In the Weeds

by Daniel Browne

  John had never been much of a cook, but a number of his buddies were professionals, speed freaks who crashed headlong into his place at two in the morning, raged till dawn, and then headed right back into work, knives sharp, nails clean. John hired them all away from their jobs in Manhattan, promising them freedom not only to come up with their own menu (as long as it started with pizza) but to make the place their own. Most of the crew came from low- and mid-level establishments, your chicken Caesar, Eggs Benedict joints, but his buddy Francisco had worked the line for Daniel and Jean-Georges, so John made him chef.

  It took a few months before anyone other than John’s extended family of high-living lowlifes figured out that this was no Vinny’s Pizza, that the food at Rita’s was, in fact, excellent. The first story in the Times wasn’t a review; it was a “get a load of this: some misfit opened a pizza parlor in the ’hood…and the kids love it!” piece. The review came next, one star, an unprecedented coup for Bushwick. The dining critic certainly played the down-and-dirty angle to the hilt: he had become addicted to the Phil Speckter (speck, quail egg, and mustard greens) and, like a debased junky, had to venture into a seedy underworld to get his fix. The third story was the real coup de grâce though: a full-page profile of John, Francisco, and the rest that doubled as a trend piece, something about how food was the new rock and roll and Rita’s was the CBGB’s of a new dining scene.

  To be clear, I wasn’t there from the beginning. Maybe I had my first Psycho Kale’er before the restaurant editor from Bon Appétit. Maybe I didn’t. Either way, I didn’t “discover” Rita’s. I wasn’t cool enough to be part of the scene. No, I was there because of Elliot. He was a regular, three days a week on average, and he was there, working on a beer, as I hurried in, still hot from my shaming before the MTA chairman.

  “The L was a shit show,” I said by way of apology for my lateness.

  Elliot grinned. “Should’ve taken the lunch bus.”

  I’m not sure what his title was, although technically I was his supervisor. A galumphing sheepdog of a guy, his untended beard, brutalized boat shoes, and rotation of fraying vests—puffy, fleece, and sweater—would have been more than enough to disqualify anyone else in Vivienne’s eyes. As it was, she could go on about the vests at length without much prompting. But Elliot was one of those people who somehow knows everybody, and there could be no quality more impressive to the socialite in her.

  He’d been with Vivienne much longer than me and probably could have had my job if he didn’t suspect it would cramp his style. Vivienne was chair of the education committee of the council, and she relied more or less completely on Elliot, a former teacher with a PhD in urban education, to run that show. But to say he was her expert on the public schools would be to radically understate his role.

  Who exactly did Elliot know? Everyone on the council and their staff, for starters. Then there were his Department of Education contacts in the old Tweed Courthouse and all the superintendents, deputy superintendents, principals, assistant principals, teachers, and union reps he’d crossed paths with over the years. He was a favorite unnamed source of reporters at all the dailies, the darling wayward son of his old professors, light in the darkness for activists searching for comrades in the morass of government. And his sphere of influence went beyond the professionally useful types, encompassing all the usual New Brooklyn suspects, too: craft brewers, burlesque dancers, graying skate rats. Oh, and he was friends with John Cardini.

  Loosening my tie and rolling up my sleeves somehow only made me feel more conspicuous. “I swear to god, I’m done with government.”

  “The chairman wasn’t moved by your presentation?”

  “The chairman,” I said, “is an asshole.”

  Elliot raised his beer in the direction of the bar, pointed at it, then held up two thick fingers. “I play soccer with his son. Major stoner.”

  “Vivienne was in rare form.”

  “When someone is always in rare form can you still call it rare?”

  His face was pink with booze and good cheer. Clearly, the next round was more than his second.

  “Where were you all afternoon anyway?”

  “Field work.”

  The waitress who arrived with our beers had short, pink-blonde hair, an eyebrow ring, and a polka-dot romper that looked like it belonged to a giant infant.

