“Found them off Reservoir Trail, Jay,” Caruzo whispered. “Found them in their spot. The beginning for me, that. Right there. Between those trees. Buried under those leaves.”
There was silence for a time.
He didn’t touch them further. He left them to lie, to sleep. But he stayed. He set up his hidden camp some short but respectful distance away. For several years he grieved. Then watched. The parks workers came eventually. The man, Albert Tong, had been raking. Something cracked underfoot, not a stick.
Caruzo frowned. “Now the bones are gone. Sure, the bones are gone. But the signs, Jay-Jay. Signs and signals. Signals and signs. Signals to return. Signs to show the way back. I believe in these signs, Jay-Jay. I really believe in these signs.”
There were others for dinner. A young man and a woman with a baby. Chladek with another bottle. Others he didn’t recognize. They all stood quietly in or just out of the ring of golden firelight. Everybody brought their own plates, produced from backpacks and hidden pockets.
The Professor looked at him curiously when Caruzo and he pulled in with their bag of starlings. He smiled at his father and nodded his head. He felt wonderful.
Dinner came together like on those magical nights when the front is packed and the back is slammed but not a thing you touch will turn out wrong. Everything leaves the frenzy of the kitchen in a warm halo of perfection. The room is stoked; the energy builds and builds.
He plucked and drew the starlings. He ran them down green wood skewers separated by slices of stale baguette brushed with olive oil and rubbed in garlic. Somebody brought potatoes. Another person had foil and onions. There were bottles of wine.
He laid the skewers across the shopping-cart grill and he felt very, very good.
“Hey, Jay,” Caruzo said, enthusiastic himself after their cathartic talk, spraying crumbs from a mouthful of toasted baguette. “Beard looks great, Jay.”
Jeremy touched it, looked over at his father and smiled again. And then to Caruzo, while still looking at his father, he said: “Give us the poem, Caruzo. The whole thing.”
“Oh,” Caruzo said. “That. Well …” And he rose theatrically to his feet, a piece of bread in one hand, a paper cup of ruby plonk in the other, arms outstretched. He recited the ancient poem he had memorized:
“From the hagge and hungrie goblin
That into ragges would rend ye,
And the spirit that stands by the Naked Man
In the Booke of Moones defend ye.
That of your five sound senses
Ye never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
And now I singe, any food, any feeding
Feeding, drink, or clothing
Come dame or maid, be not afraid
Poor Tom will injure nothing.”
The Professor came and stood next to him.
“He draws the others,” Jeremy said, staring at the ring of faces listening to Caruzo’s performance.
“Yes,” the Professor said, nodding. “But for me, time here grows short. Having finally read my outline, Sopwith Hill is keen I finish.”
“The looming sense of things not done,” Jeremy said. “I can relate.”
Caruzo was chanting up towards the summit of his performance.
“I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when he lies sleepinge,
I see the stars at bloodie wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.…”
When he was finished the group was silent. Caruzo sat, satisfied. He ate a starling with his fingers. And Jeremy thought those seconds before anyone else spoke became part of the poem’s passing, an empty space that the words pushed out in front of them.
The design team was working towards its own set of deadlines, meeting weekly. Floor plan, kitchen, menu, linen, flatware, paint schemes, art work—everything had to be discussed and market researched and discussed again. Dante set the third Friday in February for the opening, three months away and they would need every week. They met early, before the trades came in, Dante, Philip, Jeremy, Benny and Albertini Banks, sitting in the torn apart front room of the new restaurant.
This morning was typical. Dante was following a tight agenda, moving through what he called the “Critical Path Issues” as the team woke up over coffee carted in from the new Inferno Hastings. The first Crosstown Inferno location had finally opened around the corner in the space that had been Fabrek’s falafel stand.
