Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

And before I knew it, the tip of his finger was against the side of my mouth, the mousse cooling my skin. I turned my head to get a full taste, but he moved his finger away so I only got a tiny wisp of the mousse, not enough to know it.

  “Hey, come on,” I said. “Let me taste it.”

  He took another step forward, and I took the tiniest of steps back, pressing us both against the wall, Helen’s write-­up just over my left shoulder. “Oh? You think this is what’s missing?”

  I chased his finger with my lips. He had only grabbed one of my hands, so I could have brought his hand to my mouth, but I stayed there, transfixed, like a bug pinned down for inspection. Finally, the flat of my tongue and the tip of his finger met. He gently pushed it inside my mouth, and I tasted the yogurt at last. It was surprising in every way—­airy yet hearty, sunny yet earthy. The final piece. He kept his finger in my mouth even after I finished tasting it, my tongue against the ridges on the underside of his finger, coarse from cooking, I suppose, but more likely from being a man. Pascal was a man.

  He pulled his finger out and my lips made a suctioned pop sound.

  Maybe Pascal was the oxygen. Maybe he was what I should have been breathing.

  He tilted his head, let go of my hand, and took a step back. “Yes, I think that’ll do the trick.” He handed me his phone. “Can I get your number?”

  I was still woozy, hungering for Pascal’s body and face and breath. This was 110 percent unacceptable to Elliott and Michael Saltz, but I went through with it anyway.

  As I entered my number in his phone, I kept on messing up and deleting, messing up and deleting. Whenever I gave my number to a guy, it was always to collaborate on a school project or something. But this was different. Pascal—­for some reason—­desired me.

  I had to imagine this was how things happened when a boy meets a girl in a restaurant or bar. I didn’t have much experience.

  By the end, I had forgotten about Elliott and Michael Saltz. Pascal’s touch had taken over. Pascal and his body and his cooking and the way he understood and listened to me.

  “Parfait,” he said when I finished typing. “I can’t wait to see you again.”

  I WALKED HOME with my body singing. In my mind I re-­created the warmth of his hands, the proportions of his body, the tip of his finger. Even though we’d had our clothes on, I had never felt so sexy, so electrified by another person’s presence.

  But that was just my body. My mind knew better. By the time I got home, I was on the verge of vomiting. I looked at my phone and saw Elliott had called me three times, texted once, and left a voicemail. Who leaves a voicemail?

  The text said, where r u?, which sounded fine enough. Standard. But the voicemail. He’d said those same three words, but they had come out mean and scared and annoyed, a voice laced with distrust.

  I texted Elliott back and asked when we could get together. He said he’d be at Barnes & Noble the next day to study. His boss had put him on the lab’s night shift and he wouldn’t need to go in until seven P.M., so we could hang out while doing some work.

  Theoretically, the timing was perfect. The Tellicherry review was coming out online that night, but I was thinking about waiting for the print version the next morning, so I could experience it for the first time as a physical object. At Barnes & Noble, I could pick up a hard copy and share it with Elliott.

  But that was just in theory. He couldn’t know the truth. Instead of looking forward to seeing Elliott, I began to dread it. And I kept thinking about Pascal.

  Chapter 18

  THE NEXT MORNING AT BARNES & NOBLE, ELLIOTT AND I SAT across from each other in the café section. He’d brought ten botany journals and one textbook, which stood between us like a wall. The bottom of my stomach rumbled with the taste of that sesame-­yogurt mousse, of Pascal against me in Bakushan. I shook the memories out of my head.

  “What are you doing?” I asked warmly, trying to be sweet and open to his affection.

  “Studying evaporation rates in tropical versus tundra climates,” he said, his head already buried in his books.

  “Oh, cool,” I said. I looked down at my books and tapped the table. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  He glared at me for a quick second before he returned to his work. “I can’t now. Moishe wants this report before I come in. Sorry, Tia, I’ll explain it to you later.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, playfully tapping his foot. He pulled it away.

  I took a deep breath. Elliott wasn’t even noticing my efforts, so I went to find the newspaper without him.

