Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

  “The mind is like a body of water,” she continued, holding up her wineglass. “It always wants to be at the same height. If a tide goes out”—­she took a big gulp then immediately topped herself off—­“you should let something else rush in. Your mind won’t know the difference.”

  Maybe your mind wouldn’t, but what about your heart? I didn’t say anything, but then I got a text.

  WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET YOUR ATTN? MEET ME AT RYE LOUNGE.

  Melinda grabbed the phone out of my hands.

  “Unknown number? Now that’s not sketchy at all.”

  I had never texted Pascal back. But why not? Why was I keeping myself at low tide? Especially when there was a perfectly good wave waiting to come to shore.

  “Oh, that’s a guy named . . . Pascal? He’s . . . a friend.”

  “. . . A friend? Well, go to, lady! Get outta here and have fun, okay?” She stood up and started for her room. “Take your hot ass out on the town.”

  I looked back at Pascal’s text. It’d be nice to go out. Finally answer his texts. See him again. Michael Saltz had put more trust in me over the last month, and he’d never suspect I’d correspond with Pascal.

  It’d be nice to not be lonely.

  Before I overthought it, I texted that I’d meet him there, put on skinny jeans and a Tibi chiffon top, and left the apartment.

  On my way out, I bumped into Emerald, returning from wherever she’d gone.

  “Whoa there, hot stuff! You’re leaving now?” She caught me by the shoulders, like I was a mental patient on the run.

  “Yes! I’m going out,” I said, a little too proudly. I’d never left for a social thing after Emerald had returned. “To Rye Lounge.”

  “Rye Lounge? I’ve never heard of it.”

  Neither had I, but it felt good knowing something Emerald didn’t. “Oh, it’s new.”

  “Cool,” she said. “Well, see you later.”

  I got excited with every step I took. I eyed other girls, as if to pick up cues from their social behavior—­was I chill? Excitable? Should I unbutton my coat even though it was freezing out? I felt stupid for not knowing these basic things, but Elliott and I had started going out freshman year and been in our little New Haven bubble. I didn’t know what it meant to “go out” in NYC, but now I wanted to find out . . . bar by bar, restaurant by restaurant.

  I finally arrived and spotted Pascal hunched over his drink in a booth. The bar was dark and straightforward. Nothing gimmicky or shiny. No light shows or designer outfits on the bartenders. It seemed to be filled with low-­key locals and restaurant ­people getting off work. I didn’t have to worry about bumping into Michael Saltz here, that was for sure. Still, I felt overdressed in this place, a compact bar that didn’t feel particularly special—­just basic booze and some pictures of old New York.

  He didn’t see me at first, so I just watched him slumped over in the shadows.

  I guess ­people always look at models and celebrity chefs and famous ­people and think of those cover stories—­movies and restaurant openings and looking glamorous. But now his handsomeness took a backseat to what looked a lot like loneliness. That made me like him more.

  It wasn’t until I lightly tapped Pascal on the shoulder that he noticed me. “Oh!” he said as he jumped up and hugged me, his energy suddenly at the surface. I felt his heart beating through his leather jacket. Or maybe that was my heart.

  “Tia! What a treat to see you tonight. You look beautiful! Sit, sit. Did you have a good day?” He nodded to the bartender, who started mixing me a drink. He had shed his funk and was now all smiles and mussed-­up hair and tattoos that tantalized from his open cuffs.

  I recomposed myself. I loved that he asked about me. I loved that he had a drink at the ready for me and that we were here, sitting next to each other with the purpose of . . . what? To chat, to chat, I drilled into myself. I didn’t let myself think in terms beyond that. I kept those definitions—­a date? a precursor to something more?—­fuzzy and at the periphery, but close enough that I could take joy in them.

  “Well, grad school is sort of a drag,” I said as a waitress delivered my drink. “It probably seems like a waste of time to someone like you. It feels that way to me sometimes.”

