Off the Menu

by Stacey Ballis

  “I was having a nice evening, and had reservations at Terzo Piano, so you get to call Tony and tell him why I blew him off when I’m pretty sure he had Meg ready to make it special for me.” Tony Mantuano is the executive chef at the elegant restaurant in the Art Institute Modern Wing and both he and his chef de cuisine, Meg Sahs, are friends.

  “I’ll do you one better, we’ll call them up and go over there now, my treat.”

  Which is how I ended up enjoying my romantic dinner with my idiot boss instead of RJ.

  Lucky for me, RJ just let it slide. We have continued to talk every day, and the more time I spend getting to know him, the more I like him and the more attracted to him I become. So far our passion has been limited to just kissing. He is a perfect Southern gentleman, and is not applying any pressure on me. And I’m finding that the slow, luxurious pace of true courting suits me to a tee. My desire for him is building alongside my trust and our friendship, and I really hope that when we do take that step, that it is as good as I want it to be. Which, of course, makes me pretty sure that it will be horrible and disappointing, or he will turn out to have weird fetishes, or we’ll just be out of sync and the whole thing will lead to our breakup.

  I tidy up my computer a bit, and clear the detritus off the coffee table. Dumpling starts barking, not his traditional bark of greeting, but deeper and more growly, with a tinge of actual menace. “Stop that, boy, it’s just RJ.”

  I walk to the door and open it. “Hello, beautiful.” RJ leans over and kisses me. Yum.

  “Hello, you.” I kiss him back.

  He looks deeply in my eyes, holding me to him with one arm. “You look adorable and cozy. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon movie. And I have … What the—?” he says, looking down. Where Dumpling is casually and proudly taking a piss on his leg.

  “DUMPLING! BAD BOY! GO. TO. YOUR. BED. RIGHT NOW! Oh my god, RJ, I’m so sorry, he’s never … I mean, I just …”

  Then we both start to laugh. “Well, that is some greeting.”

  “That is just the worst thing ever. RJ, I don’t know what to say.” Dumpling turns with a sniff and walks over to his bed and flops down, glaring at RJ with what can only be described as contempt. “Dumpling, you are a VERY BAD BOY.” I have never been so mortified.

  RJ touches my arm. “It’s really okay. Dogs don’t necessarily love me on first meeting.” He hands me a large shopping bag. “Any chance you have an extra pair of sweat pants lying around?”

  “Of course.” I am gobsmacked. I put the bag on the kitchen counter, and go to fetch him a pair of pants. I bring them out to him, and motion him to the front bathroom so he can change. While he is gone, I unpack the bag. On top, a small bouquet of flowers, deep pink peonies mixed with pale pink tea roses. A bottle of Vilmart pink champagne, already chilled. Smooth chevre, sharp cheddar, caramel-y aged Gouda. Three kinds of sausage. Two kinds of olives. Cornichons, those tiny puckery pickles that I am addicted to. Marcona almonds. A pear, an apple, and a small bunch of grapes. A bar of dark chocolate.

  And a bag of organic dog treats. I look over at Dumpling, who is pouting on his bed. Dumb dog. And with RJ so excited to meet him and bringing him treats.

  I get out a platter and some small bowls.

  “Well, I don’t think this is going to be my most fashionable day,” RJ says behind me. I turn and can’t help but laugh. My sweatpants hit him mid-calf.

  “Heather gray manpris are all the rage.”

  “Well, I guess I should be grateful that my jeans are so absorbent, saved the shoe. Don’t suppose you have laundry?”

  “I do, in fact. Please allow me.” I reach for the pants. He hands them over and I head up the hall to the washer-dryer, and toss them in. By the time I get back RJ has managed to arrange the nibbles artfully.

  “Thank you for all of this, especially the flowers. They’re so lovely.”

  “Well, they made me think of you. I seem to remember you said something at some point about peonies.” This man remembers everything.

  “They are my favorite flower.” I slide my arms around his waist and tilt my head up, and he obliges me with a deep and thrilling kiss.

  We bring all the goodies to the living room and arrange them on the table. I put the DVD in the player, while RJ pours the champagne.

  “To making you play hooky, even just for a couple of hours.”

  “If this is how you make me play hooky, I’m in whenever you like!” We sip, and the bubbles go straight up my nose in the best possible way. “I really do want to apologize about Dumpling, I have never seen him do anything even remotely like that. I don’t know where it came from!”

  “Really, don’t worry about it. I had a friend bring her old dog to my house once, and while we were looking at something in the garden, he somehow got locked in the bathroom and totally panicked and pissed everywhere and shat himself, and then got even more panicked and was apparently just running in circles in the bathroom peeing and pooping. By the time we came back in the house and heard him, my bathroom looked like a sewer line had exploded.”

  “Oh NO!” I am laughing at the very thought.

  “Oh YES. And I? Only have ONE bathroom. In retrospect, a little pee on the leg is not so bad.”

