doesn’t look like he’s reached thirty yet, or if he has he’s decided not to, dressed in hiking shorts and a T-shirt. His hands have not stopped moving since he first passed me in his Jeep.

“It’s not like I thought, hey, how about this for a big career move: I’ll go to Tibet,” Henry’s saying, throwing his arms open. I’ve yet to ask a single question and already I know more about him than I do about, say, Stefan, even Daniel.

I try to take notes, but I’m distracted by the fact that I love Henry Bouche. I will miss him if I never see him again. I don’t want to rub bodies. I don’t want to live with him. I just want to do this, sit here talking in this storybook kitchen with its fantasy appliances and fully stocked walk-in, mesmerized by the rhythm of the prep cook’s knife and hands, the aroma of some succulent sauce Henry is stirring. I want to live here, somehow, be a part of all this energy and creativity.

“It was more that I was on a personal journey, you know?” he continues. “I wanted to escape this culture as much as I wanted to study theirs. I mean, come on. Tibetan cuisine is not exactly the buzz, right? It’s not even that exciting, truth be told. If it was my career I’d been thinking about, I should’ve gone to Latin America, Africa.”

This is the closest we’ve gotten to the topics I’m supposed to be covering, so I clutch my pen, purse my lips in concentration, trying to think of a question.

“What?” he says, laughing. “Something I said?” He fishes a teaspoon from a drawer, dips it into the sauce he’s stirring, and sips. “Oh yeah, baby, that’s good. You want a taste?” He tosses the used spoon in the dish sink and grabs another from the drawer, dips it in the sauce. “Here.”

I slide around the prep table to the cooktop. My eyes come to his chin, which is square and dimpled. His forearm is nearly twice the width of mine. I have never felt smaller.

Henry hands me the spoon, thick fingers nimble and callused, holding it tight for a few seconds after I take it, teasing me. The sauce is a rich brown color flecked with green. “Peanut?” I guess, bringing it to my nose. “No,” I say, shaking my head in unison with his. “Tamarind? No, that’s not it, either.”

“Taste, Eleanor Samuels,” he says, folding his arms across his T-shirt, and I wonder if I am being tested.

I bring the spoon to my mouth and close my eyes. The immediate pungency of chile pricks my sinuses but doesn’t burn. It’s followed by a smoother taste, earthy and sweet, and the finish is delicately tinged with cilantro. I open my eyes. “Oh, my God, it’s delicious!”

He smiles. “So?”

“There’s some kind of chile—”

“Emmo,” he says, a variety I’ve never heard of.

“—and cilantro—”

He nods, face expectant.

“—but that’s it. That’s all I can identify.” I shrug. “And me a food writer.”

“Don’t worry,” he says. “Nobody gets it, and I don’t tell.”

I nod, lick the rest of the sauce off the spoon like a lollipop, then catch Henry watching me intently, still smiling.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just like watching you eat.”

If I could melt into a puddle and slide out of the room through the floor drain, I would. My face is so warm I know I’ve turned tomato red, and I can’t think of what to say. I have reevaluated my assessment of Henry Bouche, however, and decided I definitely do want to rub bodies.

“Wanna know a secret?” He grins like a mischievous child.

I try not to look too eager when I nod.

“Promise you won’t tell.”

“I’m a writer. You can’t ask me that.”

He stares at me until I say, “Okay. I won’t tell.”

“It’s not Tibetan. I just made it up.” He watches for my response.

“So is anything you cook Tibetan? I mean, it’s a newspaper. I’m kind of supposed to tell the truth.”

“Of course,” he says. “The curries, the dumplings, the tsampa—”

“Sam who?”

“Tsampa. It’s a barley paste that’s mixed with traditional Tibetan tea.” He raises his eyebrows. “It’s buttered and salted.”

“Ugh.”

“Right. The Tibetan food of today isn’t too appetizing to Westerners. When the Chinese invaded, they cut all the trade routes to India, so spices—with the exception of stuff like emmo that was locally grown—went right out the window, along with the Tibetan’s lifestyle and religion. These days it’s a lot of yak jerky and dried goat cheese and salty tea.”

“So you make it up.”

He laughs. “I reinterpret what was. I adjust for the reality that Americans probably won’t eat yak meat. I’m trying to get at the spirit of Tibetan food.”

“Which is?

He pauses and looks dead into me. “Earthy, subtle. Kind of sweet and slightly spicy.” His eye contact is so intense, so expectant, that gravity ceases to exist for a split second; my feet feel as if they might come up from under me. Then he winks at the prep cook, who smiles a nearly toothless smile at me, and the warmth of color returns to my face.

“Eleanor Samuels, you are welcome to stay, but I have to start prepping. We have a full house tonight.”

