Food Whore (16 page)

 

Chapter 16

M
ELINDA KICKED OPEN MY DOOR ON
S
UNDAY NIGHT.
“Hey, you wanna take a little study break with me?” she asked. “I brought snacks.”

“Sure.” I had been studying up on clothes and restaurants and food—­not working on my Twentieth-­Century Food Systems paper.

Emerald was gone, so Melinda and I moved to the living room and plopped down on the floor with a box of Triscuits and a jar of mayonnaise.

“It's tarragon . . .” She turned the jar to read the label. “Dijon garlic? I don't know. It was an impulse buy at Food Emporium. Trashy and delicious,” Melinda said, before she threw a whole Triscuit in her mouth.

“Ha, come to think of it, I studied straight through dinner. I'm starving!” Sometimes I found reading about food could almost replace eating it.

“Seriously? You are working way too hard, then. Follow my lead and chill out.” She smiled. Melinda rarely smiled, but when she did, you got a sense of the girl underneath her too-­cool-­for-­school exterior. She was kind of a goofball.

I opened a napkin, laid out some Triscuits, spread the mayo on top, then remembered I had a leftover salad in the fridge and added some lettuce for an extra dose of freshness.

Melinda told me about her haphazard job search; her mom, who was about to get remarried; the amazing and terrible acts at a comedy show she'd snuck into. She spoke fast and in a list-like way. Next, next, next.

“But anyway,” Melinda said, in her screen diva voice, “what's happening in the world of Tia?”

“Well . . .” I started. Melinda was chomping away at the Triscuits. I thought I could let out a bit of tension. That wouldn't be so bad. It might even help me live a more stable life. “The other day my dean put me on probation.” This I knew was okay to say and the words hissed out of me like air out of a tire.

“Probation? Isn't that sort of a big deal?”

“Yeah. It is . . . but it isn't,” I said. The Tellicherry review was coming out that week and I'd get that surge of exhilaration again. Even thinking about it, my energy picked up, my posture straightened. My words in the paper had an unmistakable effect on me.

Melinda went back to pondering the thatching on a Triscuit. It didn't seem like she wanted to hear any more, but I went on anyway. “What if I told you that . . . I got a really great job that I can't tell anyone else about. I just started, but it's more than I ever could have imagined.”

Melinda leaned back. “Go on . . .” she said skeptically.

I stammered, already at an impasse. That was all I could say, and hearing it come from my mouth, I realized it wasn't much and that it raised more questions than it answered.

Just then Emerald walked in, still on the phone. “Hey, Mom? I gotta go. Tia and Melinda are here,” she said, then hung up. “Hey.” She nodded to us before making her way toward her room.

Melinda and I didn't even have time to say hey back before she closed the door.

“She's the worst,” Melinda whispered. “So what have you found out about her life?”

“Uh . . . I did see something weird.” I knew the Bergdorf incident was fair game, though I hadn't intended to make it a big deal. I guess I wanted to talk to someone about something
real
. I felt bad that it was gossip about Emerald, but I knew this was the type of thing Melinda would be interested in.

Melinda's eyes widened. “Really?”

“Well . . .” I lowered my voice, more lip-­synching than sound. “I think there's something up with her mom. About two weeks ago, I saw them at a store together, and Emerald's mom was—­”

“A store? What store?”

“Oh, I forget the name of it,” I lied. “It's in Midtown.”

“Hm . . .” That explanation didn't satisfy Melinda, so I hurried up with the meat.

“Her mother is . . . not all there . . . I don't know why.”

“I thought you were gonna say something about her having a sugar daddy or something.” Melinda shrugged her shoulders, scanning the room, bored. “I'm getting sleepy anyway,” she said, picking up her things. “Let me know if Miss Big Boobs does something crazy. The mom thing isn't doing anything for me.”

Her nastiness pained me, but I didn't let on. “Yeah, for sure,” I said. “Good night.”

