Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

  “The flavor sounds foul, right?” Michael Saltz said, then looked over at Pascal Fox, as if to size him up.

  I wanted to say, But I bet it’s amazing! or That’s the most creative dish I’ve ever seen on a menu!, because I believed that and I wanted to shield Pascal. I had the power to protect him.

  “But that’s why you get it,” Michael Saltz concluded. “You get the one where the chef is reaching for the stars.”

  “Pascal is good at that,” I said, sitting up tall. My voice came out in a steady, authoritative stream. No more of that quiver, and I felt proud that words bent more easily to my will these days.

  “Pascal? You get a new hairdo and now you’re all chummy with the chefs? I forgot you had that little flirtation with him at Tellicherry.” Michael Saltz shuddered. “Yes, well, Pascal wasn’t known for his adventurousness at his previous posts. This is brand new for him. There’s a lot at stake here.”

  I crinkled my nose, playing along with him. “I know, we dodged a bullet there. But it’s just . . . I get a four-­star vibe here. I can tell the difference now. You were right about Tellicherry being three stars.”

  Michael Saltz’s smile was instant and blinding. “Oh! Good, good. You’re learning. I’ve never trusted the hoi polloi. Maybe this place is . . .” He looked around and I laid it on thicker. Michael Saltz ran on ego like cars ran on gas, but because his job required him to be a ghost, he only had me to show off to. I was about to use that to my advantage.

  “What were Pascal’s other restaurants like? I’ve read about them, but I never got around to going. You have the most impressive dining history.” I made it sound like I hadn’t gone because the restaurants had just been a little bit out of the way, not the real reason, which was that not too long ago I was a girl from Yonkers with parents who thought restaurants were the world’s biggest scam. I did it to protect my own ego, sure, but also to make Michael Saltz feel that he was talking to a fawning acolyte.

  “Oh, Tia. They were classic—­to the book,” he said, playing right into my charms. “Beautiful food, my goodness. But the creative latitude was about this wide.” He held his hands about two inches apart. “And the menu here is like this.” He opened his hands to the width of the table and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, So what’s he got?

  I watched Pascal from our table. He never hesitated over a dish or doubled back over something he forgot. I could see his mouth moving, and then understood why the music was so loud—­so the patrons wouldn’t hear his constant yelling. By then I had a sense of his musculature and the complex ways he moved through space. His motions were slick and fast, like a seal in the water. For a second he stared at something outside of my sight and I wondered if he was daydreaming of me in that moment. I wished I could have walked right up to the pass and kissed him, but all I could do was stay in my chair, in a pant suit that made me feel ten years older, and make his day in another way.

  The food arrived. The snail and pork dumpling had new, thinner dough. I placed it in my mouth but instead of melting away, the skin suctioned to my mouth like a piece of plastic. I gulped it down and noticed a gravelly feeling across the roof of my mouth. Sand.

  Then, a pea shoot and foie gras wheel with a small butter knife. Michael Saltz and I stared at it, confounded by how it worked. It stood on its side like an ancient monument, with various crinkly and crackly things at its base.

  “Just cut it,” the waiter said kindly. He looked like Pascal Lite, not as exotic or statuesque, but with a bit of Pascal’s twinkle and good-­boy-­with-­a-­lot-­of-­tattoos edge.

  I slid the knife down. At first nothing happened. The foie gras clung to itself, until it peeled apart sleepily and a green, milky liquid bled out.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow,” Michael Saltz said.

  I took a soft forkful of foie gras and dragged it through the pea shoot sauce and the brown crumbles and white flakes. I rubbed the foie gras against the roof of my mouth, and it stuck there with a sticky stubbornness, then melted away. The taste coursed through my body, a slippery, moody, gutsy smoothness that slithered and pushed and screamed down my throat.

  Oh, Pascal, I thought. If I couldn’t be with him, this came close. I flashed back to three nights ago and the pleasure cascaded through me once more.

