Food Whore

by Jessica Tom

  I wore leather Band of Outsiders pants, a slinky Alexander Wang sweater, and a Marni wool bubble coat with trumpeted sleeves that peekabooed a bright yellow lining. I rarely wore my regular clothes anymore.

  Melinda had already arrived and was wearing a knitted purple tube dress and a yellow turban. She, too, was always changing her style. She wore overalls and plaid, or sky-­high heels and piles of gold bangles. When she wore something glamorous and oversize, I sometimes thought she was Emerald, even though Melinda had none of Emerald’s curves.

  Heedless had just opened in NoHo, and served a variety of raw fish and meats in a blinding white space with scatterings of barren branches. It felt like a boutique in a desert, amplifying the chicness of nothing.

  I had once suggested to Michael Saltz that we come here, but he’d thrown a fit about how he was the one in control of the schedule, not me. Fine, but there was no reason I couldn’t eat there without him . . . and use his “pocket money.”

  “Hey. Sorry for the late invite,” Melinda said, throwing her purse from my seat onto the floor. “Some guy asked me out tonight, but the fucker bailed last minute.”

  I smiled in commiseration. Melinda was stood up with surprising regularity. “That sucks,” I said, though I thought that if the guys weren’t standing Melinda up, she would likely be the one standing them up.

  We shared some small plates. Beef with raw quail egg tasted elegant and savage, perfect with some delicate pickled chives, slicked close like veins. Bluefish came slashed with a streak of hot oil that blistered the flesh in a caramel-­colored scar. The herring was paired with a curried goat cheese curd with blueberry jam. The duck breast arrived sliced like sashimi, with a smear of fresh American horseradish.

  “This food is like the opposite of Cleveland fare. So sexy,” Melinda said as a busboy came to refill her water glass. “But the ser­vice is eh.”

  The busboy, our age or even younger, drew back at Melinda’s comment.

  “Come on,” I said. “Go easy. They’re new. Every reviewer gives a restaurant at least three months to get on their feet.” Restaurant Reviewing 101, I thought. Give the restaurant some time, and—­oh, yeah—­don’t be a jerk.

  “Hm, interesting,” Melinda said. “So, suddenly you’re a babe . . . and a restaurant expert . . .”

  “Well . . . I read it somewhere,” I said, shrugging as if it were some factoid on a bottle cap, not knowledge I had earned the hard way, night after night.

  Melinda dropped the subject. The conversation drifted to random things like how our apartment was too hot, how she’d applied for a barista job but didn’t care for the group interview process, how she had a bunch of guys she wanted to set me up with. I didn’t need to talk to Melinda about my secret life with Michael Saltz or Pascal, or even my real life of family and NYU, for that matter. Our friendship was there with no pushes or pulls or obligations, which was often nice, when it didn’t feel empty.

  As we left the restaurant, Melinda took out a cigarette and we hung out on a bench in front of a health food store. Some guys swept the sidewalk around us, ready to close up. I meant to talk to her about Emerald, that we should try to be nicer to her, maybe invite her out to drinks or make dinner at home or something.

  But something gave me pause. I was running low in the friend department and I was afraid of what would happen if I said anything. Melinda had no problem talking shit about Emerald, and I was sure she’d have no problem talking shit about me. I didn’t quite care for her friendship, but she was one of the few friends I had, and I didn’t want to lose her.

  So we just sat on the bench while Melinda smoked. I kept looking at the burning red end of her cigarette, thinking about how to tell her, if at all.

  The smoke swirled around her, caressing her with mystery and poise and sophistication. The glow hypnotized me.

  “You want one?” she asked. She pulled the pack from her purse, some brand I had never seen. The cigarettes sat in a black box trimmed in silver, wrapped in a slightly textured gold foil, like expensive chocolate. She passed me one and I almost dropped it because it was so light. I had only smoked one cigarette in my entire life. I thought they were heavier.

  She gave me a light and I took a breath. The smoke filled my mouth with a flavor like garbage, like bad neighborhoods and wrong corners. I took another breath, and it tasted like men in white undershirts and sweaty feet after dancing. After the third breath, I realized I liked cigarettes now.

