“So you played along.”
Taylor snorts. “Yeah, I told her I was going to the bathroom first and locked myself in the john until the cops came. Now you know why I host the annual fundraiser for the Police Benevolent Association.”
In addition to the sensors inside and out (and I thought Tex’s police lock on his apartment door was excessive), he tells me about the twenty-foot high fences. “Those went up the day that I saw a picture of myself inhaling an illegal drug.”
“Men in glass houses shouldn’t get stoned.”
He smiles. “I see you’re gonna be trouble.”
“So, does tight security mean that bells go off if I touch your arm?”
“Not quite. Anyway, you get used to it, and since I couldn’t get arrested in this town for years, I’m not complaining about the way things are…anyway, you hungry? I have a fridge packed with food.”
“I ate on the plane, but maybe just some iced tea and fruit?”
He seems taken aback, then shrugs it off. “Done. Let’s go down.”
I can’t help staring at the luminescent flecks that dance along the runway of black granite that is a kitchen counter, as if I am looking at a highway paved with diamonds.
“Do you know what a New Yorker would do for a kitchen this size? We cook in cubicles. If you’re lucky, you can stretch your arms out to the side and make a 360 degree circle without banging into something.” He watches me, amused. I open the refrigerator and stare.
“Party here tonight?”
He shakes his head.
“Why so much food?”
He shrugs. “You’re supposed to like to eat, no?”
“I don’t eat THIS much. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll cook you dinner. What do you like?”
His eyes widen. “Everything. Whatever.”
“Why do you look so shocked?”
“The truth is that no one has made me a home-cooked meal since the last time I ate shepherd’s pie at my mom’s house in Des Moines, maybe six months back—and to tell you the truth, she’s not such a hot cook.”
This surprises me. No women fawning over him, inviting him over for dinner? Maybe that wasn’t an L.A. thing.
“Until I left home at eighteen, I thought mashed potatoes came out of boxes, and that gravy came in cans.”
“Doesn’t Jolie cook?”
“Cook? All she eats are fruits and vegetables and a sprinkling of granola.” I see he’s house-cleaned. There’s nothing resembling granola or soy milk here, at least not that I can see. He smiles. “On Thanksgiving—hey, that was a feast—she diced up a salad.”
Should I laugh or cry? “Well then, Super Sleuth,” I say, now comfortable enough to call him by the title of one of his movies, “tonight you’re going to eat big-time, some delectable treats from the mother cuisine.” I look at his face. He has no clue. “Italian food. How does that sound?”
“I can’t wait.”
“Good, now get out of the kitchen and go learn some lines or something. I’ll find you when dinner’s ready.”
“Whatever you say.” He salutes, and walks out of the kitchen, but then he turns back and leans up against the door and watches me.
“What?”
“I don’t know,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “The house feels different now.”
“It’s probably the first time you’ve seen someone other than the maid in your kitchen.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not that. It’s your energy…your…aura.”
“My aura? Now I’m sure I’m in California.”
He misses the cynicism. “Great,” he says, striding off. “Great.”
The overstocked refrigerator is like a giant orgasmatron. I inhale, get a grip on myself and then begin poking through shelf after shelf to come upon gastronomic glory in all shapes, scents, colors and tastes. It’s like a VIP ticket to Fauchon, or the Food Halls of Harrods with the unlimited freedom to indulge. Obscene, excessive, overabundant—and alluring. And no one knows better than me what to do with all these delectables. The French Froz fruit had put Taylor’s body into culinary deep freeze. I would shock him back to life.
After inventorying the contents, I decide on the menu: Semolina cakes with butter and cheese, baked oysters Florentine, veal marsala, meatballs, manicotti, escarole with garlic, mesclun greens, and zabaglione with raspberries and blackberries. (Maybe this should be a column: See, I’m not dieting!!!)