  “Elliot, you hanging out later?” Her voice was surprisingly husky given her appearance.

  “I might be. Why, what’s going on?”

  “I’ve got this tiny ukulele. We’re going to take mushrooms and sing songs.”

  Elliot tapped his chin as if considering her proposal. “Interesting.”

  “Should be.” She left us to imagine the scene.

  “Hard to believe people like that really exist,” I said.

  “Hard to believe any of us exist. Pretty improbable when you think about it.”

  I eyed him as he took a long pull from his beer and let the suds froth in his beard. “What’s with you? Why are you talking like that?”

  He wiped his chin with his sleeve. “Done with government, you say?”

  “Government, politics, public service. Done, done, and done.”

  “So what’s next then?”

  Given my looming unemployment, I should’ve had a ready answer, but I’d put off thinking about it. In the back of my mind, I knew there’d be another place for me in the council, maybe even city hall. Next time could be different. But no, clarity had come to me: I really was done. Now I’d confirmed it—out loud, in front of witnesses—and it felt too good to turn back.

  “I don’t know. Consulting? Maybe get paid for a change, see how that feels.”

  Elliot shook his big head like he was disappointed with my answer. “If you’re going to be done, why not be done? With all of it.”

  “All of what?”

  He waved his hand to take in my attire. “All of it, man. The suit and tie. The office life.”

  “Working for the man, man?”

  “You said it, brother.”

  “I genuinely have no idea if you’re serious.”

  The girls’ night out seated next to us was getting a tad rowdy. They were all dressed like mimes and slamming down their empty shot glasses.

  Elliot leaned across the table. “Dude, aren’t you sick of trying to make things happen from behind a desk? I am. Legislation, resolutions, conference reports. It’s all so removed.”

  “You thinking of getting back into teaching?”

  He’d taught kindergarten at Little Red, which was that perfect oxymoron, a socialist private school. It was hard for me to picture him in loco parentis, responsible for all those tender young minds. Then again, the guy was in parentis parentis these days. Sadie was three, and so far he hadn’t misplaced or corrupted her in any obvious way. He’d even organized a daycare co-op with a prize-winning war photographer, two regular contributors to The New Yorker, and a highly sought-after mixologist.

  “The problem with teaching,” he said, “is you’ve got to answer to everybody. Administration, parents, even the kids. And answering to people isn’t exactly my style these days.”

  “I’ve noticed.” I stretched my neck in search of our waitress.

  “Men like us need to work for themselves,” Elliot said. “Not filling out timesheets and taking webinars. We need to be out in the world, doing some good.”

  Men like us. Out in the world. I turned the words over in my mind, appreciating their heft.

  “I hear you,” I said. “In fact, I was just thinking the same thing.” I was about to mention the Waldorf salad truck but thought the better of it.

  “Helping people face to face, making a real difference in their lives.”

  “I like it.”

  “The Lone Ranger and Tonto.”

  “Wait, am I the Lone Ranger or Tonto?”

  There he went, tapping his chin again. He appeared to be taking the question seriously, but like I said, it could be hard to tell with him.


  “Tonto did most of the logistics, right? The scouting, the maps. LR was more of the front man. So that makes me the Lone Ranger and you Tonto, I guess. But we can switch off if you want to be the cowboy sometimes.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got our future all planned out.”

  Elliot killed his beer, his gaze drifting to a point over my shoulder. “I just might,” he said. His eyes brightened. “There he is.”

  I turned around and saw John shouldering his way through the crowd towards us. Stocky and ever so slightly bow-legged with neat black hair and pink ears like perfect little shells, he didn’t exactly fit the stock image of a killer, but once you knew his backstory, details started to jump out at you: the skull tattooed on the knuckle of the ring finger on his right hand, the expressive tendon in his neck. John didn’t really smile as near as I could tell, but the tendon was relaxed, and he was gripping shoulders and bumping fists as he approached us, so I gathered he was in a good mood. A space on our bench appeared where none had been before. He sat down next to me and offered me his hand. It was dry and cool but carapaced with calluses, the hand of a man who calmly bends nature to his will.

