“Did they score well at survey?” Jeremy said.
“Plus, Dante likes them.”
“So,” Dante said, trying to return to the matter. “We give these ideas their day in court, as it were.”
“I already did,” Jeremy said. “Jules and I were highlighting local produce, meats and vineyards for the past couple years. That’s what we were all about.”
“Yes, of course, you and Capelli,” Dante said. Her name jarred him, Jeremy thought. Still. “You guys were great at whatever it was that you did. We’re talking about something different here. Something really new.”
They were just pulling up to the gates at Garrulous Greens, a pretty farm on a quiet road in Langley with deep frog-filled ditches and high hedges on either side. Once through the farm gate, they were directed up the tree-lined drive by officious volunteers in faux-chef gear, and left into a paddock off the main yard, which had been converted into a parking lot. Dante tentatively manoeuvred the Jaguar
in between a Range Rover and a convertible Ford Falcon, which reminded Jeremy of Jules’s old car.
They got out and stretched in the cool fall air, then walked through the grass to the main yard, where they exchanged their tickets for a wine glass and a napkin each.
The general idea was to explore at your leisure, from the entrance yard up behind the farmhouse to the working part of the farm. There you found several barns, a greenhouse and a chicken run. The fields stretched away from there to the back of the property, itself lined with the same hedges that lined the road. It was a tidy farm in Jeremy’s experience, a bit of a show farm, although Jeremy did not grudge them their mustard greens.
Down the various lanes meanwhile, among the various buildings, visitors would find the food and wine tents. And here, as you wandered slowly and nibbled and sipped, you were encouraged to have your own personal epiphany about the relationship between working farms and the food that you eat. It was contrived, certainly, but Jeremy knew that most people needed the lesson.
There were over thirty tents this year, under the airy covering of which representatives from “the better-known organic restaurants” and most of the local vineyards were busy meeting and greeting and providing samples. Chefs were preparing finger food exemplary of their craft and style, while the vintners were standing at attention with their various Gewürztraminers and Pinot Blancs, Pinot Noirs and the odd Okanagan Cabernet.
Jeremy left Dante and Benny to explore by himself, to chat with the chefs and winery reps he knew. Almost to a person he was greeted with condolences about The Monkey’s Paw, and about half of those people tagged on an additional comment along the lines of: “Inferno Coffee, though. Wow.” The meaning of the
wow
varied widely depending on the speaker.
He stopped at Valley Vineyards and talked with one of their representatives, who poured him a glass of Gewürztraminer—thirst quenching, with light grapefruit and lychee flavours—before offering his regrets about The Monkey’s Paw. After his
Inferno-Coffee-wow
comment, he added: “Very surprised about that, Jeremy. What are you planning together?”
Purple and gold food, Jeremy told him.
“Speaking of Inferno, though,” said another wine rep after a parallel conversation ten yards further down the lane, “isn’t it something to see them at one of these little events.”
Jeremy took a second to process this comment. “Inferno is
here?”
he asked finally.
They were, the rep said. In a kiosk behind the greenhouse, and hadn’t times changed vis-à-vis Local Splendour ideological rigour? “Although Inferno apparently waved a lot of money around.”
They had also promised to use local dairy products, it seemed.
Jeremy wandered on, sipping a Pinot Blanc, full flavoured and soft in the mouth, perfectly al fresco. He ate a slice of poached sockeye salmon filet, which had been opened and stuffed with a caviar-studded mousse of oyster mushrooms, arugula and cream.
He saw Jules from a few yards off. She was working for the Left Coast Grill. He hesitated, but she spotted him, and instead of turning away she leaned her head forward to emphasize the fact that he had been acquired.
“Don’t you go walking by,” Jules said to him as he approached the tent. She wiped her hands and came around the table to give him a kiss on the cheek.
“So, you finally made it to Local Splendour,” he said. “With a ‘better-known restaurant,’ no less.”
They were busy, so she couldn’t take a break. “Word is out, something big and new happening in Crosstown.”
Jeremy took the jibe. “I’m getting mixed reactions all around.”
He caught her glance for a second, a flash of the titanium-flecked pale green before she pushed her head back with a sturdy swipe of her hand through her hair.
“I saw him,” she said.
“Menu espionage.”