  “Wait, wait. Why are you putting yourself down like that? NYU’s a great school. I’ve heard it’s the best Food Studies program in the country.”

  When did I tell him I went to NYU?

  The thought occurred to me in a flash, and then it disappeared, making way for Pascal’s attention.

  He had put his drink down and was looking at me with concern. Why was I putting myself down? Pascal made me want to be a better version of me—­more confident, more sure. But also prettier, better dressed, more in-­the-­know about the world in which he was a player. I liked who I became in his eyes.

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “I’m lucky, I guess. I have a cool internship now. That’s rare for a first-­year.”

  He nudged toward me and his face opened up in a way you rarely see from handsome faces. You expect those faces to look perfect, an encapsulation of a single pure moment for the outside viewer to appreciate from afar. But his expression intertwined with mine, reflecting my emotions, amplifying them, eliciting them. I nudged toward him, too.

  “You like food a lot, don’t you? Is that what you want to do with your life?”

  “I want to write about food,” I said matter-­of-­factly. And then, less so, “I want ­people . . . to listen to me.” The moment I said it, I felt embarrassed. It seemed so crass. Of course everyone wanted to be heard.

  But his eyebrows softened. He rested an elbow on the table and looked at me with undivided attention.

  Why was I even telling him all this? I didn’t tell anyone this stuff—­not Elliott, my friends, my family—­no one.

  Pascal let a smile creep over his face.

  “What, do you think that’s funny?” I started sweating right through my chiffon top.

  “No, no, I don’t. I like your passion. It makes me happy to meet ­people who know what they want and are going for it. Especially when those ­people are beautiful, like you.”

  I retreated into the shadow of the banquette. Man, he made me feel so good.

  “It can be scary to pursue your dream, but I think the key is to surround yourself with ­people who support you,” he said. “My parents love to cook. My mom is Filipino and my dad is French—­both food cultures. They put me on this cooking track and I never looked back.”

  “Oh!” I said. So that’s why he looked a little like me. “I’m also mixed,” I said.

  He smiled shyly. “I know,” he said. And then I blushed, too.

  “When I was in school, I never partied or went out with my friends,” he said. “I preferred to stay home and cook. And I guess when I was younger, I thought that made me weird. But then I realized that was my purpose in this world, and I owed it to myself to see it through.” Here his accent became not quite French, but something dreamy around the edges.

  I picked up my drink, a brown whiskey-­based thing that was much stronger than what I was used to, but somehow went down easily. I let Pascal’s knee touch mine.

  “Did you always want to be a chef?”

  Pascal bit his nails. Bit his nails! He was so cute, so real. All those articles about him made him seem like some cocky man-­about-­town. But here he was modest and measured, talking in thoughtful tones. “I think so, yes. If not a chef, then maybe a food writer like you. Have you always wanted to be a writer?”

  The power of someone listening startled me. I had gone through the semester without a single real, deep conversation. But why? What did I think was so bad down there?

  For the first time in months, I let myself look into that darkness.

  “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to be a writer. But more than that, I’ve always wan
ted to have a thing. Something that defined me.”

  Ugh, that sounded so lame. The second I spoke, I regretted the desperation of it. I wished I could have tossed out something hollow like Melinda, or something assertive and sure like Emerald. But Pascal put his hand on my leg, and I knew right then that what I’d said was okay and he understood.

  “. . . something that validated me,” I finished.

  He squeezed my knee. “You’re not alone.”

  As steamy as our Bakushan episode had been, this time we hardly touched. We talked into the night. In the same way I’d spilled my heart to Michael Saltz in the restaurant basement, I gave myself to Pascal. I talked about my dreams, the raw stuff. I wasn’t sure if this was okay during my break with Elliott, and I was positive that this was unacceptable to Michael Saltz, but I pushed them out of my mind. It was easier to throw myself into this, this ecstasy of being heard, of being magnetic to someone you admire.

  Of course I liked that he was famous and hot. But I hadn’t realized until then how tense I had been all fall. With him, I let go.