“God, I haven’t even . . .” I glance over at my notebook.

“My fault,” Henry says. “I got off on a tangent or two. Stay. Shoot some questions at me. If I get too far behind, though, I’m throwing you an apron. Deal?”

“Great, no problem,” I say, sliding back around to my notebook. I tap
the pen on the pad. “Let’s see. Why don’t we start with your earliest influences?”

When I finally leave two hours later, I am buzzing with energy, over-caffeinated perhaps by strangely flavored tea, but it’s something else, too. I haven’t had an animated conversation with someone else who loves food in so long I’d forgotten what it feels like.

I walk down Twelfth Avenue toward my car. In the distance, the high arc of the Fremont Bridge disappears into low-hanging clouds, cars driving straight into heaven.

At home, my phone machine is blinking: five messages. Christine, sounding happy, saying she and Reid have patched things up. “He really is a wonderful man,” she says. “He really wants what’s best for everyone.” She really doesn’t convince me.

Anne, sounding angry. “If I have to sit in this damn apartment one more day without even opening the curtains, for Christ’s sake, I am going to scream,” she says. “They camp out there in the parking lot, Eleanor, with their cameras and sound crews and satellite-tower trucks. They sleep out there, they eat fast food some stupid little assistant brings them. They are never gone. It’s un-fucking-believable.”

Yolanda, saying, “Ellie? Are you there? Have you talked to the home hospice people yet?” She sounds shaky. “I hope you understand, honey, but I just can’t be his caretaker. I know it’s a lot to ask, but . . . God, he loves you so much.” She stops, and while I don’t hear her crying, I know she is. When she speaks again, her voice is raw. “I hope you understand, Ellie. I just . . . well, I think you know. Call me, if you want to.”

Stefan (Stefan!), who sounds businesslike and distracted. “Oh, uh, Eleanor, I got your message about being ready for the assignment next week, and I think that’s doable. Just e-mail me back to confirm. I’m on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but my assistant David can get you the info. When you’re ready, of course. But next week, right?” Silence, except for the clicking of computer keys. “Oh, and”—the clicking stops—“I hope everything’s going well there. Really.” Another phone rings in the background. “Gotta go. Take care.”

I turn off the machine, even though there’s one message left. I close
my eyes, will my heart to slow, my jaw and stomach to unclench. I am his employee. That’s what all his care and concern is about. Managing me so that he gets his precious article done on time. I had been manipulated this way far too many times by Daniel. Why do I fall in love with the same prick over and over? I even did it with the high school yearbook editor.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I say, standing up, marching to my bookcase, grabbing the red-jeweled picture frame. Stefan sits in a casual pose on a high chrome stool, one foot propped on a rung with a slim hand on the thigh of his neat slacks. The other hand gestures to some presence off camera, and he is laughing, but carefully so that his face is not distorted by his smile. He is handsome, I’ll give him that—good bone structure, small nose, tight body—but he’s faking the smile, the casual pose. I see that now, having just been in the presence of Henry Bouche. Stefan is a phony, a pretend person behind the warm and caring facade.

I flick the catch on the back of the frame, slide out the magazine clipping, and crumple it in my hand. Buddy looks up with interest from her perch on the windowsill. “Here, kitty,” I say, and throw the paper wad to the floor. She leaps upon it, covering it with her front paws, then rips her teeth into a fold of paper and shakes the thing until it is surely dead. When she tires of it she stands, looks at me, winks an eye and mews.

“You definitely deserve real cream,” I tell her, going to the kitchen to fill her bowl.

Then I go back to the bookcase, take down the trifold cardboard with heart stickers, move the candle to a lower shelf beside some others, put the empty picture frame flat on the floor, and crush it with my heel. How stupid was I, how childish to even think that way? It’s not Stefan’s fault. He’s just doing his job. I’m the one acting like a thirteen-year-old. I survey the broken glass and bent frame, the scatter of red jewels on oak planks. Life is different now, I’m different, and I have more important things to attend to.

After sweeping up, I go back to the answering machine, knowing who will and will not be on it. My mother can hold a grudge forever. I tap the
LISTEN
button.

“Ellie? Hey, I guess I need someone to take me home tomorrow and
help get me set up. They’re sending round some home-care person, you know, to make sure I . . .” Benny clears his throat. “Well, that I got everything I need, but I’m supposed to have someone to help me out. Yolie’s too busy with her new job and all that, and I was wondering . . .” He stops again, and I picture him swallowing, Adam’s apple rising and falling. “I know you’re busy, too, honey. I hope it’s not too much to ask.”

Why me?
I wonder. How did I end up being Benny’s only choice? He is not my blood. Some would argue he tore my family apart. And even though I have no life, it’s not like I couldn’t. I could travel, maybe, do something exciting, something different.