  And then came the celery soda lemon pie with pine nuts and guanciale. It didn’t look like a pie, more like a pudding. The pine nuts gave it roundness and body, and the guanciale a lurid, sweaty moodiness. But the soda effervescence was rather unnerving.

  “Well, how do you like it?” Michael Saltz asked, picking at its jiggle.

  I tried to silence a pine nut–celery–lemon–pork burp. It was . . . interesting.

  But it didn’t matter. For the purposes of this dinner, I loved it. I loved more than “it”—­I loved the whole orbit of genius that linked the food to the space to the man.

  “Four stars, for sure,” I said while imagining Pascal’s joy and what would become of us.

  “Four stars, oh, yes?” Michael Saltz said. “That’s a bold statement, but I shouldn’t be surprised, coming from you. You know, I’ve heard rumblings that Le Brittane is cleaning shop.”

  “Cleaning shop?” I gulped.

  “Firing all the staff and starting fresh. They were blindsided.” Michael Saltz cleared his throat and his face got stern. “We did a number on that restaurant. I sometimes wonder if they deserved it.” He looked at me for a long time, but not in an accusing way, just pondering, reflective. Even though he didn’t care much for me or typical journalistic integrity, he still had his own moral compass when it came to the reviews.

  Shit. Le Brittane hadn’t deserved it. They hadn’t lost two stars because the food had fallen or the ser­vice failed. That day, with Elliott, I had fallen. I had failed. And now ­people were losing their jobs. I thought of our waiter, Hugo. He was probably the first to get fired. Did he have a wife? Kids? A mortgage? I realized with a wallop of regret that he probably had all three.

  Writing the review had made me feel powerful, sure. But I never wanted to abuse it again. Back then, I had let the pains of my life affect the stars. But I wouldn’t make that mistake again. ­People’s lives were on the line, and starting with this review, my impact would be more positive.

  “Bakushan deserves four stars,” I said. “Absolutely.” I sat up, ready to flatter Michael Saltz again if that’s what it’d take to give Pascal what I wanted.

  “Building something up requires more effort than taking it down,” he said matter-­of-­factly. “In this city, ninety percent of all restaurants fail. Another restaurant failing might make news for a ­couple days, until the next week’s review gets ­people up in a lather. But a restaurant reaching four stars, rising above ninety percent of the failures and ninety-­eight percent of the mediocres, then that’s something to seriously consider.”

  “Well, I think Bakushan is up there. You said Pascal never showed his creative range at his earlier restaurants, but look at how far he’s come. He’s pushing cuisine, and—­”

  Michael Saltz nodded. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to convince me. I agree. Bakushan certainly has the bones of a four-­star, but let’s take this one day at a time. I haven’t awarded four stars since . . . since, you know. The experience has to absolutely merit it and I have to be able to stand by the claim.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But I stand by it. I’ve used everything I’ve learned from you and I really feel that this is it.”

  Michael Saltz lifted his fork, then thought better of it and put it down. After all, the food was cardboard to him anyway. “Well, we can keep that in mind. For a four-­star, I’d like to come back again, to check for consistency. I wish I could experience it with you, just so I could know for myself.” He brought his napkin up to his mouth and kept it there for a while, like he was going to cough. “I’m lucky that I’ve got you.”
/>   I liked the compliment but something about the way he said “got you” made me shiver.

  “Thanks,” I said, shaking that off. “I’m glad you’ve got me, too.”

  As we left, I popped a stick of gum to mask the lingering effects of that porky soda pie. Pascal never spotted us.

  Chapter 24

  EVEN THOUGH MICHAEL SALTZ WANTED TO VISIT BAKUSHAN for a second time, I started writing the review. Four stars. Obviously genius. World-­class. I agonized over every word since I knew that this document, these sentences, would come to define the restaurant and set in motion a whole other chain of events. Expansion. Investments. Cookbook deals. When I wasn’t in class or working at Madison Park Tavern, I was crafting the Bakushan review.

  After class on Wednesday, I power-­walked back to the apartment to get ready for work and found Emerald sitting on the couch in a black silk taffeta gown and dangly gold earrings. A big bouquet of lilies lay nearby and a guy I didn’t know stood next to her.