  There in a wire bin next to the entrance, I spotted them. I peeled away to the Food section and saw a beautiful picture of Tellicherry’s jewel-­like dining room, centered around the best table, where Michael Saltz and I had sat and Pascal had paid a visit.

  I read it slowly and carefully, ingesting each word before I moved on to the next.

  Some parts of my review were left out or skewed. For one, I had raved about the lavender-­peach macarons, but Michael Saltz had decided they didn’t make the cut. I had also written favorably about Tellicherry’s varied menu, but Michael Saltz’s review tweaked my words so that the menu selections came off as flighty and indecisive instead of agile and joyous. It made the thrilling will-­he-­or-­won’t-­he danger of the dishes something to be frightened of.

  But those were subtle matters of punctuation and syntax, slight connotation shifts. More important, there were two major things that caught my attention.

  First, just like the Madison Park Tavern review, Michael Saltz had used my exact words in the vast majority of his column. As he had said on the phone, he was perfectly able to write his own review, even if he was using my thoughts. So why had he bothered to use my wording? I loved some of my turns of phrase, but I couldn’t imagine why he had used them, especially given that this was Michael Saltz—­his ego and name were so precious to him.

  And then there was the big type across the bottom of the review: THREE STARS, as Michael Saltz had said it would be. He’d had it in his head from the beginning, and that’s why he’d made it so. My words, his judgment call.

  But even with the star rating changed and those other minor tweaks, I still felt I owned that piece of writing. My words were in the New York Times, and that was an intoxicating, sky-­high rush, the type that makes you want to scream from the rooftops and tell everyone you know. But of course I couldn’t tell a soul. All that energy ricocheted back inside me and I felt radioactive, so excited and pent up I might have burst.

  I ran back to sit with Elliott and made a big show of opening and shutting the paper, spreading it wide over my face, crinkling the edges, folding and unfolding. He kept working.

  I didn’t want it to, but my mind turned to Pascal again. I couldn’t help it. What would he say if he saw this review? If I wrote one about him, would he hang it up in his kitchen? Would he celebrate with Chef Rhodes, because after all, three stars was pretty good?

  Elliott sat there while I thought of another man’s hands on me, his finger in my mouth, his smell of caramelized onions and brown butter and sage. Thankfully, Elliott would never find out about Pascal. We weren’t in college anymore. In New York City, millions of ­people went about their business on separate tracks, going to work, going to bed, having sex.

  Yikes, sex. I tried to refocus, away from Tellicherry and the review and a certain someone’s tattooed arms.

  “How’s it going?” I asked Elliott, my heart still fluttering like a hummingbird after a candy binge.

  He pursed his lips and hit his book with the end of a pen. “It’s okay. I’m thinking about a problem. Give me a ­couple moments.”

  “Um . . . sure,” I said, my heart sinking. He was studying a molecular diagram and drawing out his own. His head turned from side to side as he compared the diagrams, his lips skewed in thought. I had always liked Elliott’s hard-­core study sessi
ons. He dove into everything he did, and that passion, that disregard for what anyone thought of his intensity, had attracted me. But now he looked pained, his eyebrows at an angry slant, his fingernails scraping at the table.

  Fact was, Elliott could never match Pascal. He and I didn’t share the same passions. Elliott didn’t light up around esoteric veggies. Elliott didn’t have his own restaurant and a staff who reported to him. And, frankly, frighteningly . . . Elliott didn’t turn me on like Pascal had. I had always thought I just wasn’t a sexual person, but . . . Pascal. Pascal and his strong arms. His hair mussed just so. His hands rough and firm and . . . large. Part of the appeal was Pascal’s size. Not that he was a giant or anything, but he had stature.

  I took a walk to cool off. Studying was impossible. So I kept quiet, choking on my happiness. Every now and again, I looked back at Elliott, still engrossed by those molecular diagrams. I monitored the newspaper bin and tried to eavesdrop on ­people reading the review:

  “Have you read the review of that new place on Bond Street? Sounds like Michael Saltz got his groove back.”

