In the Weeds

by Daniel Browne

  “Enjoy, guys,” John said, unsmiling. “We’re all excited you’re here.”

  I had my doubts about the special menu. The Schlossers didn’t seem like the weeds-and-cuttlefish type. But John—no surprise—was a step ahead of me. The first course was a big wooden bowl of salad, romaine in a vinaigrette with strips of salumi (made in house, of course), candied walnuts, and Vermont blue cheese. Then came the pizzas: a Coppa Feel, a Zooey Béchamel, and a Provolone Wolf. The main was a whole pork shoulder, served on a cutting board, lustrous with drippings, if not falling off the bone then willing to part from it at the merest suggestion. Sides included roasted carrots dressed in lime and—hallelujah—that mystical, near-psychedelic corn. It was as rustic and people-pleasing a meal as the tasting menu Elliot and I had shared was refined and inscrutable.

  Little was said while there was food on the table, and what words did pass between us were on the order of, “Divine,” and “Have you ever…?” and “I shouldn’t, but…” I decided there was no harm in ordering a beer after all. By the time the plates were cleared and the coffee served—no dessert; John hated dessert—our pitch was scratching my throat, itching for release. I’d done the requisite internet research earlier in the day. The local population was younger with more blacks and Hispanics, and more families living in poverty, than Brooklyn or New York as a whole. Nearly half of the elementary school children in Bushwick were either overweight or obese. That likely had something to do with the fact that 84 percent of the food stores in the neighborhood were bodegas, and only eight percent of those carried fresh vegetables. With our help, the Schlossers could tackle this problem head-on, putting the students of Begin to Win on the path to a healthy lifestyle, meeting their families’ urgent nutritional needs, and lifting the spirits of the entire community. Elliot, for his part, was ready to rattle off a spiel about aligning with the school’s academic goals and measuring the development of the students’ social-emotional skills. Not too shabby on a day’s notice, if I do say so myself.

  Too bad because we didn’t even get to clear our throats, let alone launch into our song and dance before Arthur tossed his napkin on the table and said, “We’re not giving you any money.”

  “We’re not asking for any money,” Vivienne said before either Elliot or I could summon a response.

  I shot Elliot an urgent glance. I was pretty sure the plan was to ask for money. A lot of money. After all, Begin to Win stood to reap the PR gains from the project—on top of the benefits to the kids, who, it went without saying, came first.

  Arthur raised his considerable eyebrows, an effort that seemed to involve much of the musculature of his face. “You’re not?”

  Vivienne waved him off as if the mere suggestion were ridiculous. “All we want from you is your roof. Leave the rest to us.”

  He stared into his coffee cup, searching for a sign in the dregs. “Our test scores are slipping. We’ve given the principal one more year to turn it around. We can’t have any distractions.”

  “Distraction? This is going to help with your test scores. Elliot has all the data.”

  Elliot gave them a dazed smile. “There are some promising studies…”

  The Schlossers waited, but he didn’t elaborate. My turn.

  “The broccoli on the pizza tonight…Imagine if it said ‘Begin to Win broccoli’ right on the menu.”

  I didn’t have John’s permission to put the words “Begin to Win” on his menu, but I figured I could get it more easily than Elliot could get hard data showing that a school garden could boost test scores.

  Barbara laid her hand on Arthur’s arm, as if to hold him back. Odd since he didn’t exactly look like a man about to leap into action.

  “What we need from you is help with the community,” she said to us. “We’ve been here twenty years, but still they act like we’re taking something away from them.”

  “Some,” Arthur corrected her. “A minority.”

  She gave Vivienne a meaningful look. “You know how it is.”

  “Barbara, this is what we do,” Vivienne said. “Let us help you.”

  I saw Barbara squeeze Arthur’s arm. He let out a heavy breath, as though she’d punctured him with a fingernail.

  “You’ll meet the principal,” he said. “If he’s open to it, the roof is yours.”