Why did I feel the need to talk shit about Emerald? She was by no means my best friend, but suddenly I felt shameful and dirty.

After Melinda went back to her room, I tried to resume my restaurant research, but the conversation bothered me. I didn't want to be that “mean girl,” but it seemed Melinda and I only had two modes: gossiping or some half friendship of incomplete sentences and barely there stories.

The story about Emerald's mom wasn't nice, and I shouldn't have been the one spreading it. But at least it was tangible and tellable, two things I had in short supply.

 

Chapter 17

A
FTER CLASS ON
T
UESDAY
I
STOPPED INTO
W
HOLE
F
OODS TO
escape and relax. I had made a habit of wandering around the city's markets after class. I didn't have to walk far. On one block, you'd have a Greek grocery store, stocked with salty triangles of feta peeking out of a barrel, every color of olive in every iteration—­pitted, brined, and herbed. There was the Indian market with six shelves devoted to turmeric. And finally, Chinatown and its cacophonous cross section of humanity—­the grandma bargaining for vegetables, the kid poking mischievously at the dried fish, the newlyweds piling their cart for their first home-­cooked dinner with their parents.

Whole Foods wasn't that exotic, but it was my Tuesday and Thursday spot. After my internship seminar, I went to the Lower East Side location, which I liked because it was roomier and less chaotic than the Union Square one. I walked through the aisles and unwound without tourists colliding into me.

I stopped in the produce aisle to look at their selection of exotic eggs. They had white eggs, brown eggs, large, extra-­large, and jumbo. They also had tiny quail eggs, weighty duck eggs, and a giant forty-­dollar ostrich egg.

I picked up the ostrich egg and felt the viscous insides slosh around. I flipped it over and over in my hands like a Magic 8 Ball.

First, I'd loved Helen Lansky. She was why I came to NYU.

I didn't get the Helen internship. I got Madison Park Tavern.

But then Michael Saltz had given me the opportunity to work with him. He would ensure I'd be set up with Helen. Which brought me back to the beginning.

I had to keep sight of that. Lately, with everything happening, I'd started to forget why I'd agreed to this whole arrangement. The clothes, the fine dining, the hot waiters and chefs—­they all threatened to cloud the real reason I was jeopardizing my personal relationships and my place in grad school.

You're doing this for the right reasons,
I told myself.
Steady on.

Around and around the egg went, and now the insides had taken on their own momentum, whirlpooling around.

Then someone bumped me on the hip and the giant ostrich egg fell to the ground.

“
Merde!
” Pascal Fox said.

I didn't have time to react to his presence. We just watched the egg. At first, it seemed like it'd be okay. But then a crack wiggled its way from the bottom to the top, and the insides took their cue, oozing out with a definitive
blurp
.

“My, my,” Pascal said.

We watched as the white spread fast and loose, while the bright orange yolk moved with purpose, like a paramecium.

“Kinda sexy, no?” he remarked, more to the egg than to me, but I blushed four thousand degrees anyway.

Oh. My. God.

A manager came rushing over.

“Oh! Chef! Good to see you. Don't worry about this at all. We'll take care of it right now.”

“Thanks, Frank,” he said. I was surprised that he knew the manager—­who wasn't wearing a name tag—­personally, and that he was taking the blame for the egg. But I was even more surprised when he stuck around with me and smiled a full, toothy, letter-­D-­shaped movie star grin.

The magazines said he was only twenty-­eight, which was young for an executive chef but felt old to me. He looked like a man. Even when Elliott turned twenty-­eight, I doubted he would look as manly as Pascal. Somehow, in the supermarket lighting, Pascal seemed hotter—­more capable and more real. In restaurants, he blended in with the scenery of the meal. But here, holding his basket just like everyone else, looking at the discounted produce, getting lost in the aisles, his presence became even more magical, as if I were seeing a beautiful, powerful animal in the wild instead of at the zoo.

“Where's your boyfriend?” he teased.