Albertini Banks was sipping his triple espresso, hungover eyes concealed behind yellow sunglasses with lizard-green frames. (Benny and he had been out clubbing the night before, Jeremy learned. Not their first time.) Banks was, as always, dusted with an urban patina of foundation, mascara and Hard Candy nail polish, corseted with layers of fashion. Today he wore an eight-button, red plaid jacket with a pinched waist and a Nehru collar decorated with silver flashes. A gold neck chain with a Rolex hanging from it. Vintage Gucci loafers with pointy toes beginning to curl upward. Today’s hat, a white silk fez with tassel. Karl Lagerfeld does the Turkish Armed Forces.
Benny, too, wore sunglasses, no doubt concealing a hangover of her own. But she had moulted again, toeing some invisible sartorial line between Dante and her new dance partner. And with only designer New York and Jermyn Street as her points of reference, she’d come up with a black and white nylon tube top under a green blazer with a club crest from the Pall Mall Club. Kinky Knightsbridge. Dante was obviously paying her well.
Philip looked the same as always. Urbanely suited and stubbled. The consummate New Economy Vice-President of Intangibles.
Everybody so far politely ignored that Jeremy was starting to look like an Hassidic Deadhead. Overalls, red long johns and a pleasantly thick rabbinical beard that was starting to come down off his chin.
Critical Path Issue #2 had been fabrics, a half-hour discussion that evolved directly into yet another debate about suitable names. This topic had been open for days, but market research had come up with a final proposal.
Dante stood in front of a large swatch of purple velvet that Benny had been showing them. “Gerriamo’s,” he said grandly.
Everybody loved it. Even Jeremy had to allow it was not too bad an outcome given the short list had included Cucina Gerrissimo, a lemony mouthful of pseudo-Latin pretension if there ever was one.
The only trouble with Gerriamo’s was that—as a fabricated word drawn from the consumer intellect revealed through market research—there was wide variance of opinion as to how it should be pronounced. Jeremy took it as Jerry-AH-mose. Benny said SHER-ry-ah-moss. Dante went with Benny’s version or, alternately, something like CHER-ry-amus, which sounded simply rude.
“Cherryamus Critical Path Issue #4,” Dante said, smoothing his shirt front, straightening French cuffs. “Open kitchens. We should have talked about it earlier. Suddenly I’m getting favourable input on open kitchens.”
“I should have thought of that,” Benny said, scribbling a note to herself. “I like the idea.”
“I find that I can go easy every way,” Banks equivocated in his placeless accent. (Jeremy had decided it was the accent you inherited if you were raised speaking Esperanto.) “If we open the kitchen up to the people’s eyes from this room, then only I think we use a wide, wooden counter, and over we stack with fresh animals and fishes and vegetables on ice or something, or also have a large flower arrangement to match the one in the centre of the room. This idea could be very opulent. But I see that it will also be very opulent without this open kitchen.”
“Jeremy?” Dante asked.
“Closed.” He said. “We sweat. We swear. And, I hate to break it to you, but I frequently do not wear the stupid paper hat.”
Dante stared at him for a second or two, then said finally: “Closed it is. If we’re going to cover up the opening with a flower arrangement, why have the opening in the first place? Second, I want the carpenters out next week not next month. Third, as Jeremy has point
ed out, cooks aren’t much to look at on the line.” Dante reached over and flicked Jeremy’s beard with one finger. “Is the chin garnish considered ‘grunge’? Grunge is very out, isn’t it?”
Jeremy smiled serenely. “Don’t you think it makes me look spiritual?”
“Perhaps. But spiritual is hardly one of our market response themes.”
“I could die it purple or gold.”
“Very droll. You can’t cook with that thing, can you? It’s not hygienic.”
“I’ll wear a hairnet.”
They turned to other matters. On the opening night guest list, Philip had a confirmation from England. “I am really happy to tell everyone that Kiwi Frederique and Gud Tayste confirmed.”
“Brilliant,” said Dante, turning to Jeremy. “Quam olim Abrahae promisisti.”
“I thought you already delivered on that promise,” Jeremy said, thinking of the blurb in “Hack Your Food.”
“Oh, I have more,” Dante said. “How does a feature strike you?”
Jeremy made appropriate noises of enthusiasm and excused himself. He had a meeting with a kitchen designer and equipment supplier. Dante walked him to the front door, where he said: “We should talk menu at some point, yes?”