  I drank that drink and ordered another. And when the bartender made last call at 3:45, I ordered another. Pascal and I talked the whole night, and at the end of it, he walked me back to my apartment. We were tired, yet not as drunk as I would have thought. I wanted to touch him and felt like he wanted to touch me, too. The air in the late, late night was thin and hallucinatory, like we were at a high altitude.

  Outside my apartment, Pascal sighed and took me by the waist. He was much taller than I and swung me from side to side. He tipped his lips down as I tipped my lips up. And then, without a care in the world, we kissed.

  His lips were surprisingly soft. I had only kissed Elliott for the past four years, and every kiss before that had been embarrassingly bad. Pascal’s lips were so different, full yet muscular. He held me by the back of my head, then slid his hands down to my neck, kneading as he went, so by the time his hands were at the small of my back, my insides had melted.

  Elliott had a shallow way of kissing, lips that moved like an ant on a leaf. Pascal was all push and pull, suck and lick. Every bit of pressure corresponded with another withdrawal, leaving me panting and yearning. With each second, I felt more and more out of my body, out of my mind. I felt, blissfully, like a totally different person.

  And that’s when I heard him.

  “Tia!” yelled a voice from down the street, a silhouette with a slightly off-­balance movement.

  It was so late, I didn’t think it could be him. But I had been made. And not by Melinda or Emerald or Michael Saltz, but by someone I actually cared about.

  He was probably returning from one of his night shifts at the lab. He held a basket of flowers. Crocuses and saffron, I thought, but that could have been some hallucinatory guilt. I thought if I stayed still he wouldn’t know it was me. But just like I knew his walk, he knew the lines of my movement. I couldn’t even look back to see what Pascal was doing. I just stayed still, waiting for him to walk away, to think we were just some strangers in the night.

  Elliott. He looked for a second longer, and of course I knew more about him than just his walk. I also knew this face he was making now, a frown and a gulp and a punch in the stomach. And then he turned away.

  What had I done?

  “Elliott!” I called back, but my voice cracked and fell midair. I left Pascal and ran to him, my stomach balling up and my breath quivering in the cold.

  He snapped back, his blue eyes sparkling with tears. “So you wanted to go on a break, huh? To do this?” He’d started at a whisper but ramped up to a yell. I hadn’t seen him in a month. Had barely talked to him. It crushed me that his face and his body and his voice felt vaguely foreign to me. We had lost something real.

  “Elliott, I . . .”

  “What is a break to you anyway? You know, I thought it was so we could get our heads on straight. Do some thinking on our own. But if I had known that you wanted to use this opportunity to—­”

  “Elliott. I . . . it’s just . . .”

  “Who is . . .” He pointed to Pascal on the other side of the street, who had his hands in his pockets and was looking down at the sidewalk.

  “He’s just . . . a chef.”

  “A chef . . .” Elliott said. And then something clicked for him. “Oh, right. Right! Why didn’t I fucking see this before? That’s the Bakushan dude who makes the fucking amazing snail bonbons and sauerkraut ice cream.”

  I closed my eyes and stayed stone-­still, scrambling for the right words to say.

  “It all makes fucking sense now. All fall you’ve had this weirdness about you that I couldn’t put my finger on. It was Helen, or me, or school, or Emerald, I don’t know! But apparently this guy makes you happy.”

  I couldn’t respond because the answer was yes.

  He stopped and regained his composure, standing to his full height, six or so inches above me, as if to intimidate me, to show me his worth.

  “I get it now. This is who you are.”

  The lone shadow across the street turned away. Pascal had made his exit.

  Now it was up to me to say something. But what could I say?

  That night, I had kissed another man and let him into my heart. I was hiding my life from Elliott and could see no end to that.

  “I give up,” Elliott said. “Forget this break. You’re a terrible person and I’m done with you.”

  AS I WALKED upstairs, I thought about Elliott’s tears falling in a sudden downpour.

  How Pascal stared at me in the dark bar.