  “Dude sounded like he was losing it for a while. His old reviews were so boring.”

  “Tellicherry sounds interesting, we should go.”

  “This licorice breadstick sounds so cool.”

  Perhaps ­people were quoting my words in their emails and would talk about them over dinner. Perhaps a young girl had brought my review to school and read it in class while her teachers weren’t looking. Perhaps she dreamed that she could write this column, too.

  I wished I could write this column and have it to myself.

  I didn’t attempt to lure Elliott out of his shell again. Instead, I listened to the chatter. I walked past a Bon Appétit magazine with Pascal Fox on the cover, holding a plate toward the public.

  Oh, Pascal, I thought, as if we were two old hats working at the famous foodie game. I imagined him right there in the bookstore with me, holding me from behind, his chest so warm and broad in my imagination that I got too hot and took off my cardigan. I shook my head—­yet again—­to rid myself of these thoughts. I had a boyfriend. But thinking about Pascal wasn’t cheating. Especially if Elliott was already being so distant. I liked Elliott when he was passionate, but those passions had usually included me. Now I didn’t know where I stood.

  Finally, I returned to our table. “Hey, are you hungry?” I asked.

  “Hungry?” Elliott said gruffly. “We just got here.”

  I looked at my watch. “No, not really. It’s one thirty. We’ve been here two hours.”

  “Eugh, yeah, you’re right,” he said. “Let’s go, then.” He began to put everything in his backpack. “How about that falafel place?”

  “Falafel?” I scrunched my nose. “Actually, what do you think about going to Tellicherry?”

  “What’s Tellicherry?”

  “It’s a new restaurant. The New York Times reviewed it today.” I opened the paper and showed him the page. My page. It was my last effort to connect.

  Please, I thought. Please like this. Please please please.

  It was relationship voodoo. If he liked it, everything would be okay. If he loved me on a fundamental level, he’d somehow be able to recognize this as mine—­knowing nothing about it. He’d feel it in his bones.

  He quickly glanced at the article. “Really? That place? Eh . . . that’s not us.”

  My hands dropped with the newspaper. I reworked my voodoo. If he realized the importance after a little coaxing—­after all, he couldn’t read my mind—­then we were right for each other.

  But part of me knew that was an impossible challenge. Maybe I wanted him to fail.

  “Come on, read it,” I said, meaning to sound breezy, but my voice came out a little mean and annoyed, a voice laced with distrust.

  Elliott sighed and took the paper. I watched him expectantly.

  I wanted him to love it so we could share this moment, even in the weakest of ways. That would be better than nothing. Yet I also wanted him to hate it, to absolve me of my Pascal thoughts, to give me permission to think new ones.

  “Yuba stick?” he said with a small note of disgust in his voice. “Curry ice cream? Sounds pretentious, doesn’t it? And gross, frankly.”

  I staggered back as if he had struck me. One last chance. “You’re missing the point. Read it again.”

  “I don’t want to read it again,” Elliott said with finality. “I want to eat lunch.” He took me by the hand but I yanked it away.

  “I don’t want falafel,” I said. “I want to go to Tellicherry.”

  “Okay!” Elliott replied with his hands up, as if I were holding him hostage. “Let’s go. I definitely want to spend my nonexistent money there. Maybe it’ll be as good as Bakushan.”

  The word from his lips paralyzed me for a second and I felt protective over Pascal and his restaurant.

  “Fine, I’ll go by myself.” It’d be a mistake to take him there anyway. What did he know about food? Why did I need to tolerate this attitude? I’d given him a shot, but I wouldn’t pretend that the review didn’t matter to me.

  By now ­people were looking at us, shoppers and tourists and kids and parents. The newspaper stack had diminished considerably. God, couldn’t they get more papers here? ­People wanted to read the review! Where was the floor manager?

  Tellicherry was never the type of place for Elliott. I don’t know why I even bothered to ask him in the first place, especially after Bakushan.