In this area, as with kitchen staffing, Jeremy had been given some authority. He was obliged only to pay attention to the “market response themes” and table a draft menu at some point well before the opening.
“I don’t have anything formal prepared,” Jeremy said. “Just ideas.”
“Come on then. Let’s have one.”
In fact, he didn’t have any ideas. But a Monkey’s Paw dish came to him then for the simple reason that he’d seen one of its ingredients—which was undeniably groovy at the moment—sold in purple glass decanters. “Prawns sautéed with grappa,” he said.
Dante didn’t frown or smile. He was merely straining to understand. “Prawns and grappa. That’s it?”
Jeremy fleshed it out from memory. “Marinate the prawns in grappa, oil, green onions, salt and pepper. Very lightly sauté. De-glaze with the liqueur and minced shallots. Season. Monté au beurre. Serve with watercress and fresh bread.”
Dante’s lips were slightly pursed. He was nodding his head the way people do when they would really rather shake their head but don’t, either out of politeness or because they’re fairly sure they can change your mind so why get your defence up prematurely. “I mean, it sounds fine, Jeremy,” he said. “But I need you to begin to think in a new way.”
Just that.
“I know you can,” Dante went on. “But you must. Now: prawns, grappa. These are beginnings. But I do not yet see a completion. I do not yet see an experience about which my fooderati will e-mail their friends in New York City. I do not yet see the vibrancy, the aggressiveness.…”
“The purple?”
“Don’t be sarcastic with me.”
“Shall we add something exotic? Some caramelized, peppered durian?”
“Would that work?”
“No, it would be very unpleasant, I assure you,” Jeremy said. “It smells like a sushi fart.”
“Then you will, of course, think of something more appropriate. Something that carries with it our messages of newness and sophistication. Grappa, to be clear, I like. But the dish is not hip in total.”
It wasn’t that terribly difficult to do, to utter a sentence in convincing Crip. How had Jules once said it? “Classic Ingredient A plus Exotic Technique B plus Totally Unexpected Strange Ingredient C.” He considered the matter for five seconds and came up with: “Gulf Coast rock shrimp on a spiced ruby yam wafer with vintage grappa and … Thai ginger cream.”
Dante looked surprised and relieved. “Jeremy, you see that’s the idea. Would it taste good, do you think?”
“I’m not going to suggest something that tastes bad, not unless bad were one of our market response themes.”
“All right then, so let’s use that one.”
“It was just an example. You have to run through these things a few times; there’s a natural evolution. The rock shrimp, for example, is not really a sensible choice given our selection of local shellfish combined with what we can get from the Maritimes.”
“Now don’t regress on me, Jeremy. But fine. That’s enough for now. Develop your ideas along those lines.”
“I’m on it.”
“And bruschetta.”
“Sorry?”
“Bruschetta, what about it?”
“Not innovative. Indeed, common.”
“As a technique. As a launching point. Put something unusual on it.”
“Bruschetta with three strange ingredients,” Jeremy said.
“Think about it,” Dante said, opening the door for him. “It’s a personal favourite.”
At the kitchen supply warehouse, he said to the sales rep: “If I had to have a single pot in my hand at the moment of death, what would you suggest? I’m thinking Chaudier.”
“Your own death?” the rep said. “Bourgeat copper, I’m sure. The Jacques Pépin Signature Series. Of course, I’m of the view that Pépin is God. You might as well be holding his pot when you rise up to meet him in the sky.”
“But he’s not in the sky yet,” Jeremy pointed out.
“Oh, sure he is,” the rep answered.
Aluminum-base would cover their needs. Jeremy ran through the Chaudier catalogue and picked out a suitable range of skillets, sauté pans, saucière, reducing and roasting pans, stock and sauce pots. But then, acknowledging the point vis-à-vis Jacques Pépin’s potentially overlapping relationship with God, he ordered a set of thirty-four Bourgeat pans. These would have to be FedExed in from France, naturally.