“I was eating with my friend at Tellicherry,” I said, which was kind of true. Michael Saltz was most certainly not a boyfriend. I hoped Pascal wouldn't mention a “boyfriend” again so we could continue like this, talking in a safe, cordoned-­off ring away from Elliott and Michael Saltz. Could Michael Saltz blame me for running into him here?

“Girls' night at Tellicherry? You know how to live, then. Aren't you in school?”

“Well . . . yeah . . .” I started, wondering how he'd known. I was wearing regular jeans, a toggle coat, and ballet flats—­standard grad school wear. And it was midday, so clearly I wasn't at work. “School's okay,” I said, “but I prefer being around this stuff.”

“Gigantic cracked eggs?”

I giggled, a high-­pitched girly trill, an uncharacteristic sound that momentarily startled me. Was he really talking to me this much? Again? “No, I mean I like being around food and learning about it and stuff.”

Learning about it and stuff
? Apparently I always had grade-­A babble for Pascal.

“Yeah, me too,” he said. He spoke like he was just another NYU student, low-­key and modest, some guy shopping for groceries. Not some super-­hot celebrity chef, the preferred topic for every food magazine and blog.

“Well, see you around,” he said, then bowed his head in the courtly manner that I knew from Madison Park Tavern was the mark of a fine restaurant.

“Yeah.” I gulped. “See you around.”

He picked up his basket of mushrooms, herbs, and heavy cream, and walked away.

I looked down at my outfit. It was one thing to see him in the dark lights of Tellicherry when I'd worn that Vivienne Tam, but unlike Pascal, supermarket lighting wasn't doing me any favors. Michael Saltz didn't want me wearing my Bergdorf clothing out, but how would he know? I had a whole closet of shiny, new, sexy, impressive things that deserved to be seen. It wasn't like I was telling ­people where I was eating dinner. No one besides Elliott knew that I had barely touched designer clothing. Emerald and Melinda were somewhat aware I was a fashion dilettante, but they were two ­people in a city of 8.5 million. I just needed to keep them at arm's length. Everyone else would assume I had always had these privileges.

But I could only self-­loathe for a second or two because then I saw Pascal Fox turn back toward me, like he'd just thought of something. Maybe he wanted yams, or cauliflower, or oranges. Not me again.

“Hey, Tia,” he said.

He remembered my name. Now I felt like that ostrich egg, rolling around, oozing goo. He whistled slightly as he spoke, a part of his accent that made him seem like he was whispering something to me and only me.

I suddenly thought of Elliott. He and I had started dating in freshman year. He was my first love, my first—­and only—­lover. Early in our relationship, he had given me a list titled: “59 Reasons Elliott Loves Tia.” Once I had read it, I'd recited a list of my own, right off the cuff. Fifty-­nine to his fifty-­nine, and we kept building on that list in our minds and in our hearts for the next four years.

This was fresh in my mind as Pascal inched nearer, every millimeter burning into that memory. When was the last time I'd had these red-­hot feelings for Elliott? Maybe never. We had started as friends, temperate water that had worked itself to a simmer.

But with Pascal, I was already at a full boil.

“Yes?”

“Can I get your opinion on something?” He bit his lip and sounded adorably unsure. His chef's coat was unbuttoned at the top, and I was disappointed to see a T-­shirt instead of his bare skin.

“Sure,” I said.

“Come on.” He nodded his head toward the spice aisle and I followed, practically skipping behind him because apparently my feet didn't know how to play it cool.

“I'm working on a new dish with fluke and lovage, but it's falling a little flat for me,” he said. “What do you think?”

I scanned the spices. Something to pull them together . . . “Hmm, okay. Let me think.”

We stayed silent for a while, pondering the selection.

“You know what lovage is, yes?” he asked finally.

I shot him a face. “Um, yeah. It's been written up all over the place.”

He laughed. “Sure. I should have known you'd know. But do you like it?”