Jules laughed loudly at that.
“I miss you,” Jeremy said, trying to catch her eye again, but she looked away from him, and he hated himself instantly for saying it. It was undeniable, but so was the chasmic weakness in his character it revealed.
I miss you
. What did that mean after you sent someone away?
She didn’t answer anyway, but given the growing crowds went back around the table to produce more of the mushroom crostini that the Left Coast Grill was featuring. In front of the work station—a wok on a high gas flame—Jules had arranged her simple ingredients for people to see. Green onions. Chard. Tiny yellow cherry tomatoes. A basket of mushrooms including chanterelle, oyster, shiitake and a magnificent almost-black specimen called blue cluster.
She handed him one of the lightly toasted, ginger-rubbed crostini, piled with its earthy fragrant assortment of mushrooms, the sautéed chard and onions and a single sweet yellow tomato. And then she turned to other people, without saying anything.
He ate the crostini walking through the main farmyard, the familiarity of her flavours making him distinctly lonely. He had red wine after the crostini. A Pinot Noir, the wine glistening ruby in autumn sunlight, smelling clearly of raspberry and strawberry.
He ate a skewer of grilled free-range chicken from Badje’s, marinated in yogurt and masala, standing in the middle of the yard.
Badje’s owner asked him: “Glad to get some time off?”
It was a nice way to put it. “I am actually.”
“You are coming back to all this craziness, of course.”
“I will be, yes.”
“I’m looking forward to it. I think you will do something interesting.”
Jeremy glanced around for Benny and Dante.
They were opposite, at the Chart Room Restaurant tent. They were eating soup out of baked acorn squash bowls, ladling it gingerly into their mouths and comparing notes with a group of seven or eight people who had gathered around them. Dante’s face was set to an impassive princely expression as he held very quiet court, the shortest of the men in the group but the core of group attention.
Jeremy noticed something, even at this distance. When others would speak to Dante, or greet him, he would nod hello or exchange brief pleasantries. When Benny pointed her spoon at the squash bowl now—she was guessing at the ingredients of the soup, or commenting on the fact that the tiny squash itself was edible—Dante listened fixedly. Somebody who didn’t know Dante, hadn’t read first-hand his unearthly post-sexual presence, this might have offered a suggestion of intimacy between them. To Jeremy, it seemed only suddenly clear that Benny had something to fear. That somehow the barista, whose career had blossomed so magnificently, so quickly, would be made to pay.
Dante leaned closer. He was watching Benny’s lips as she spoke. She finished. He straightened, took a spoonful of soup and looked around as if nothing had been said.
The Inferno kiosk was opposite. People were standing two-deep in front of the cappuccino maker, waiting for their skinny frappuccinos. And there at the edge of the crowd was Trout, standing quite still and staring up at the Inferno logo on the tent front: the mythic-looking figure and the hair of soft steam, in his outstretched hand a steaming black brew. The coffee deity offering the world a rich cup of Honduran arabica.
He walked up slowly behind the little boy in his rolled-up jeans, white T-shirt, his nylon packsack slung over both shoulders, the buzz-cut head leaned back as he gazed upwards. Trout sensed him coming, turned and held up a hand for a silent high five.
“Who is that?” And here Trout pointed a stubby finger up at the Inferno logo.
“The Devil?” Jeremy suggested.
Trout shook his head. “Nahh,” he said. “Too obvious.”
Olli appeared just then and Trout scurried off through the barnyard, following the whiff of something. Olli was corporate casual, an expensive merino-wool pullover and khakis. A new Barbour. He was also drinking a glass of wine, Jeremy couldn’t help but notice.
“The wise child dispensed wise words, I trust,” Olli said.
Jeremy waggled his head. “Not bad, really.”
They looked around for a minute at the milling crowds, the foodies eating and comparing notes, the organic-hemp fusion component of the crowd walking slowly and looking up at the sky, communicating wordlessly with the Mother Earth that brought them such bounty.
“I saw Jules,” Olli said. If Jeremy took a small measure of judgment from this comment, thought Olli, so be it. The Monkey’s Paw closure had disappointed him more than he could tell his friend. He didn’t know why it had happened, he only had the sense that Jeremy hadn’t tried hard enough in the face of some crisis. How many times in the early years of Trout World had he fought bankers? Many. And here Jeremy was supposed to be some kind of culinary artist, according to Margaret, in which case giving up seemed a very bad thing. “I really liked Jules,” Olli finished.