  Melinda and I smoked that one, then without even thinking, another, just sitting there quietly among the East Village’s nightly parade of characters.

  After a while, I stopped thinking about confronting Melinda. I didn’t think about the upcoming Bakushan review or my paper or what would become of me and Pascal after that late-­night kiss and the even later-­night sex. I watched ­people pass me by—­NYU students, tourists, New Yorkers annoyed at both. The smoke filled me with a soothing dumbness that fizzed into relaxation.

  “Jeez, it’s getting cold,” Melinda said. She grabbed a scarf from my bag.

  Before I could snatch it out of her hands, she peeked at the tag. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Where the hell did you get this nice scarf? Fendi?” She put it around her neck and ran her hands over the cashmere and fur trim a ­couple of times. “Okay. This totally stumped me before, but the new look? The swag and restaurant stuff? You have a sugar daddy, don’t you?”

  I stared at her in my nicotined post-­dinner buzz and smiled dully.

  A big guy in green cargo pants and a peacoat walked by. “Hey, Tia Monroe, right?”

  I said nothing. I could sort of hear muffled sounds in the distance, as if they or I were underwater.

  “Uh, yeah,” Melinda said when I didn’t answer. “This is Tia.”

  “Oh, hi,” the guy said. I raised the cigarette up to his face, as if it were a torch that could light the way. My arm felt heavy and tingly. He stepped back. “It’s me, Kyle Lorimer?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, still in my murk.

  “I wouldn’t think a foodie like you would smoke.”

  “Why’s that?” I said in a toothless, floating-­on-­the sea sort of way. “Tons of ­people in restaurants smoke.”

  “Don’t you need your taste buds, though? Smoking destroys them.”

  Taste buds. I needed my taste.

  Suddenly I felt the smoke like a gang of ghosts, terrorizing my tongue. I snapped out of it, threw the cigarette down and stomped on it.

  And only then did I register Kyle.

  “How’s the job at Madison Park Tavern?” he asked.

  “It’s fine. It’s coat check, so it’s a riveting collection of wool,” I said, knowing that my sarcasm wasn’t a very subtle defensive tactic.

  “You know, Madison Park Tavern was almost my first choice,” Kyle said. Ha, figures.

  He was carrying two packed-­to-­the-­brim bags of groceries. I peeked inside and saw three different flours, cornmeal, and parchment paper.

  “How is working with Helen Lansky?” I ventured.

  “She’s amazing. We’re transitioning to a big project that will keep her occupied for a ­couple more months. A bit different from her other work.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said. “What kind of project?”

  Melinda put out her cigarette and nudged me. “Come on, let’s go. There’s a cocktail special at that Hawaiian-­themed place!” Her eyes crossed drunkenly as she did a halfway hula motion. We hadn’t drunk much, so I didn’t know why she was acting that way.

  “But wait,” I said. I truly was wondering about Kyle’s experience with Helen. “I want to talk to Kyle for a second.”

  Melinda stood and swung her purse around, bored.

  “Yeah, she’s working on a cookbook,” he said, brightening up so much I couldn’t help but smile along with him. “But she’s taking a departure from general recipes and is specializ
ing—­”

  My phone gave a ping and I looked at it while Melinda watched over my shoulder.

  FREE TONITE AROUND 1?

  Pascal. Even his texts had his magical smell.

  “Whoa!” Melinda said. “It’s that unknown number. That dude Pascal again! He wants you so hard. Is he a babe?”

  He had been texting ever since our night together. Little smil­eys and pictures of dishes. He’d wanted to meet up, but hadn’t been able to because of restaurant obligations. Yes. You’re on! I texted back. It was already half past midnight.

  “Sorry, I have to go,” I said. I had to see him, especially because the review would come out soon. If he was busy now, he’d be even busier later.

  “Yeah, of course,” Kyle said. “You’re a busy gal. Well, anyway, we should get together sometime and talk shop! If you have time.”

