by Alison Pace
Okay. “I’m doing a survey of steak houses in New York,” she says, speaking calmly and assuredly, partly in order to convey to Douglas and to herself that calmness is always an option, and partly to irritate him. “I’m starting with the old standbys, the Palm, Peter Luger’s, etc., and I’m going to work my way up to the newer ones, to Dylan Prime—”
“Dylan Prime opened in fucking two thousand! Where the fuck were you in two thousand?”
“And all the way up to Craftsteak and to STK, which just opened. I thought I’d even do a sidebar of all the barbecue in the city, too.”
“I think you should think again. I think you should get over Frank Bruni’s survey of fast-food restaurants in the Times and stop wishing you’d done that and stop with the fucking surveys.”
“I don’t look at Frank Bruni’s fast-food survey as something I need to get over.”
“Oh, I do. But great job with your Ouest review, by the way.”
“Thanks,” she says as the world spirals around in the bizarre reality that is a conversation with her surely bipolar boss.
“But I digress. Start writing reviews of new restaurants, of ridiculous fucking restaurants, of places where readers who are hip and consumer-driven and have disposable income want to see and be seen, and give that to me and give that to me ASAP.”
“Brasserie was on my list,” she says, thinking it might mean something, might say something about hipness meeting steak. She’s always thought that if you looked at it in the right way, at the very modernist bathrooms for starters, that Brasserie could be considered hip.
“I’m not even going to justify that with a response.”
She’d like to tell him that it should be about the food. That it shouldn’t be about the swankness of the place, the see-and-be-seen qualities of a restaurant. And she believes that; her reviews have always been more about the food than about the fabulous-ness, which is a word Douglas actually uses. But she can’t really say that right now, because she hasn’t actually eaten quite enough of the food. And even though he is for the most part an idiot, Douglas does have a point.
She stands on Fourth Street, the exact same person she was two weeks ago, in the exact same dress size, living the exact same life only in a different wig, only now she has turned in sub-par work, only now she has disappointed her boss. She wonders at how much of a price did those five and a half pounds actually come. She tries not to think horrible thoughts of how maybe Douglas has just saved her from embarrassing herself and her magazine by submitting a poorly researched review of an old standby steak house even if it is a New York classic. She tries not to stress out over how much more work she’ll have to do in order to make up for all the time she has recently spent eating only protein.
“I have plenty of notes at home. I can e-mail you another review tomorrow.”
“Why e-mail? Do you know you haven’t been in the office at all for the last two weeks? What’s the deal with that?” And she thinks that along with everything else, now might not be the best time to share with Douglas the news of the joyous arrival of DB Sweeney.
“I’ve been working from home,” she says, stating perhaps the obvious, but it is, she thinks, something that might need to be stated. She has an office at the The NY offices, a very nice one actually, but in no way does she really have to be there. Contractually, she doesn’t ever have to go to the office as long as she gets her reviews in on time, and yes, properly. Columnists, restaurant critics especially, who spend almost every night doing research aren’t often expected to be in the office. Meredith was in many ways an exception to the rule, spending as much time as she did at her office.
Douglas doesn’t say anything. She imagines that is because Douglas knows she is completely within her contractual rights to always work from home, and maybe he’s wondering why, if that has always been the case, she’s spent such a large part of the last few years at her desk.
She pauses for a moment and wonders about that, about the why of always being at the office. She thinks it might be because except for the purple velvet sectional couch, except for the electronics, she’s never really liked her apartment. Until it was the place where DB Sweeney lived.
“Douglas, listen,” she begins again, because he’s still not saying anything. She pictures him, Montblanc pen in hand, doodling fuck fuck fuck all over his black leather Coach desk blotter. “I’ve got to go right now, I’m standing outside Knife + Fork, in the East Village,” she pauses, lingers right after East Village, she hopes the East Village doesn’t say “steak house” to Douglas, who has Manhattan neighborhoods labeled and judged and preconceived almost as much as she does. “I’m late for a reservation, so I’ve got to hang up now.”