  “Um, hi?” I said to Emerald, even though she had her head buried in her knees. The guy wore a hoodie over a suit and looked nice, down-­to-­earth.

  Emerald lifted her head and said, “Sorry Tia, I didn’t think you’d be home this early.” She put her hand on the small of the guy’s back, in a place you don’t touch friends of the opposite sex. “You should go now,” she whispered, a voice that had none of Emerald’s usual honeyed swagger.

  The guy smiled at me, then left. And then I saw that Emerald’s face was red and swollen, her makeup streaky.

  “That’s Charlie, my boyfriend,” she said flatly.

  “You have a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah. We just made it official last week. He’s great.” Talking about him seemed to brighten her mood, but barely. She was oddly still, like she’d been sedated.

  “Elliott introduced us,” she said. “Charlie works at the Botanical Gardens.”

  “Oh!” I said, pretending that Elliott’s name in her story didn’t startle me. So that was why she’d wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens the other day.

  “Do you want to know what I was doing today?” she asked in resignation.

  The flowers, the dress. I had no idea what other surprises she had in store for me. “Sure. What were you doing today?”

  She pursed her lips and leaned her head away, like a buoy tipping far from shore. “You know, I thought we’d be friends. I saw your Facebook profile and you seemed nice, like really real. And then you get here, and . . . I don’t know what happened. We don’t even know each other. I don’t know why I even expected we would be buddy-­buddy. It’s perfectly fine that we aren’t, as long as you pay the bills, I guess. But . . . it’s hard living here with you and Melinda, like I’m not welcome in my own home.” She shook her head. Happy, sexy, confident Emerald looked totally hopeless.

  Of course she was right. We didn’t know each other. But I just didn’t know how to relate to her. She looked at me, through me, grasping at a connection we didn’t have. Her grief filled the room, and I felt suffocated by her earnestness, not ready for what came next.

  “I was at the cemetery today, Tia.”

  “The cemetery?” I repeated numbly.

  “Yes. I go every week. But today was—­”

  “Wait, what?” I didn’t feel equipped to be here with sad Emerald. I couldn’t even handle happy Emerald.

  She collapsed back on the couch, the black ball gown poofing upward like a cloud of dust. “Never mind.”

  “No . . . really,” I said. I approached her as if she were an injured animal: concerned but cautious, ready to jump back at any moment.

  She eyed me with suspicion and as her tears dried up, I saw the Emerald I knew come into being. Emerald’s essence was in her posture. Her spine, sure. But also her alert lips, her demonstrative hands, her hair elevated just so. Even her boobs had poise.

  “A memorial ser­vice,” she said, and in her eyes I detected something similar to what I’d been doing a lot of lately—­a computation of what can be disclosed, and to whom.

  “Oh,” I said. “For . . . who?”

  Emerald scrunched up her face and just went for it. “My brother and father. They died four years ago.”

  Sherri’s hint of a “hard life.” The sighting at Bergdorf with her bewildered, weak mother. I realized with a shock that I had had a chance to step in and ask her about those things. I could have been there for her instead of gossiping behind her back. At the very least, I could have thanked her for the suit, the suit that had made me feel like I could actually belong at the type of restaurant I now visited every week.

  “You didn’t know that about me, did you?”

  “Oh, Emerald,” I said. I walked closer, but stopped myself as a matter of habit. All semester, I had avoided closeness—­physical and emotional—­with her. We had never spoken about our families, but we could have. It seemed so obvious and right, to be friends with your roommate. It would have made New York a whole lot easier and more fun.

  She took a deep breath and blurted out the rest in one long go, like coming up for air after being underwater. “My parents were finalizing the divorce. Dad picked up Peter from Yale for our last Thanksgiving as a family.” Her voice squeaked on the word family. She talked to the wall behind me as if she were reading off a teleprompter, so her voice seemed delivered to the space in the living room, not to me. “They were going down I-­95 and a sixteen-­wheeler swerved. The fucking driver fell asleep at the wheel. The road was icy and he threw them off, right into a ditch.”