  “Shh. Don’t give him some challenge.”

  “Hey, he’s adorable. And if you were my person, I’d be sure that any interloper who showed up was made perfectly aware that he was being watched, and that you would be protected at all costs.”

  “You keep saying things like that and plying me with champagne and flowers and delicious snacks, and I could be persuaded to be your person.”

  He leans over and kisses me deeply, sending shocks of electricity right down into my toes. “I’m counting on it.”

  By the time the movie is over, we have decimated a good percentage of the platter, the bottle is empty, and RJ is back in his freshly cleaned pants, smelling of the dryer.

  “Is the dog still on lockdown, or can I try to make up with him?”

  “You are welcome to try.”

  RJ walks over to the kitchen and picks up the bag of treats he brought, opening it up and taking a couple out. Then he comes back over to the living room and sits beside me on the couch. “Dumpling, c’mere, boy. Get a treat.” He pats the couch next to him and holds up the treat. Dumpling rises from his bed, stretches a bit, and walks over to the couch. “Good boy. Let’s be pals.” RJ holds the treat down to him, and he leans over and sniffs it before taking it in his mouth. “Good boy, that’s a good boy. Want another?” Dumpling takes the second treat and wolfs it down, allowing RJ to pet his head. Then he jumps up on the couch and wiggles his weird little misshapen self right in between us. RJ laughs. “He’s just jealous. And that’s fine by me.”

  “Oh really, why is that?”

  “Because it means he thinks there is something to be jealous of, and I hope he’s right.”

  RJ gets up, pats Dumpling one more time on the head, and I stand to walk him to the door.

  “So, I’m sure this is either early or late or presumptuous or something, but I was wondering if you had plans for New Year’s.”

  “Well, I do have plans for New Year’s Day with my family, but no firm plans for New Year’s Eve yet.” Which is a lie. I am supposed to spend New Year’s Eve at Patrick’s annual party, to which I was going to invite RJ, but if he has other ideas, I’m more than willing to blow Patrick off. He usually ends up luring me into the kitchen and I spend the whole night whipping up extra food in uncomfortable shoes.

  “Some friends of mine are having a small dinner party, and I would love it if you would come with me.”

  YAY! “I would love to come with you.”

  “Good. So I’ve got the last of my work travel stuff this week, and then I head to Tennessee to see the family for Christmas, but I’ll be back on the twenty-sixth. Maybe we can sneak in another date between then and New Year’s?” My kiss is all the answer he needs on that, and I watch him walk down my front steps and out to his car.


  Sigh. I turn around and look at Dumpling, who is preening on the couch as if he has done something to be proud of.

  “You’re still on my list, buddy boy. And make no mistake. At this point, if you challenge that man, you just might lose.”

  He looks at me as if to say, “Bring it.”

  I take the platter over to the kitchen, and discover a card sitting on the counter. I open it. On the front is a picture of a heart and the words From the bottom of mine.

  Alana—

  Just a little note to thank you for coming into my life. I’m romantic enough to want to believe in magic or “it” or whatever describes a priori rightness, but pragmatic enough not to bank on it. I do know that I’ve never felt more naturally comfortable with or attuned to anyone else. So, whatever eventually transpires between us, I don’t ever want you to not be a part of my life. Call it luck or effort or both, but we each have pretty good lives independent of each other. And I don’t ever want to impinge on that for you. I do know that you take me to another level of happiness, and for that, I thank you. I hope you have a great year coming and I hope to be a part of it.

  RJ

  P.S. My handwriting is TERRIBLE! I write like the unabomber!

  And he does, sort of, but I don’t care. I hold the card to my heart. And I try to focus on the deep-down broken part of me that does still believe in happy-ever-after, and no shoes dropping, and think, yes.

  13

  What time is your future husband picking you up?” Bennie asks, continuing to claim that her premonition about me and RJ is going to come true.

  “About seven, so I have three hours to get ready.”

  “Are you so excited?”

  “I am, but also a little nervous.”

  “RJ never makes you nervous. What’s up?”

  “I’m more nervous about meeting his friends, and you know how I get about dinner parties with people who don’t know about my stupid food stuff.”

  Bennie laughs. “For a chef, you do have some serious limitations.”

  “I know.”

  It should be mentioned that I am very oddly picky about my food. I’ve never been one of those chefs who would just eat anything, and some of my issues can be enormously problematic.

  Without putting too fine a point on it, there is a lot of food that I don’t eat. A list the existence of which I hate to acknowledge, a list of things widely touted as so delectable that people think of them as the pinnacle of perfection. And I’m not allergic to anything, and I don’t have political agendas against how the foods are attained or prepared, and I’m not restricted by religious beliefs.

  I just don’t like ’em.