“Well . . . actually.” Normally, in any room, I was the food expert. But this was New York City. And here was Pascal Fox. And I was just one of thousands of ­people like me, ­people who had curiosity and a computer. “I've never had lovage,” I admitted. “I know it's like celery, but milder. And I know it looks like fennel. And I know it comes in giant stalks and . . .”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on right there! You can talk all you want, but that doesn't tell you everything about love—­”

I kept expecting him to finish the word, but he let it hang until I interjected, my voice trapped in my throat. “Lovage?” I said.

“Love-­age.” He smiled. “What do your book smarts tell you goes well with lovage?”

I felt him watching me as I reconsidered the spices, trying—­and failing—­to keep my heartbeat soft and steady. “You said fluke, right? Well, I'd stay away from the stronger spices that would otherwise pair with lovage—­cumin, coriander, etc. And I see you already have dill in your basket.” As I thought, I got calmer. I didn't even need to look at him; I felt Pascal warming up, smiling at my knowledge.

God, I loved that—­being challenged and appreciated and heard. As much fun as I had with Elliott, I could never talk to him directly about food. He'd listen, sure. He'd try to understand, of course. But I'd always hold back, curbing my passion. What if I didn't have to?

“So I think . . .” I picked up a jar from the spice rack. “Nigella.”

“Nigella! A daring pick. Why nigella?” Pascal asked, taking the jar from my hands.

“Because the oniony flavors will complement the lovage. Onion, celery, fennel. It all goes. And it has that sort of prickly pungency to it. The taste matches the texture.” I looked up at him, but he kept his lips tightly sealed, as if words were about ready to come out . . . but didn't. Did he want to correct me? Say “never mind”?

“But . . .” I looked back on the shelf. “If you're not looking for textural contrast, maybe a whisper of white peppercorn?” Strain had entered my voice because he wasn't giving me any feedback. He was the chef, not me.

Finally, he put me at ease. “Why did you stop?” he asked. “You were giving me free ideas!”

I blushed. “Oh, I guess I didn't know if you liked my suggestions.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I liked them very much. Pretty good for never having tasted love-­age ever.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, trying not to beam. All I thought was,
Thank you, you get it.

“Well, why don't we pop your lovage cherry?” he said.

Under any other circumstances combining lovage and cherries would have repulsed me, but now I simply melted.

“Come to Bakushan now. I'll try out the dish and you tell me what you think.”

I gasped and leaped up in the air. “Really?”

He touched me on the shoulder and a chill zipped to my toes. “Really,” he said.

Before I knew it, we were in the checkout line together. I briefly checked my phone to see if Elliott or Michael Saltz had called or texted, but thankfully neither had. For now, I pretended that I was in another world without them.

“O
KAY, GIVE ME
fifteen minutes,” he said. “Study up, book smarts girl!”

The restaurant was closed until five
P.
M
.
, so it was only us plus some prep cooks in the back. The dining room looked oddly inert and uncool in the light. I heaved my books up and tried to do my reading, but I couldn't concentrate, not with Pascal clanking around in the open kitchen.

I kept my head down and my eyes up, watching him. The situation was at once strange and homey. We barely knew each other and yet the moment now felt tender, like he was my boyfriend making me breakfast while I worked.

I closed my book and walked up to the kitchen pass.

“Hey, brainiac,” he said upon seeing me. “Sick of the books and wanting to do some hard labor, huh?”

“Ha! Yes. Over books any day,” I said, and walked in. I saw him take me in, from head to toe. Not the once-­over that I'd gotten at Yale or from Emerald, but another sort of thing, a look that said,
I'm glad you're here.

He put me to work.

“Smaller,” he said, looking at my lovage chunks. “Like this.” His knife vibrated up and down, and before I knew it he'd tada-ed a mound of perfect translucent green cubes.

“Oh, jeez! I've never learned knife skills. I guess I've sort of faked it this whole time.”

He leaned his hand on the counter and looked at me curiously, licking his soft, ribbonlike lips in thought. I had to hold on to the ledge for balance.