They walked over to the fence around one of the fields and leaned on the top rail, looking out over the rows of arugula, mustard, chard, kale, radicchio and other high-end produce.
“Do you still talk?” Olli asked him finally.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Olli shrugged. “Just wondering.”
“I got into some trouble. It was out of my hands. Sure, we talk.”
In the middle of the field opposite, there was a woman walking between the rows of arugula and kale. She was wearing black tights and a black sweater, Dayton lumberjack boots.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” Olli asked.
“I did once.”
“Different,” Olli said. “Start-up money. You weren’t facing a crisis. You could afford to be turned down.”
“I see.”
Sometimes he sounded harsher with Jeremy than he wanted to. Olli turned to his friend now and said, a fraction gentler: “I’m assuming it was a crisis this time.”
Jeremy nodded. “You ever hear of a kite? I got busted more or less.”
Olli raised his eyebrows. “Are you shitting me?”
“No. I had my ass saved.”
Olli nodded slowly. “Dante Beale.”
“I suppose you can relate to the big partner,” Jeremy said.
Olli turned to look back into the field. The woman in Daytons was wandering in a reverie, sipping her Chardonnay. Every five yards or so she leaned dramatically over and plucked arugula direct from the field, elevating a broad ass. When she stood again and ate the arugula, her head was tossed back, blond hair cascading.
“I call it the ‘Risk of the Big Heavy,’ ” Olli said. “Simply put: with heavy partners, the money is good, and that buys some of your freedom. That’s the deal, in essence.”
Jeremy looked at his friend. These words would be advice, then. “Sure,” Jeremy said. “Money for freedom.”
“After that, it’s ad hoc.” Olli was looking around the barnyard now. “The freedom isn’t necessarily the whole pay-off. You give up other things. Things you don’t negotiate at the outset. Parts of your vision. Parts of yourself. Handle this
risk well and the big heavy is your friend. Handle it poorly and they become something else entirely.”
Jeremy nodded, chilled by these words. He didn’t think his own situation was particularly difficult to evaluate in this regard. The Monkey’s Paw had been a spontaneous product of what Jules and he had been together, the sum of their culinary selves. Which part of that vision had he not bartered away?
“What’s he like?” Olli asked.
“Dante is a killer,” Jeremy said. “He takes care of business.”
Olli smiled. He didn’t think his friend knew the half of it yet. “And do I get to meet this killer?” he asked.
He did. They all met up in front of the Inferno kiosk. Margaret and Benny found each other at the tent giving out goat’s milk gelato and decided to get the group together for drinks. Dante offered his place.
Jeremy was part of the chatty circle that formed but feeling a little zoned out. Olli’s observations had put him in a dark enough frame of mind without having to see Jules walk by with a man he’d never seen before, bumping shoulders as they walked, leaning in slightly to hear the words of the other. He raised a hand, started to say hello, but stopped mid-word and brought his hand down. She disappeared around the corner of the greenhouse, the blur of her dwindling down the lane towards the Left Coast Grill tent.
Olli and Dante were appraising each other. Dante’s face responded approvingly when he established with whom Olli was now strategically allied.
As they talked, Trout stepped wordlessly between his mother and father, and gazed up fixedly at Dante alone. Dante glanced down, and Jeremy watched as his normally impenetrable facial expression transformed. The hardness went out of it. The blunt came off his eyebrows, the Uzi left the nose, which became merely short and snouted. The bristly dome of his scalp seemed suddenly fragile as a new-born,
and he tried for a smile. An unusual, placating smile, as if Trout were an old schoolmate who’d once licked him convincingly.
“Oh, Dante,” Benny said, mildly alarmed. She fumbled in her purse and produced a handkerchief. “You’re bleeding.”
Which he was, a worm of blood having emerged from his left nostril. Dante wadded Benny’s handkerchief to his face and tried to laugh through it. “Sorry. Sorry,” he said. “Just go ahead to the cars, I’ll be along.”
Benny hung back. Jeremy noticed the handkerchief reddening as he turned to leave.