“What’s this Knife + Fork?” he asks, ignoring any mention on her part of the conversation’s need to end.
“It’s a wonderful jewel of a restaurant on East Fourth Street. Lovely atmosphere, friendly service, fantastic prix fixe. They bake all their own bread,” she says, knowing as she does that she sounds a bit like the lead-in to a rave review, and that is her intention. She thinks she mentions the bread (with which they really do a wonderful job, presenting it on a crafted piece of butcher block, with the highest quality olive oil and a smattering of sea salt) as a silent penance for trying to write all those reviews without eating any carbs. And she thinks she’ll have to eat carbs again. She wonders if she really thought it through, if it occurred to her that dieting while being a restaurant critic would require perhaps quite a bit of integrity-compromising.
“It sounds interesting enough,” he says dismissively, and she reminds herself she likes her job, really she does. She loves her job and she can’t imagine not having it, at least not until the New York Times calls to tell her they are in fact very desirous of her talents, until she receives the call with an offer for a three-book deal on food, on restaurants, on cooking, until they sell the film rights and she becomes the star of her very own television show.
“Tonight’s my third visit. I can have a review for you by midday.”
“Good. E-mailed or in person?”
DB Sweeney, she thinks. “E-mailed,” she says.
She turns back in the direction of the restaurant, envisions the imminent flipping shut of her phone—ending the call with Douglas, ending these thoughts of diet failure that again seem to be rearing their ugly snakelike heads—one quick motion that will bestow so much happiness even if it is so fleeting. Fleeting happiness, she wonders sometimes if it’s better than none at all. She’s starting to think so.
“Yeah,” he says, and she waits, and so does he, for a beat, “I need a reservation at wd~50 for Tuesday.”
“Not a problem,” she says, and he says a quick goodbye and disconnects. She flips her phone shut, noting that it did not bring quite as much satisfaction as she was hoping for; sometimes the things you look forward to don’t. She carefully adjusts her wig and sees her friend Jill standing outside the restaurant, waiting, and she hopes she hasn’t been waiting long. She hopes Jill remembers that tonight Meredith’s name is May. Usually she finds Jill a bit annoying because of a childish fascination she’s always had with cartoons. The Lion King often looms large in her conversations, the release of Curious George: The Movie was, for Jill, a very big deal. But tonight Meredith doesn’t find that as annoying as she finds it convenient. She wants to ask Jill which channels on cable are best for locating cartoons and puppets at night. She’s sure that’s the best thing for DB Sweeney to be watching, to keep him company when she isn’t there.
As she greets Jill and they enter the restaurant together, as they order their wine and their prix fixe dinners, even as she eats, even as she’s making mental notes (and one or two slyly written in her notepad) she has an eye on the future, she can see her folder on her desk, the one with the notes from her last two visits here. She can see folders from other places, too, places where she ate carbs and where she did her job well. And she thinks if she puts her mind to it, she’ll have a good review, an h
onest one, a real one, about Knife + Fork and if she spends some time after that, she’s sure she could even write a few carbheavy spares. And she finds herself hoping that it won’t take that long, looking through all the folders, scouring all the notes, because she’d like to be finished with it, she’d like very much to read this book she just bought, called Beyond Fetch: Fun, Interactive Activities for You and Your Dog.
fifteen
thunderstorm consolation
As a thunderstorm rages outside, a wheezing sound emanates from DB Sweeney as his partly wirehaired fur flies off him by the handful. Meredith holds him under his front two legs, trying to restrain him from his earlier endeavor of trying to climb, quite literally, right up the wall.
In Beyond Fetch: Fun, Interactive Activities for You and Your Dog there are a total of one hundred and nineteen activities, seven vacation tips, and sixteen craft projects. And out of all of that, out of that entire tome of doggy bonding, entertainment, and enrichment, there does not seem to be a section on what to do with your little friend when he is literally climbing the walls because the weather outside has turned inclimate. And inclimate, in his little doggy psyche seems to be the exact same thing as extremely frightful.