  Vivienne nodded. “That still leaves the question of money.” I thought for a moment Barbara really would need to hold Arthur back. “I told you…”

  Vivienne held up her hand. “You’re not giving us any. I remember. And you remember, of course, I said we’re not asking. But I bet you can think of somebody, a friend of Begin to Win, who’d make a good angel investor.”

  I was pretty sure nonprofits have donors, not investors, but that was way beside the point. Vivienne was operating at the peak of her powers—something we rarely got to see at the council, where the people weren’t her people and the horse-trading was too malodorous for her sensibilities. It was magnificent to behold. Arthur Schlosser had slumped down in his chair like a man who knows the person across the table has ways of making him talk. Barbara glanced at him and decided to put him out of his misery.

  “Martin,” she said.

  Martin. Vivienne mouthed the word, rolling it around like the first swig of Sancerre offered by the waiter. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

  Did anybody above a certain net worth use last names? You’d think we were talking about Madonna or Shaq.

  “Oh, we’ve been friends forever. He’s on our board.”

  Vivienne looked first at Elliot and then at me, her silent partners, as if we’d have something meaningful to contribute. “Well, that’s it then,” Vivienne said. “Martin’s such a peach, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to help.”

  Arthur fidgeted in his seat. “Don’t tell him we sicced you on him. Please.”

  Believe it or not, Vivienne actually pantomimed zipping her lip and throwing away the key. She was having a ball. “Of course. We just came across his name when we were looking up your board.”

  And that was that, more or less. We all clinked coffee cups to seal our partnership. Elliot and I rushed over to help the Schlossers to their feet and out the door, where their car was waiting. Arthur wished us luck, and Barbara added that they wanted to be kept in the loop every step of the way, but Arthur had already gotten into the car at that point, so I figured she wasn’t really speaking for both of them. Vivienne told them she’d join them in a moment for the trip back to Manhattan, then turned to us with a sly, vaguely feline grin.

  Elliot fake-applauded. “Amazing, Viv.”

  She brushed the backs of her fingers against her shawl, the international sign for hot stuff.

  “Just think,” she said, rolling her eyes in the direction of the car, “if those two weren’t so fucking cheap, their test scores might not be in the toilet. Guess how much they paid Pfizer for that building…a dollar. I should know, I brokered the whole thing.”

  “We need to set up a 501c3,” I said, half to myself, an epic to-do list starting to take shape in my mind.

  Vivienne shook her head. “Priority number one is Martin. Come by the apartment later this week, and we’ll work on a game plan.”

  As we watched the town car slip off toward the Williamsburg Bridge like a salmon upstream, John joined us on the curb.

  “We in business?”

  “We are,” Elliot said.

  “How soon can we get up on that roof?”

  “We need to talk to the principal,” I said, still in list mode.

  “Aren’t those two the principal’s boss?”

  “And they said we need to talk to him.”

  John glanced at Elliot before answering me. “Growing season is coming up. The way we work, we try not to get too bogged down with formalities.”

  His tone was so even, his face so still, I was having trouble interpreting what he’d said. “Right, I get that. But we’re talking about a school here. There’s going to be some coordination t
hat has to happen.”

  Elliot made a motion I guessed was meant to convey the smoothing out of difficulties but looked more like petting a cat. “Nothing we can’t take care of in a week or two, tops. We’ll be ready for growing season.”

  John nodded. “The money?”

  “We’ve got a promising lead,” Elliot said.

  “Well, I’ve got another one for you. You know Greta?”

  Guess which one of us did.

  “She’s Tommy Brutti’s assistant.”

  At least I knew who Tommy Brutti was. Everyone did. Ten years ago, that assertion might have sounded like big city snobbery, as in, “You mean you haven’t tried the sautéed calf’s brains at Brutti’s Trattoria? Is your idea of Italian still veal marsala on a checkered tablecloth?” Even five years ago, you could probably find people who had never seen Forza Brutti, his cult classic on The Food Network, and therefore didn’t have the image of Chef Tommy, a shock-haired volcano in trademark cargo shorts and mismatched Converse high tops, delivering a mile-a-minute, stream-of-consciousness lecture on the kitchen secrets imparted to him by Ligurian grandmothers to a rapt audience featuring conspicuously inconspicuous celebrities like Sofia Coppola and The Edge. Now, though, with the campout cookbook, the line of custom spatulas, and the signature Converse, it was just a fact: the guy was everywhere.