  “Gentlemen.” His voice was low but seemed to cut straight through the noise.

  “Crowded tonight,” I said. Pure banality, but I realized too late it could be taken as a compliment or a complaint, depending on the hearer’s inclinations. Truth is, I never knew what to say to John. You could fit the totality of our past conversations into the average commercial break.

  Elliot, on the other hand, always knew what to say to everyone. “Bread and circuses, right, John?”

  John nodded as if he knew exactly what Elliot meant. “Always.”

  “Will and I were just discussing which of us is the Lone Ranger and which of us is Tonto.”

  John’s eyes were making a quick survey of the room, keeping tabs on his business, but the rest of his face remained impassive. “Yeah? And what did you decide?”

  “That identity is fluid.”

  Again, John nodded. “So you haven’t brought him up to speed yet?”

  “Slowly but surely,” Elliot said.

  “Up to speed on what?” I asked.

  “John and the boys are building a farm.”

  Elliot leaned back as if he’d laid all his cards on the table and their value was self-evident. I looked from him to John, who still wasn’t giving anything away.

  “Is that what you do? You ‘build’ a farm? I always thought you just kind of planted things in the ground, rounded up some animals.”

  Pedantic distinctions were a big part of my job: the difference between an economic opportunity zone and a business improvement district, a letter of interest and a letter of intent. Tough to turn it off sometimes.

  John flexed his lips, but I couldn’t tell if it was a smirk, a grimace, or some kind of hybrid he’d invented. “When you’re doing it on a rooftop in Brooklyn, you build it.”

  Elliot jumped in to fill the ensuing silence. “Find the right roof and you’ve got enough acreage to supply the restaurant with fresh organic produce and sell to some of the other restaurants in the area.”

  “A real local food system that’s sustainable and profitable. That’s what we’re doing,” John said.

  I stuck my lip out and nodded like a fair-goer appraising a ribbon-winning squash. “Sounds awesome.” I still wasn’t sure why John and Elliot considered it important that I be in the loop.

  Elliot picked up the story. “So I was telling John for this thing to really have the impact he wants there needs to be a community component. A farmers market to deal with the food desert situation in the area, an education program for kids.”

  Food deserts were a trendy topic in the council at the time. The thinking was that poor neighborhoods had grim health statistics in part because the residents didn’t have access to the right foods, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables. Bushwick, for instance, didn’t have a major chain supermarket, just the usual assortment of bodegas, where “fresh” was an elastic term. In other neighborhoods, a single supermarket would take advantage of the lack of competition by gouging customers, the very people who could least afford it. I’d read a lot of the reports circulating in the council and even briefed Vivienne at one point, but food deserts weren’t much of an issue on the UES, and Vivienne herself, having never set foot in a supermarket, was a tad fuzzy on the problem. “Can’t they just order from FreshDirect?” was a question I fielded during our briefing.

  As for education, teaching gardens were starting to become a thing, at least among the more progressive schools. The impetus for this one was that our children, growing up in a world of Lunchables and Go-GURT, were losing touch with the concept of real food—what it is, where it comes from. A survey had found that the majority of kids couldn’t identify an array of common vegetables when they were shown to them in unadulterated form, and the results were even worse for poor kids. As for spending time in the kitchen learning the basics of cooking, forget it. Have you seen all the put-upon moms in fast food commercials?

  The answer was to get kids down in the dirt at an early age, raising their own tomatoes and baby greens, learning to cook what they grow, and then converting their parents to the gospel of fresh, seasonal, local. Tie garden time into their biology lessons, bring out the art classes to sketch the plants at every stage of development, invite the families for a fall harvest festival—the vision was the garden as the pride and hub of the school.