I press the power button on the CD player and the kitchen comes alive with golden oldies by the Supremes—Baby love, oh baby love, I need you, oh how I miss you. What I really want to do is jump up on the kitchen counter and dance, swinging a wine bottle over my head, but afraid of being caught and appearing bipolar, I channel my euphoria by chopping and sautéing to the beat, infusing the air with the redolent bouquet of garlic, onions and wine sauce.
“What are you making? It should be illegal.” I jump. Taylor has crept into the kitchen behind me.
“Nuking Lean Cuisine.”
He lifts the lid on a pot, but I smack his hand.
“Don’t you dare!”
“Sorry,” he says, lowering it. “Sorry. How about a little wine?”
“Let me guess, you have cases of the Richebourg ’71, and as a backup, the Grand-Echezeaux ’71 from the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t have a world-class cave packed with priceless selections.”
He shakes his head. “No cave. Don’t know a damn about wine. I usually go with local California stuff—at least I can pronounce it. The only things goin’ vintage in my cellar are the bones of producers who put me into pilots that went nowhere.” He pours two glasses of chardonnay ordinaire and lifts his. “To you and to our collaboration. And boy am I glad you can cook.”
I clink his glass a trifle too hard in return. “Here’s to Dangerous Lies, the movie and all the ones I had to tell to get me here. Now if you want to eat tonight, I suggest you find something to do. I’ve got work ahead of me. See you at eight.”
“I’m off to the gym,” Taylor says. “If I’m going to feast tonight, I better get into shape.”
Fat AND Fit
Remember all the research telling you that fat people die younger than thin ones? That less is more when it comes to how much you weigh? Well, now there’s another piece to the puzzle. Stephen Blair, director of research at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, told colleagues attending a meeting of the Association for the Study of Obesity in London that if obese people are fit they have half the death rate of skinnies who don’t work out. According to Blair, we’re too busy obsessing about weight, and not busy enough thinking about fitness.
Does the dinner tonight include Jolie? I wonder as Taylor saunters off. The scent of sautéing beef probably sends her into spasm. Merde! Fatty food! Is she in the gym too? I can’t get the vision of her in the gym out of my head. I see her riding on a bike next to him, purring seductively. Or lying down on a weight bench, trying to tease him into getting on top of her. Or worse still, following him into the shower while dear old me is in the kitchen fixing them both dinner. I turn up the CD.
In the middle of rolling out the pasta for the manicotti, I stop. Tim McGraw is singing “Please Remember Me.” It makes me think about the paper, and I check my watch. What’s going on now? The office seems a world away.
The scent of sautéing garlic and onions and browning beef makes me think of Tex and how he would have delighted in the feast I was preparing—especially in a kitchen this size. He would have rolled up his sleeves and joined me. He never cooked with a recipe. The proportions just seemed to come to him. Then he taste-tested.
When we met I assumed that his culinary repertoire began and ended with his kickin’-ass chili. And it wasn‘t the kind of chili that I knew, with red kidney beans and tomatoes.
“Cut up the beef, you never use ground beef,” he informed me. I sat there, like an attentive student, watching him add water
, chilies and garlic, and then cumin and oregano. Nothing else. He told me about the international chili cook-off that he entered in the West Texas ghost town of Terlingua—total population 25—fewer than the number of tenants who lived in my apartment building. That gave me just an inkling of his interest in food. It turned out that Tex had read more cookbooks than Tamara had tried diets.
He was the one who introduced me to Ligurian cooking—“La Cucina Profumata.” One cold Sunday last winter, I called him after a brunch to whine about a disastrous blind date. He swore that his fish Ligurian-style would improve my mood. We met on the West side to shop for Gaeta olives and red snapper. When we got back, he presented me with a little gift sack of an appetizer: Basil leaves stuffed with minced prosciutto and Parmesan cheese then breaded and fried in olive oil. Then he taught me about Sicilian bottarga, the cured tuna roe that was salty and pungent and divine when mixed with olive oil, garlic and parsley, and served over spaghetti dusted with bread crumbs.
And technique. Tex knew every method, even how to use a pressure cooker. He walked me through the basics, one afternoon, demystifying the process.