  My pulse revved. I was a fan of Chef Tommy’s talk show appearances, an avid consumer of his jarred sauces. Dinner at the Trattoria was on my New York bucket list.

  “He just started the Tommy Brutti Foundation, and they’re looking for projects,” John said. “Greta can get us a meeting next week, and I want to have it up on that roof.”

  John’s olive-pit eyes settled on me. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

  First Fruit

  We offered to pick up Starbucks before our strategy session with Vivienne, both of us knowing full well what that meant. Vivienne’s drink of choice was notorious: a “two-pump” skim chai latte. Elliot and I did rock-paper-scissors to decide who would have to place the order. It fell to me—paper. I was afraid the girl working the register would scream out the order to the barista, but instead, she just scribbled on the cup with a Sharpie and passed it along the line. Things are a little more genteel on the Upper East Side, even in Starbucks.

  Vivienne lived in a venerable doorman building, but the apartment wasn’t quite as luxe as you might expect. That’s the secret with a lot of these places. Building staff will pick up your laundry for you, but it’s not like you get a washer-dryer of your own. Or a dishwasher. Or room for a king-size bed. There was a piano in the den and some early work by a lesser Modernist on the walls, alongside the one editorial cartoon to feature Vivienne: her entire head eclipsed by outlandish sunglasses, she walks an extravagantly coiffed poodle who bears a striking resemblance to the mayor at the time, the suggestion being that this unlikely power broker (we’re talking pre-council, pre-Bloomberg here) had Hizzoner on a leash. All in all, the place had a lived-in, slightly tatty feel one typically associates more with the Upper West than the Upper East Side. But that was Vivienne for you: compared to her fellow council members, she might as well have been Gloria Vanderbilt herself, but in society circles, she was a lovable eccentric, practically a Bolshevik.

  Sitting in the middle of the faded Persian rug, surrounded by manila folders, was a girl with granny glasses, a knit beanie, and a Hawaiian shirt: Kat, the hipster intern. Or was she a dork? It was still a close call. She looked up as we entered the room, announced by the creak of the Knickerbocker-era wood floors.

  “Hey,” Kat said.

  Elliot and I exchanged a look. “Hey,” we said in near unison.

  “Vivienne will be out in a minute. She’s just finishing up a call.”

  We took a seat on a baroque-ish sofa with green velvet upholstery worn to a sheen. It felt like Kat should be offering us watercress sandwiches.

  “So…” Elliot ventured.

  “I know, right?” Kat widened her eyes and put on a little debutante drawl. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Elliot pointed at her shirt. “Never seen one with volcanoes before.”

  She looked down as if she were noticing it for the first time. “Yeah. I’m mostly by myself here, so I figured it wouldn’t matter what I wear.”

  “You’re working here?” I asked.

  Kat scrunched up her forehead, embarrassed by the lameness of the question. Did I think she just happened to stop by?

  “I was looking for a job, and Vivienne needed someone to organize her papers and appointments and stuff now that she’s out of office.”

  It seemed rude to mention that, a few days earlier, Vivienne seemed to have no idea who she was, so I just nodded.

  “Next time, we’ll bring you coffee,” Elliot said, holding out the paper tray.

  “Are you guys working for Vivienne, too?”

  Did the coffee suggest to her that we were gophers, cogs, along with her, in the vast machinery of Vivdom, one minion to do her filing, two to fetch her morning chai, a man for each pump?

  “She’s helping us out with a project we’re doing,” I said.

  “A rooftop farm in Brooklyn,” Elliot added.

  Kat’s eyes lit up. “Really? Where in Brooklyn?”