  I realized I hadn’t heard what Helen was working on, though I wanted to find out. What was Kyle doing with those ingredients at this hour of the night? But he was already retreating, probably embarrassed after Melinda’s boy-­crazy encouragement.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, and I meant it. But in the end, Pascal took precedence over Kyle.

  As he walked away, Melinda pulled me by the elbow. “I don’t buy that that fratty guy is into food. He doesn’t look the part. I call bullshit.”

  I didn’t think that was a fair assessment, but I went along anyway. “Yeah,” I said. “Total bullshit.”

  I tried to sober up and concentrate. Pascal. I had to get to Pascal.

  “I’m super impressed by you,” Melinda said. “Say hi to your sugar daddy for me.”

  And with that, I left to see him.

  WE MET ON the corner of Thompson and West Broadway, outside a bar. Pascal jumped at me from the shadows.

  “Hello!” he said. “Sorry to scare you. Let’s not go in there. The staff is . . .” He fanned the air in front of his nose. I peeked inside the bar and saw darkness. The only sensation was a full, bitter smell of weed. “Unless you want to have some?” Pascal asked.

  “No, thanks. I don’t do that.”

  He chuckled and grabbed my shoulder. “Good girl! Focused!”

  “So what do you want to do? Is there another place you want to try?” I batted my eyelashes. Did he notice my new outfit?

  Pascal looked at me for a long while. “Let’s go to my place. If that’s okay with you?”

  “Yes!” I said, a bit too quickly, with a little too much blush in my cheeks. “Sure.”

  We were moving fast. Maybe too fast. Elliott and I had just broken up five days ago, the same night Pascal and I had had sex for the first time. But why would I slow down? He made me feel something I had never felt before. I wanted to say good-­bye to that humdrum existence, putt-­putting along. I couldn’t wait for the next step with Pascal. Maybe we’d go out on a dinner date somewhere—­where? I would let him choose. We would say hi to the chef and sit at a PX table. The waitstaff would fuss over us, but we’d be nice to them, tell them not to work so hard because we were on their side.

  He held out his arm and I hooked mine in his. We wove through the night to his place, a small but sweet one-­bedroom on Mulberry. So this was what it was like to enjoy New York with a man. Bars twinkled with premature Christmas decorations, and ­couples smiled at us gently, like they were extras to set the scene: A man and a woman walk out in the November air. Romantic music sets the mood.

  He opened his apartment door and let me enter first. It looked like he had just moved in, with basic furniture and nothing that warmed or personalized the space. We sat at a plastic table and he poured me a glass of red wine, then wiped the lip of the bottle with a white dishcloth and turned the label toward me. I laughed at how cute that was, this little bit of hospitality in his austere bachelor pad.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, as he served himself a Scotch. “Still in restaurant mode.”

  Thursday nights were his least favorite of the week, he explained—­lots of customers, often demanding and entitled. He didn’t mind tourists, who were annoying in their own way, but were at least polite. I put my hand on his thigh and felt his muscles relax. He closed his eyes and took long, slow sips from his glass.

  After a ­couple of minutes, Pascal put on some music, opened a door into a dark room, and returned with a single flower.

  “For you,” he said. It was an elaborate puzzle of a flower, a vermilion red the texture of crepe paper.

  “Me?” Elliott had given me flowers all the time, but they were flowers from his greenhouse experiments—­simple blooms that were understood with a few slices of the scalpel. This one was tantalizingly exotic. The stem was warped, the petals tangled and butterfly-­wing thin, the stamens like eyelashes glooped with mascara. This strange thing was the most beautiful flower I had ever received.

  “What’s in the back there? You have a floral shop on the side?” I nodded over to his bedroom.

  “No, of course not. I saw that flower and thought of you.” He combed his fingers through my new hair and I briefly closed my eyes in involuntary euphoria. “I like your new hairstyle,” he said.

  He was a guy who noticed these things. I laughed. “You’re pretty observant . . . for a boy.”

  “Haha, I’m not just any boy,” he said. He fingers moved deeper and I thought that the dye may have given me new nerve endings because every hair prickled up to his touch. “We’re sensualists, aren’t we?”