  I’d find someone else to go to Tellicherry with me. At least one guy would be game. I let my mind escape to that fantasy. He’d go with me to any restaurant in the city. He was the ultimate insider, tastemaker, key-­holder. Everything about Pascal excited me—­the roughness of his skin, the clench of his hand, the lullaby that was his knife slicing through the lovage.

  I didn’t have to fantasize for long, though. Just then, Pascal texted me a picture of that fluke, lovage, and yogurt mousse dish along with a caption:

  IT’S A HIT!

  I smiled and didn’t even bother to hide it from Elliott, who was loading up his backpack with his mountain of books.

  “Sorry, I mean . . . I just don’t feel like going out to a fancy lunch.” He smiled in a long-­suffering kind of way. “I guess I’m stressed. And I remembered I have to head out anyway. I have this thing—­”

  “Sure,” I said, relieved, actually. Elliott picked up his bag and walked away without saying good-­bye. I waited for him to turn around and wave back at me, in case a small part of “us” was still there. He descended on the escalator, walked through the crowd, and left through the revolving door.

  I realized then that my relationship voodoo was juvenile. There were no cryptic signs. It was either there or it wasn’t.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I got another text from my new friend. He really wanted to see me again.

  HEY. I NEED TO THANK YOU FOR THAT LOVAGE INSPIRATION. DINNER?

  But before I had a chance to think about it, I got an email from Elliott. A mass email.

  Dear Friends,

  Come one, come all to the botany symposium—­tomorrow! A ­couple of us will present our work, ranging from cryptozoology to chemosynthesis, and we’ll also show a sneak peek of our Poison exhibit.

  I’ll be your honorary emcee and will also present my project, eco-­friendly pest control via carnivorous plant enzymes. It sounds sexy because it is sexy. I’ll be introducing our awesome speaker, Dr. Mohammed Zalmai, who’ll speak about the New York Botanical Garden’s partnership with Beth Israel Medical Center.

  The symposium is tomorrow at 3:00 P.M. in Weill Auditorium, 1300 York Ave and 69th St. Hope to see you all there.

  Cheers,

  Elliott

  Had he been planning the symposium at the bookstore? Had he told me about it? Wasn’t he studying something about the Arctic? I
looked at my phone, then at my computer. I made an effort to get back to Elliott first, even though I wanted to flood Pascal’s inbox with Yes, what time, I’ve been thinking about you every second. But I focused on Elliott’s message. I had scheduled lunch at Le Brittane with Michael Saltz, but Elliott’s thing wasn’t until three. And then I had to report to Madison Park Tavern at five thirty. It would be tight, but it seemed doable.

  Hey. This sounds really exciting! I’ll be there.

  Elliott’s email was exciting. I was proud of him and happy that he was happy. And yet. After I pressed Send, the words looked so sterile and forced. They didn’t look different from any other email I had sent to Elliott, even when we were at the height of our love. And yet those days seemed so far away.

  In New York, my best moments had been at Madison Park Tavern, Tellicherry, Bakushan. The ­people I liked most were food ­people, who lived and breathed it like me. Maybe all the times Elliott had chased a food adventure with me in college, he’d just been playing along because he couldn’t think of anything better to do. But now we had options besides each other.

  And so I turned my attention to Pascal’s texts. Where would we have dinner? My mind raced to what I’d wear and what I’d order.

  But Michael Saltz wouldn’t approve of me texting back and would forbid me from seeing him, so I did nothing. For now.

  Still, Pascal Fox had texted me. That was something. I savored it, and for the time being, that was enough.

  Chapter 19

  MY LE BRITTANE–SYMPOSIUM–MADISON PARK Tavern triple-­header started at one thirty. After class, I walked to a coffee shop and went straight to the bathroom.

  I took off my jeans and sweater and jumped into a fitted Carolina Herrera skirt and a chiffon Moschino blouse with a patterned sash wrapped around the waist. Ballet flats, off. Red Prada slingbacks, on. I’d put my Burberry trench coat on later. I stuffed my old clothes in my Goyard tote and checked myself in the mirror.

  Today I was playing an actress. I had a lot on my plate, but the key was to own the part. For the next ­couple of hours with Michael Saltz, I put my old self aside.