  John didn’t look to me like a guy who cared much about food deserts or the childhood obesity epidemic, but hey, what did I know? I mean, what does a humanitarian look like anyway? Is a skull tattoo disqualifying? I told John and Elliot that a large-scale rooftop farm, responsive to community needs with ties to local schools, sounded like an excellent idea.

  Elliot tapped the wing of his nose like I’d whispered the secret password. “You forgot one thing. Social entrepreneurship. Did you read that report from the small business committee? The division between for-profit and nonprofit is eroding. Every good start-up has community development as part of its mission now. Every venture capitalist wants to be a philanthropist.”

  “And we think that’s a good thing?” I asked.

  “It can be,” Elliot said. “It will be for us.”

  I was starting to get the picture. “So are you two going to be working together?”

  Elliot looked to John to answer.

  “I told Elliot I’ve got a lot on my plate,” John said. “But I like his angle. I want this thing to be good for the neighborhood. So I’m going to do what I do, which is build a business, and he’s going to do what he does.”

  I turned to Elliot. “What is it you told him you do? I’ve been waiting years for this.”

  Elliot grinned. John didn’t.

  “I’m going to put together the most forward-thinking urban agriculture program for public schools anywhere in the country,” Elliot said. “And I’m going to find all the money to pay for it. Actually, kemosabe, you and I are going to do it.”

  “Is that right?” My stomach did a little flip, but it may just have been the hunger talking.

  “Picture it,” Elliot said, making a frame with his hands. “Between the two of us we’ve got every aspect of urban policy covered. I can pull together an expert panel tomorrow to develop a curriculum. You can draft a budget and write up a grant proposal in your sleep. This is it. Our chance to work for ourselves. No more dank offices, no more ugly ties.”

  He pointed at my tie, red silk with little blue ties in various stages of knotting.

  “We do this right,” he said, “and we’re CEOs of our own nonprofit. Out in the world doing good instead of just talking about it.”

  Before I could think of what to say, John was standing, looking down at me. I could feel my neck getting damp under my collar.

  “Listen,” he said, “You should know, everything I do succeeds. Big. Look around here and you’ll see a lot of people who are glad
they got in when they did. Now I’ve got to get back to it, but I’d like to shake on this first.”

  John’s eyes boring into me, hot as his Sicilian oven, made me want to look away, say I needed time to think it over. But really what was there to think about? I was going to be out of a job in a month, and I didn’t particularly want to do any of the things my resume most qualified me to do. Now I understood why I couldn’t stop reading about the people in Savory Brooklyn, the picklers, the foragers, the beekeepers. They were a vision of my future.

  I took John’s hand and tried to match the firmness of his shake. “One thing. If we’re going to do this, I don’t want to be stuck in the background doing budgets and grant proposals. I want to get my hands dirty, grow things, work with the kids. I want us to build this thing together.”

  John nodded. He didn’t seem especially impressed, but he wasn’t dismissive either. He may well have figured I was after a sliver of his macho glory. Maybe I was. My marriage to Tricia worked fine for the most part; we related to each other as sensible, straitlaced yuppies, your basic industrious urbanites. But her dad was a carpenter who built the house she grew up in, and while she never held me to that standard, I sometimes got the sense she wouldn’t be upset if I were the kind of guy who at least knew how to fix her rusty ten-speed bike rather than putting it on Craigslist, who could assemble an IKEA shelving unit without tears. Truth is, I wouldn’t have minded being that guy either. Now, in John Cardini’s farm I saw an opportunity. The word “farm” itself could do wonders. I imagined telling Tricia to have dinner without me because I’d be working late on the farm, and I liked the way it sounded, though I was dimly aware that I was more likely to be working early on the farm than late.

  “When do we start?” I asked.

  Elliot actually rubbed his hands together. “I say we celebrate with a little feast.”

  I was so taken with the idea of manning up, I’d momentarily forgotten how hungry I was. Already a good sign. “What are you thinking? Phil Speckter? Hakuna Burrata?”