“I know it’s going to spew out of the pot and explode in my face,” I said, holding an oven mitt over my face like a catcher’s mask.
“Darlin’, you have nothing whatsoever to worry about.”
“Where in the world did this contraption come from anyway,” I asked, lowering the mitt.
“Introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair by National Presto Industries.” What were the chances of any other guy in the world knowing that?
“And for the one-million-dollar jackpot, Mr. Van Doren, the category is food history. Who was the fierce conqueror who introduced the lowly potato to Elizabeth I? Tick tock, tick tock—”
“Sir Walter Raleigh.”
“Jesus, Tex! How did you know that?”
“Trivial Pursuit, I think,” he said, grinning. “Keep going.”
I did. “If you’re so smart, tell me about the origins of ketchup. And I’m talking about pre-Heinz.”
I remember the way he stared back at me. “Ketchup, huh?”
I was so sure then that he was stumped. “Ketchup, you heard me.”
Slowly, a smile spread over his face. “Ohh.” He feigned confusion. “I think what you mean is ke-tsiap. It was a seventeenth-century Chinese brine of pickled fish and spices.”
“Oh, stop it, Tex.”
“I swear to you.”
But he wasn’t all business. I was over at his apartment baking chocolate cookies one day, got distracted and forgot about them until the smoke alarm went off. I raced to the kitchen, too late. Tex had to hold back a laugh.
“Guess Maida Heatter’s job is secure.” He lifted one, tossed it up and then caught it in his hand, weighing it. “Feels like buckshot,” he said, eyeing me with a wicked grin.
“You want to feel buckshot?” I took a cookie and flipped it at his head.
“Naw, that wasn’t buckshot,” he said, taking aim, “THIS is buckshot.” He flung it at me like a Frisbee and then ran out, ducking behind the couch. Men love this sort of thing. I think it’s almost instinctual for them to go wild and act piggish, like out-of-control adolescents. Food fights, panty raids, activities of that high level of sophistication. No matter how old they are, or what they do, start the rumpus and you’ll see how easily they’ll join in.
Our food fight escalated to the point where both of us were running in and out of rooms, screaming threats and barricading ourselves behind furniture and doors. Cookies flew through the air. What did I care? It wasn’t my place.
Eventually, we cleaned the mess up together and then, bereft of dessert, we went out for it. Then we just walked and explored some new neighborhood, and saw a movie. Sometimes our nights together ended up in a bookstore or a foreign magazine stand where we would share barbs about which books made the bestseller list, who was profiled in the news magazines and who should have been, or the ludicrous subject for a fashion magazine cover story: “Legs are Back.”
“Didn’t know they left,” Tex said.
Nothing special, we just hung out. Together, just not on Saturdays or Wednesdays. Those were his date nights with Sharon. This was fine with me. We went to better restaurants than they did. She was a born-again vegetarian. At least this week.
Though it’s late in New York, I dial and then punch out his extension. If he answered, it was never by name, in case he wanted to duck who it was.
“Metro.”
“So how’s the big cheese?”
“Turnin’ blue without you,” he says.
“Yeah, it’s dead there without me, huh?”
“What’s it to you? Was there a lull between sour apple martinis poolside and you remembered your roots?”
“Actually, they’re drinking cosmopolitans out here, but more importantly, I needed help with a recipe. I’m making veal marsala and I forget how much wine to use.”
“Whatever’s left in the case after you drink yourself sick.”
“That’s helpful. Thank you.”
“Why don’t you teach the actor how to cook? You spent a summer at the Culinary Arts Institute, didn’t you?”
I don’t answer.
“Maybe you could give him some tips on roasting the high-heat method; reducing gravies—”
“You don’t sound like yourself. What’s doing?” The Texas drawl was back. Why was he pissed?
“Ah’m getting married.”
“Tell me another one.”
“Ah am serious.”
I knew at that moment he was leaning back in his chair, stroking the side of his face. I start to answer, but nothing comes out of my mouth, then a rush like bullets. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Now, what kind of thing is that to say?”