  “The Broadway Triangle. It’s this kind of no man’s land where Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, and East Williamsburg all meet.”

  “Cool. I’ve been living in Crown Heights since I moved here.” Turns out she was from Oregon, near Eugene, and had grown up on a farm—more of a hippie commune, really—but they’d raised their own vegetables, and there were goats and bees. She’d come to New York to study urban planning, just about the only form of rebellion she had available to her, but jobs were scarce, so she figured she’d bide her time with Vivienne, pick up whatever connections and tidbits of Gotham lore she could. I probably should’ve known all this already, having worked in the same office with Kat all summer, but after a while, the constant parade of interns passing through our doors started to look like an undifferentiated mass of C students with politically connected uncles.

  “You know, you guys are totally on-trend,” she said. “One of my classmates at the New School is raising tilapia now.”

  “As a job?” I tried to picture it, but I wasn’t sure what tilapia looked like in its un-filleted state.

  “Fuck yeah, as a job. Sustainable urban aquaculture, Holmes.”

  A crafty look had come over Elliot’s face. “How many hours are you putting in for Viv?”

  Kat gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Whatever she needs. About two-and-a-half days a week?”

  “You want to go back to the land with us?”

  I could see it coming, and I could already hear Elliot’s post-facto rationalization. An urban planning background plus real (albeit hippie-derived) farming experience plus an extra voice in Vivienne’s ear to keep her on task? How could we afford not to bring her aboard?

  She laid a finger along the severe taper of her chin, weighing the offer. “What does it pay?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  If he weren’t holding a tray of coffee and tea, Elliot would’ve elbowed me in the ribs. “We’re still hammering out the budget. We’ve got a line on a couple of big donors. Do you know Tommy Brutti?”

  “I’m not a hick.”

  “Well, he’s interested. Once the donations start coming in, we’ll be able to discuss compensation. Right now, this is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.”

  “I thought it was supposed to be a rooftop farm.”

  “What Elliot means is…”

  Kat rolled her eyes. “I’m in.”

  Before I could make even more of a pompous ass of myself, Vivienne dashed in, a phone in each hand.

  “It’s not working. You’re going to have to go there and do it in person.”

  We stood. Vivienne reached reflexively for her chai, then remembered both her hands were occupied. A little ballet ensued as she swung around to hand t
he phones to Kat, who couldn’t quite reach them from the floor. I stepped between them to facilitate the transfer while Elliot shuffled over to Vivienne’s side so she wouldn’t have to turn back around for her drink.

  Vivienne took a sip of her chai and grimaced. “The council wants its crummy Blackberry back, so we’ve been trying to transfer all my contacts to my iPhone, but the fucker won’t cooperate.”

  “Which fucker?” Elliot asked.

  “The Blackberry, obviously. I begged those creeps in IT for an iPhone, remember? They said the city had an exclusive contract with Blackberry. Somebody should investigate that!”

  Actually, Vivienne had demanded that I investigate it, but I just ignored her, figuring she’d forget about it. Which she had.

  Kat held up the two phones like she was about to start juggling them. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Good because we have to go. I got us onto Martin’s calendar for this afternoon. We’ll strategize in the car.”

  The car was still driven by Rick, the impassive ex-cop. Most members of the council didn’t have an entourage that included a personal driver. By and large, they took the subway. Vivienne just called Rick campaign staff and held an annual fundraiser to pay him, known to the inner circle as the Rick-a-thon. Wondering where his checks were coming from now, I had an urge to remind Vivienne she could only dip into the campaign funds if she was, you know, running for something, but then I had the positively liberating realization that it was none of my business anymore. Instead, I turned my attention to another mystery.

  “So you do know who Kat is after all,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The girl you left in your apartment with all your valuables and personal information.”

  “Oh, you mean Katherine? Don’t worry about her. She came highly recommended.”

  “Really? She says she’s from a farm in Oregon.”

  “Don’t be a snob, Will. She interned for the planning commission. They raved about her.”

  “She interned for you, too, you know.”