  Now, I don’t think you need to be Andrew Zimmern to effectively fit yourself into the foodie category. I know plenty of serious chefs and gourmands who aren’t going to tuck into insects and four-year-old putrefied shark. But despite having once eaten two live termites (a story for another day), my issue isn’t with extreme eating. It’s with stuff that most people find delicious, and I’m always afraid of that moment with someone who doesn’t know me when I have to tell them the stuff I don’t eat.

  It would be like having to tell someone that, while you happily acknowledge your sex addiction, you aren’t interested in S&M, porn, toys, erotica, threesomes, and will only do half of the positions in the Kama Sutra. Your street cred would suffer significantly.

  Same for me. I’m a trained chef for the love of Pete. I have more than seventy herbs and spices stocked in my cabinets. I have fourteen kinds of vinegar in my pantry. I am prepared, by virtue of a good stock of staples, to make a hearty, delicious meal at the drop of a hat. I believe in making homemade stock, in using top-notch ingredients prepared to best heighten their natural goodness, and that good food made with your heart is one of the truest forms of love. I subscribe to eight cooking magazines. I write cookbooks with Patrick, and collect other people’s cookbooks and read them like novels. I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph.

  I don’t feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie’s face when you pass on the pâté. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards.

  Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice—again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet.

  I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Ick. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend.

  Spicy isn’t so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily’s sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn’t admit to liking. I’m allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but I’m never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado’s bland oiliness, okra’s slickery slime, don’t even get me started on runny eggs.

  I know. It’s mortifying.

  And beyond dreaming of a road trip with Tony and Michael, it makes situations like tonight fraught with potential for disaster. It’s bad enough that so many people get freaked out by the idea of cooking for a chef, thinking we are going to judge them or be disappointed, when in fact, any chef is usually thrilled that someone wants to cook for them for a change. But the idea that I could sit at someone’s lovely and thoughtfully planned dinner party pushing things around my plate like some picky child, it knots my stomach. At least RJ was very cool about it when I fessed up during one of our marathon phone calls. He told me that I should never be embarrassed or shy about liking what I like, and anyone who would think less of me because of it wasn’t worth my time. I’m sure eventually he will say or do the wrong thing, we all do, but so far he is batting a thousand, and despite the fact that we have only actually seen each other in person a few times, I just feel entirely wonderful whenever I think of him.

  Bennie continues to stick by her story that he is The One and that my forever after is around the corner. And she continues to talk me off the ledge about my own varied and ridiculous insecurities. Like now.

  “You have nothing to worry about, silly girl. It’s New Year’s Eve. I’m sure there will be either prime rib or rack of lamb, with traditional sides. No one is making broiled kidneys with blue cheese sauce stuffed into a green pepper on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Okay, that just made my whole stomach turn over.”

  “Sorry. But aren’t you probably more nervous about after the party? I mean, aren’t you thinking that tonight is the night?”

  “Yes, I’m thinking that tonight might be the night I ask RJ to sleep over, if it feels right.”

  “It will be
fine. You like him. You trust him. The kissing, etcetera, has been great. Don’t overthink.”

  “Yeah, um, are you new? Have you met me? I overthink EVERYTHING.”

  She chuckles. “True enough. Look, lovely girl, go indulge in some New Year’s Eve primping and dreaming, have a wonderful night with your man, and we will chat tomorrow. And I hope you don’t mind, but I thought maybe I’d stay with Maria when I come next week.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I think you are at a place with RJ that your busy lives are going to have to stop preventing you from spending more time together, and having me in your guest room for four days is not going to be conducive to that.”

  “Hey, you know I’m not one of those girls who abandons her girlfriends in favor of boyfriends.”

  “Wouldn’t have dreamt of suggesting such a thing. I just mean that you guys are about to be in the best phase of your new relationship, and you both have enough barriers to time together without having a houseguest for the better part of a week. Not to worry, we’ll still have quality time, and there is the party to think of. I just want the two of you to be able to get all wrapped up in each other without any impediments.”

  “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

  “Yes you have. Go have a wonderful night, and happy New Year my sweet friend. I love you.”

  “I love you, and I can’t wait to see you next week. Happy New Year, Benlet.”

  “Mwah.”

  I’m just getting out of the shower when my phone rings. “Help.” Patrick sounds urgent, but then again, when you are the center of the universe, things are always urgent.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Fridge died. All the food has gone off. Fifty people imminent. I need you.”

  This cannot be happening. “Slow down. Exactly what happened?”

  “Did all the food prep yesterday, platters set, everything ready. Then I open my fucking fridge and the light doesn’t come on and it’s totally warm and it smells like a corpse someone pulled out of a swamp. Fifteen hundred fucking dollars’ worth of shrimp and oysters and stone crab claws and lobster and cheese and caviar and all the little sliders I made that just needed reheating and the pot of chili … The damn thing must have died in the night and now I have fifty people coming in four hours and NOT ONE FUCKING THING TO FEED THEM.”