“You’re one of my best friends, and you didn’t even tell me?”
“Ah’m telling you now.”
I wedge the phone between my ear and shoulder and start mincing the onion, making very small, precise cuts with the knife. I don’t know what to say. That doesn’t happen often.
“Well…congratulations.” I’m using the knife to push all the pieces into a neat pile. “I’m just surprised. Well, that’s wonderful for you and Sharon. When’s the big day?”
“If I had five minutes away from this damn place I could figure that out.”
“So why don’t you sound deliriously happy?”
“I’m in the middle of a mess here. Police reporter just quit, so it looks like there‘s going to be white space where his column belongs.”
“I’ll let you go. I was just cooking up a big Italian dinner here and I thought of you—”
“I thought you don’t eat that way anymore.”
“I’m keeping the franchise.”
“Good, when you get back you can teach Sharon how to cook.”
“She can’t cook?”
“She does other things,” he drawls.
I try to keep the laugh in the back of my throat, but like a wave in motion, there’s no stopping it. Tex hangs up, and that makes it funnier. Maybe it was the wine, but I’m doubled over, holding my stomach envisioning the headline in a supermarket tabloid: Cuisine from Hell! The poor guy would subsist on boilable bag cuisine. His mantra would be “microwave ready.” Served him right for getting involved with an investment banker. Well, at least I now know what to buy them for a wedding present: A Texas-size toaster oven, and Cooking for Dummies. If it didn’t exist, I’d write it.
eleven
“Maggie, que pasa, mama?” Tamara says when I call her a few minutes later at the office.
“According to plan.”
“And how is the hunkasauras? What is that bad little white boy really like?”
“Trash,” I say. “No, sweet, really. I’d even venture humble. Unlike his pet frog here, I don’t think he has a mean bone in his body.”
“Are you lovesick? I mean how can you work with a guy who looks—”
“It�
��s under control. What am I missing?”
“Page six in the Post. The headline, and I quote: ‘Mega Morph for Mesomorph for Mega Mike—’”
“Yeeech.”
“They said that you whittled down, glammed up and headed out to play houseguest of, quote, ‘L.A.’s sexiest bachelor.’”
“Oh God. How the hell did they find out? This is going to poison my career. I can see the résumés pouring in to Wharton now for my replacement. He probably bought himself a cat-o’-nine-tails and is whipping himself for giving me the okay to come out here.”
“Never mind the real world, you’ve got exactly eleven more days left in paradise. Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks, Tamara.”
“Maggie?”
“Yeah?”
“Is he hung?”
“Oh, Jesus, I am going to hang up in your—”
“One mo’ thing.”
“What?”
“Pro-tec-shun.”
I’m about to hang up and then hesitate. “Did you hear about Tex?”
“Yeah, Sharon’s really crazy about the guy.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me,” Tamara says before hanging up.
It was good to check in with the office. Dear, crazy Tamara…and the whole crew. But after today, no more “in the kitchen with Maggie.” I’m out here working, even though in the sunshine it doesn’t look like anybody does that.
I fish out a meatball. Mmmmm, perfection, and the recipe will die with me. Forty minutes to dinner. I sip the wine and look out at the gardens. Fruit trees—oranges, lemons, grapefruits, mangos. Eden. What would it be like to live in a house like this? Vistas of paradise, cascading vines of fuchsia bougainvillea, scarlet frangipani, spiky red-and-yellow bromeliads… I’d be a fine gardener. I could barely remember to water my cactus.
This was a world away. The view over my kitchen sink in Manhattan was the traffic-choked entrance to the Midtown Tunnel, and beyond it a sliver of the East River with a cylindrical concrete Con Ed tower, like a monument to steam, rising above it. And that was an improvement over my last apartment where my head abutted the kitchen cabinets when I did the dishes. Enter trompe l’oeil. But here, no ersatz panoramas needed to be painstakingly drawn.
Fat Chance Page 10