That gives Meredith an idea. “Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” she sings in what she hopes is a happy voice, “but the fire inside’s delightful.” Nothing.
Just to be clear, she does think Beyond Fetch: Fun, Interactive Activties for You and Your Dog is an excellent resource. She and DB Sweeney have tremendously enjoyed some of its suggestions, especially the ones from the section “The Best Mind Games,” which is all about indoor activities such as “Treasure Hunt,” and the slightly-to-very-embarrassing “Love Seat Game.” They keep DB Sweeney quite amused, engaged, and entertained, without even having to wander around the neighborhood. As it turns out, DB Sweeney seems to have quite an interest in fighting every large dog he sees, right down to the death. Sometimes going for long walks with DB Sweeney is not so much peaceful and bonding as it is extremely stressful. Meredith imagines many dog owners, before they were dog owners, must have looked forward to the long walks alongside their dogs. That could make her one step ahead of the game, she figures, since she never longed to be a dog owner. But couldn’t it be that it’s possible to long for something without even knowing what it is? Just in the same way she’s sometimes sure it might be possible to miss someone you haven’t met yet?
To be fair, there are five items included in Beyond Fetch that fall under the heading of “The Best Ways to Relax,” complete with doggie massage instructions. And it’s not as if those instructions didn’t have some merit, quite a lot really, it’s just that DB Sweeney, at present driven to despair, so immensely preoccupied with the thunderstorm, would have none of it, none of anything it seemed, least of all a misguided attempt of Meredith’s at doggie massage.
She moves on, sings a few lines of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful.” She’s not sure why that song—it’s really a fair amount more melancholy than it is soothing and uplifting, but then, DB Sweeney is quite beautiful. “You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful,” she repeats with what she hopes is less melancholy than James Blunt usually infuses into his lyrics. “I saw your face in a crowded place.” Still nothing.
DB Sweeney wriggles free of what might not have been to him such a soothing grasp. He gets up on his hind legs, and makes this horrible gagging sound. It’s not that he’s choking on anything, it is just a sound he makes, mostly on the aforementioned stressful walks when he passes the borzoi who lives on Sixty-seventh Street of whom he has become increasingly unfond.
Maybe it would help if she played James Blunt for him on her iPod, through the Bose speakers. Or better yet, she thinks she’ll play him his new CD, Dog Gone Songs: Music to Soothe the Animal Spirit. She ordered it from Target.com to play for DB Sweeney, just in case he had any issues with separation anxiety when she went out at night. Not that she’d really thought he would, because other than the desire to fight every dog larger than him (and when you are the approximate size of a mini dachshund, the number of dogs who are a great deal bigger than you is myriad and vast) he has always been a brilliant sage. He has never had a house-training accident, has never destroyed property, has always just stared at her wisely and assuredly, and made her feel safe. Except when he encounters something on the pavement that he finds to be especially dirty. DB Sweeney loves dirty things, and whenever he comes across them, he feels the need to pivot himself sideways and shimmy down to the pavement. This movement is apparently what he has determined as the absolute best way to smear as large a surface area of his body into whatever sidewalk disgustingness it is that he has found. Even brilliant sages have their weaknesses.
DB Sweeney stops his gagging noise and settles back down onto four legs and looks at Meredith like he would very much like her to do something, like he would like her to make him safe. And she knows, as she has known at times before, but never in this way, so completely, that it is time for her to step up.
She scrolls quickly through the iPod and selects the album Dog Gone Songs: Music to Soothe the Animal Spirit and puts it on, turning the volume up, but not too loud because there is quite a lot of oboe (or could be it’s bassoon) and she’s long thought that an oboe, or even a bassoon, played too loud can indeed sound quite threatening. She grabs her phone quickly and dials Dévi. They pick up on the first ring.