  “Sensualists?” He lowered his hand to my neck and pulled me so close our foreheads touched. “What do you mean?” I asked, the tips of my lips—­just slightly—­against his.

  “Sensualism . . .” he repeated in his bizarre accent. He didn’t press his lips against mine and I didn’t dare press back. We let our mouths push and graze as we spoke. “We are passionate, you and I. We know how to give in to our senses.”

  Then I felt the full heat of his mouth on mine and I lapped him up greedily, my hands grabbing his face and hair and shoulders.

  I had never thought of myself as much of a sensualist. I was a writer, a rationalist in a sensualist world. I was always worrying about what other ­people thought of me and more often than not I liked the company of babies and dogs instead of humans my own age.

  But what’s rational about a man’s lips on you, when he’s touching you in a way that makes you feel the exquisite pleasure of belonging? Everything else is a distraction.

  We tussled around with our shirts off, until he pulled me on top of him and slid his hands from under my hair, to my shoulders, down my arms, and finally to the place where the top of my pants met my skin.

  “Leather pants, you little minx. Shall we have an encore?” he asked.

  By now my hair was a wild mess. I was red from the wine. The lights were sort of dark, but not dark enough. I was wearing some Kiki de Montparnasse lingerie, black lace with tiny bows that were at once sweet and not so sweet. You could even describe them as naughty.

  He let the tip of one finger move around the edge of my pants. When he got to the button, he made a flicking motion that stressed its hold. The critical button.

  I was ready to undo it for him when I spotted a plate of leftovers on Pascal’s kitchen counter: the snail dumplings that Elliott had pushed aside that first night at Bakushan.

  Pascal seemed to sense my hesitation and sat up. “Tia? Are you okay?”

  As my eyes slid to his, I suddenly felt dizzy, like I couldn’t get enough air. I jumped off Pascal. His heat, his motion, his heartbeat, it all nauseated me. If he touched me, my heart would have exploded.

  “Tia?” he repeated, and that’s when the panic attack took over. I leaped off the couch, opened the window, and stood there on my tippy-­toes because even the floor’s molecules were too much.

  Pascal came to help, but I stopped him before he could touch me.

  “Hold on!” I said, t
rying not to show how one look at those snail dumplings had sent me headfirst into a pit of anxiety. “I’m okay!”

  And I just stood by the window, heaving the cold November air, wondering how long I’d have to fake it to make it.

  I WOKE UP in the middle of the night on the couch, my head an inch away from Pascal’s. For a second, I didn’t recognize him and almost went into another panic attack. But then reality set in. It was Pascal. My Pascal. The guy I wanted. I hated my heart for being so slow on the uptake and took a ­couple of deep breaths.

  The panic had completely subsided, and I was relieved to see that Pascal had already removed the snail dumplings. It was a hiccup, I thought. Nothing serious, just some transitional turbulence. I had to get it together for Pascal, especially before the review came out. That would be a turning point for us. Turning where, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to let some residual feelings for Elliott ruin our chances.

  I watched Pascal sleep. He had long, curved eyelashes and lips that swelled with every little breath. I nestled into him, and his body responded in turn. He pushed his leg in between mine, nuzzling the top of his head against my cheek. His hair smelled like smoked wood chips.

  He looked old, in a good way. Even in his sleep, he had a reassuring quality. Restaurants were about hospitality, but the chef wasn’t usually the one with open arms. Pascal was, though. He was everything at Bakushan: the genius behind the stove, the draw through the door, the face on the magazine covers. He embodied so many things, and I was floored that he was the one cuddling into me. He was the one who gave me little kisses as he slept. I stayed up for an hour, just staring at him.

  And as much as I was inspired by him, he must have been inspired by me, too.

  He’d pursued me. He’d sat across from me at Tellicherry, asked me for advice at Whole Foods, and invited me to Bakushan. He’d made things better after Elliott spotted us late that night and now we were in his apartment, an apartment so barebones that surely he didn’t invite ­people over all the time. Just ones he liked. And he’d taken care of me during whatever had just happened. He made me feel safe. It was only after I finally managed to tell my stupid, slow heart to shut up and come to terms with all that, that I was able to fall back asleep.