  I gasped so hard it felt like a hiccup. Emerald sighed.

  “Every day I miss them. I guess I’m okay for the most part. I guess I’m past it all. But sometimes I think funny stuff, like they’re gonna come back. Like Peter’s gonna write me an email out of the blue and tell me that he has a lacrosse game on Friday and maybe I can take the train to New Haven.”

  “Emerald,” I started. “I don’t know how . . .”

  “You went to Yale, right?” she asked. Her voice had regained its typical lushness, but there was still a sorrowful lethargy about it.

  “Yeah, I went to Yale,” I said. I knew we had done the requisite research on each other, but it still surprised me that she remembered that. I’d thought I was a nobody to her, but now she seemed to be going out of her way to show me otherwise.

  “I went to NYU for undergrad, you know,” she said. “Two of my college friends lived with me until they moved to L.A. Is Regina Chang your dean?”

  “Yeah . . .” I said. Did she really pay this much attention to me and I so little to her? I was sure I would have remembered that she’d gone to NYU, but somehow it had slipped my mind. I guess I was too focused on myself.

  “I saw you at Bergdorf,” Emerald said suddenly and I accidentally kicked a chair in surprise. She turned her head to me and for the first time during the conversation, we truly locked eyes. “I don’t hide what happened with my dad and Peter, even if I never told you. But my mom . . . she fell apart after the accident and she’s never been the same. I never talk about that—­to anyone. It kills me to have her like this and it’s too much for me to explain.”

  She looked at me softly, strangely. “You knew my real secret. So, congratulations. I’ve lived in New York my whole life and yet I can count the ­people who know about her on one hand. It’s funny that you’re part of that group.” She brushed her hair back and smiled her Emerald smile.

  Then she walked into her room and, without shutting the door, changed into a high-­collared red-­and-­white-­check wrap dress that hugged her amazing curves and showcased her face, beautiful even after all the crying.

  I averted my eyes and waited for her to finish.

  “Emerald?” I tried.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about your dad and brother. And I know I saw you at Bergdorf, but it’s just that—­” I stop
ped myself. I wished I could have matched Emerald’s bravery. “I was too distracted by work things to stop and say hello.” That wasn’t technically a lie, but it felt so cheap compared to what Emerald had just told me.

  But Emerald didn’t seem to notice. “Badass.” She nodded. “From day one, you’ve always been a badass about this food thing.”

  I had to laugh at that. Emerald understood. That’s all I’d ever wanted out of this situation: to be badass at something. “Thanks, Emerald,” I said. “The internship has been great. And . . . thank you for the suit. I wear it all the time at the restaurant.”

  Emerald laughed uproariously. “That old thing? I’m surprised you still bother with it. Don’t think I haven’t noticed all your new goodies. I see you at Bergdorf once and you come back with a never-­ending wardrobe.”

  I tensed and looked away. “Oh, but that was a one-­time visit. My new clothes are nothing . . . H&M and stuff.”

  Emerald chuckled, an okay, if you say so . . . But she didn’t push it. She probably knew better than most that a person is entitled to her secrets.

  She slid into another one of her men’s coats, smoothing it gently. It dawned on me that those coats must have belonged to her father, and her frequent absences from the apartment must have been so she could visit her mom. She wiped off her streaked makeup and straightened her shoulders.

  “Anyway, see you around.” She should have been sad and lonely but instead she was popular and fun-­loving. And probably for the hundredth time, I wished I could be more like Emerald, someone who wasn’t afraid to live out in the open and offer her heart to ­people who might hurt it.

  Chapter 25

  THE NEXT NIGHT, MELINDA TEXTED ME OUT OF THE BLUE and asked if I wanted to eat a late dinner with her. I wondered if she had seen Emerald, too. I had been meaning to talk to her about easing up on the Emerald-­hate. Between that and torturing myself with thoughts of Pascal and my second visit to Bakushan, a night out would do me good.