“This is Emily Shea,” she says quickly. “I’m sorry but I’m going to have to cancel my reservation for tonight.” They locate her reservation and thank her for calling. Next she reaches for her BlackBerry and sends off a quick joint e-mail to her two planned dinner companions for the night: she’s so sorry but something has come up and she hopes they’ll be up for a rain check in the near future to sample Indian food in the Flatiron District. E-mail, she thinks, is so much easier, so much better sometimes. With e-mail, so much more can be left unsaid; you can cancel plans without people having any idea that compared to your dog they don’t matter nearly as much.
She opens up her copy of 97 Ways to Make Your Dog Smile, she stretches out on the floor with it, in the hopes that DB Sweeney might want to take a look at it, too. There are some good ideas in it, and some stunning pictures of very fetching dogs, too.
“Look, DB Sweeney,” she says, holding the book out to him. He has no interest. “No, look. Look, really,” she tries again. She’s no stranger to the school of If You Don’t Get the Reaction You Seek Initially, Why Not Try the Same Tactic Again. She’s taken a few classes there. And she doesn’t see why he wouldn’t like this book with all its helpful suggestions and charming pictures of adorable dogs. She likes the book; she found it, by the way, on the Internet, too. And on that, do you have any idea how many things there are on the Internet for your dog? It is a vast multitude of offerings that could truly boggle the mind. Even if your dog has already decided that he will not dress. (Well, to be truthful, Meredith decided that for DB Sweeney, but she’s pretty sure that on that topic, as on many others, they are of like minds.) There is so much stuff out there in the world to buy for your dog, from books to CDs to beds to dishes to bowls to treats to travel bags, a cornucopia of plush toys. She has purchased a few more than several plush toys for DB Sweeney, including a bear in a bee costume which she thinks is an exact replica of the busy bee the Weimariner had in the movie Best in Show and she gets a kick out of that, though of course she sees no similarity between the Parker Posey character in that film and her own character.
DB Sweeney loves his plush toys, he carries them around, from living room, to bedroom, to pass-through kitchen, to small square area right in front of the door, one by one, with such love and care and tenderness that Meredith is sure he thinks of them as his babies. She gathers them all up and presents them to him soothingly.
“Look, DB Sweeney, look at your babies,” Meredith coos, gently pushing a yellow duck, Daniel Duck to be specific, in his direction. He doesn’t acknowledge it at all. It looks as if his eye
s are making a game attempt at rolling back in his head. She hopes he doesn’t start with the gagging sound again. It’s so unsettling, really. Upsetting could even be the right word.
“What about Vernon Vermin?” she asks, presenting what might actually be a beaver but somewhere along the way she decided looked very much like a woodchuck. “And who’s this? Is this Busy Bee?”
She moves slowly, cautiously, dragging herself on her stomach to where DB Sweeney is situated, half on the carpet, half off. She didn’t think it possible to feel so concerned, so loving, so responsible, so at a loss. She puts one hand on him, on one shoulder, he lets her. She puts her other hand out. He lets her. In one motion, one that is almost graceful, she slides him toward her, over carpet. Once she has him, she steadies herself with one hand, and in motions slightly less than graceful she gets herself and DB Sweeney up off the floor. She walks with him over to the computer and sits down at it. She goes to Google.com and types in dog relax thunderstorm. And, as you might now imagine, a tremendous number of results come up. Among them: several sites offering doggie foul-weather gear; one-on-one dog training; interestingly, a link to Target to buy Dog Gone Songs: Music to Soothe the Animal Spirit; one for something called G-Doga; and one for a day care and grooming place called Biscuits & Bath.
Presented with this list, confronted with the links and descriptions, the Google ads and Amazon links running up and down the sides, so many things go through Meredith’s mind. They always do.
• Surely there must be more books she should be buying. Surely.
• Maybe, even though they’d already decided against it, maybe DB Sweeney should consider dressing, because if a Google search involving the word dog is any indication, there would be so many things for him to wear.
• Maybe she should look into getting DB Sweeney a private trainer?