  How Elliott had been with me through thick and thin.

  How Pascal rested his hand on my knee.

  The look on Elliott’s face when he saw me kissing someone else. Every time I thought about it, my heart twisted. Just a ­couple of months ago, I’d been in love with Elliott. New York was going to be our place, where we’d become our true selves.

  But that was an old plan. That was an old Tia.

  As much as I hated hurting Elliott, I also felt relieved. It was good that he’d let me go. A break was too weak. Because, really, I had let go of him the moment Michael Saltz laid eyes on me.

  When I got back to my room, I saw that Pascal had texted me.

  :( IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP?

  Yeah. I texted back:

  Can you come over?

  I didn’t want to stumble into my life anymore. I wanted to take charge and control my destiny. In thirty minutes, Pascal was at my door with a bag of beignets he had freshly fried. We ate them in my bed, getting powdered sugar on our clothes, and then on our underwear, and then on our naked bodies.

  “Who was that out there?” he said, his tongue edging up from my collarbone, to my neck, to the curve of my ear. His hands were on my butt, and my hands were on his. We were pressing into each other as much as we could, as much as was possible until we were finally one.

  “No one,” I said, as he began pushing into me.

  No one, I repeated to myself. No one. No one.

  Inside, a mountain of tension squeezed tighter and tighter before crunching into a tiny crystalline diamond. That diamond shattered into a billion pieces of wonder and I came harder than I’d ever come before. I was broken, but I was also new.

  I silently cried myself to sleep with Pascal beside me. But when I woke up, I felt much better. Kissing Pascal had made me feel like another person. And after having sex with him, I knew that the change was finally complete.

  Chapter 23

  MICHAEL SALTZ GOT US A GUARANTEED TABLE AT BAKUSHAN, even though they didn’t take reservations. Instead, he got a “holder” who waited in line for him, then passed the table on to us when we arrived.

  “Thanks for waiting, Hank.”

  “No problem,” Hank said in a giddy way, like it was an immense honor to wait in a long line so someone else could ea
t dinner in his name. “Have a good night . . . Hank.” He winked and Michael Saltz and I smiled back awkwardly.

  The wait wasn’t terrible, though. After the initial excitement, ­people had said that Bakushan wasn’t worth the hype, and as Michael Saltz had said, the staff was snobby, and the food uneven. But to me, that was in one ear, out the other.

  As I put my phone on the table, I saw Pascal in the kitchen and felt an intense sense of longing for him. What was he thinking? When would we see each other again? I wanted Pascal to whisk me away to fabulous restaurants, show me secret underground bars that only industry ­people knew. I didn’t want to disappear anymore. It seemed crazy that just three nights before, we were revealing the deepest parts of our souls, and now I was at his restaurant wearing my most ridiculous disguise yet: a staid pant suit to match Michael Saltz’s even more conservative suit. We would have passed at an investment bank, but here in the East Village, at Bakushan, we looked pitifully uncool.

  The menu had changed radically since I had eaten there with Elliott and Emerald. If the dish wasn’t entirely new, it was an old dish with new ingredients. I was disappointed that the fluke and lovage dish wasn’t on the menu, but maybe he was saving it for a special one night.

  “This is how you order at a place like this,” Michael Saltz said, in a professorial mood. “You get all the must-­haves. The obvious picks that bring ­people in. Everyone who reads about Bakushan wants to know about certain dishes. Then you get the most expensive and the cheapest, because that gives you range. You get the token vegetarian dish, the trendiest dish, the most loved, and the most hated. And then you get something like this.” He angled his menu toward me and pointed to the page.

  “Beef Wellington?” I read out loud. All the other items on the menu had much longer descriptions, but this one was conspicuously spare.

  “Right, something is up with this one. And this one here,” he said, pointing to another line.

  “Celery soda lemon pie with pine nuts and guanciale,” I read. Guanciale, bacon made from the pig’s jowl. I had read it was the “new bacon,” but had never tried it.