They ran through a number of range and grill configurations. In the end, he decided to anchor the kitchen on a twenty-five-foot installation bridge, the main cook top that would centre the room parallel to the front doors. Here Jeremy and his sous chef would work side by side opposite line cooks brought in for the grill, the broiler, hot appetizers and soups. The main work top would have an eight-burner and a grill on either side, a deep fryer, a small secondary prep area and plating counters. Pass-through shelving would run the length of the unit so the team would be able to fire plates back and forth. Behind the unit were some additional work areas and an auxiliary stove top for soups, stocks and sauces. To the far right: cold prep, meat prep and baking stations. Far left, Jeremy was saving square feet for an indulgently large cold room that would sit between the dish pit and the alley doors. Right rear, a small chef’s office and dry storage. And just inside the two doors to the dining room would be the hot and cold pick up counters, forming the line across which servers would not pass, where dockets and dishes would be exchanged. The spot from which Jeremy would play point, run the plays, control the action.
“Knives?” the rep said.
Jeremy sighed. No. He had his own.
They worked right through the Christmas holidays. Jeremy was spending nine hours a day in the kitchen, supervising and giving hands-on help installing everything from a Halon fire-extinguishing system (designed for the galley of an American Whittaker-class nuclear submarine), about an acre of Metro shelving, an automated dish pit, the installation bridge and a massive new RapidAir walk-in cold unit.
The walk-in unit inspired unconflicted enthusiasm. No reservation about the menu or the overt artificiality of cooking to market research data could obscure the fact in Jeremy’s mind that this was the pinnacle achievement of the global refrigerator-manufacturing community. Never had he seen one as large and perfect. At The Paw, efficiency had been paramount. Leftovers had to be carefully repacked into stacking blue plastic buckets. Storage of anything for more than a day or two was sure to cause log-jams, meaning Jules and Jeremy juggled a very volatile, quick-time inventory. They didn’t view the requirement as cramping their style, particularly. They were a fresh-sheet place and couldn’t have afforded to carry a large inventory anyway.
But the RapidAir could have been made by
NASA, so thoroughly did it provide for all conceivable contingencies. From the outside it looked a module from a space station, all sleek, rounded, white sides with the input console for its Pentium III processor and its flat-screen colour readouts recessed flush into side panels. When you popped the front, using the patented TouchPoint latch-release system, the doors slid aside with a pneumatic sigh. Inside were four distinct compartments, each with separate temperature controls that demarcated the box into distinct climatic zones. The first, a great expanse of crisp, chrome shelving. The second, an open area with hooks for curing ham and sausage. Third, the produce section with clear plastic bins. Last, a wine cellar.
“We call this one the Food Caboose,” the RapidAir on-site installation specialist said. “Only it’s closer to the size of a goddamn locomotive.”
Indeed, a portion of the alley wall had to be removed to get the Food Caboose into the kitchen. It was the first point in Jeremy’s acquisition binge that produced a small frown out of Dante. Even so, he didn’t say a word.
Nights, meanwhile, Jeremy was running what amounted to a second kitchen in Stanley Park. Caruzo spread the word, and Chladek found a neutral spot for it, in the forest between their two camps. And people simply began showing up. Most would bring something, and invariably their offerings became a soup or stew, given both the weather and the odd assortment of ingredients. A ring of Polish sausage, a tin of tomatoes, a dozen potatoes or a clutch of starlings or a rabbit. Always a poverty-inspired mixture of items salvaged from dumpsters (from those who had just arrived) or items harvested from the forest around them (from those, like Caruzo and Chladek, whose skills had been honed by need).
In the four hours’ sleep he was managing between these two shifts, unexpectedly, there were florid dreams. Just as in France there had come a point when he was swamped with thoughts of the past, thoughts that spurred him on towards the future, so was he now awash in nocturnal recollection. His psyche was taking an inventory of some kind.
“You will be exceptional,” Chef Quartey said to him.
“I feel exceptional,” Jeremy answered. “The only thing I worry about is if I will forget the things you taught me.”
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