by Dana Bate
“By the way,” Millie says, “I’m impressed you were able to turn in that currency paper Friday. I know how difficult that must have been to pull off, considering you lost all of your work.”
“Thanks.”
Millie is being pleasant. This scares me. I am half expecting her to reach in for a hug, at which point her jaw will snap open, and she will eat me.
“Mark and Susan will probably agree the paper needs some serious tweaking, but at least you’ve given them something to work with,” she says.
Ah, there’s the Millie I know and love: never passing up an opportunity to make me look painfully average.
I rummage through my purse in search of my wallet, not wanting to waste any time when it’s my turn at the register. All I want to do is pay and get the hell out of here, and staging an intense exploration of my bag’s interior is a good excuse not to talk to Millie or Adam.
“Hannah?”
A third voice calls my name, one that isn’t Millie’s or Adam’s. I look up and see Jacob Reaser standing right in front of me. He threads his thumbs through the belt loops on his jeans and smiles. I drop my wallet on the floor.
“Jacob—hi,” I say, bending down to pick up my wallet. “Wow, it’s like a party in here today.”
If they had parties in hell.
Jacob and Adam look each other up and down. Adam studies the washed-out New Pornographers T-shirt tucked beneath Jacob’s moleskin blazer.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “Adam and Millie, this is Jacob. Jacob, Adam and Millie.”
Jacob gives a friendly hello as he shakes both of their hands. “Nice job last night, by the way. That brisket was killer.”
“Oh … thanks.” I cast a sideways glance at Adam and Millie, since they clearly have no idea what Jacob is talking about, and I don’t want them to.
Adam knits his eyebrows together. “So your brisket is making the rounds, eh?”
“Not really.” My eyes shift between Jacob and Adam. “It’s a long story.”
“We have time,” Millie says.
If there is one person in the world who I don’t want to find out about last night, it is Millie. She has an uncanny ability to wring the joy out of pretty much anything. I pray for a sudden natural disaster—an earthquake or a tornado—to interrupt this scene and terminate this conversation. Either that, or The Rapture.
“Really,” I say, waving my hand. “It’s not worth explaining right now.”
I look at Jacob. This time, I think he gets the hint.
“Next customer!” shouts the man behind the register. That’s me. Oh, thank god.
“Great running into you,” Jacob says. I start to move toward the register, but he rests his hand on my shoulder and stops me in my tracks. “And hey, don’t forget—you still owe me a batch of cinnamon buns. Call me sometime.”
I smile nervously, something I’m sure Adam notices. “Yeah, okay,” I say. “I will.”
Jacob offers a half-wave good-bye, one of those hip-height gestures that falls somewhere between a peace sign and the number three. Not everyone can pull that off, but Jacob can. He seems to pull off a lot of things.
I walk up to the register to pay, and when I look over my shoulder, I see Adam clenching his jaw and staring at Jacob with narrowed eyes.
And even if it’s only the tiniest bit, I have to admit, I suddenly feel better.
CHAPTER
sixteen
I show up at Kramerbooks fifteen minutes late because, let’s be honest, I’m me, and punctuality evades me on a regular basis. As expected, the place is a mob scene. Kramer’s sits on Connecticut Avenue just north of Dupont Circle and is a Washington institution of sorts, functioning as a bookstore, restaurant, and bar all in one. The front always swarms with people perusing the book displays, which overflow with stacks of paperbacks and hardbacks, everything from political memoirs to the juiciest works of fiction. Some of the people browsing through the books are bookworms, but many are waiting for tables in the store’s Afterwords Café, particularly at brunch time on the weekends, when the throng almost doubles in size. At the moment, I can barely move through the store without unintentionally groping someone’s ass.
I peer around the corner toward the bar area and spot Rachel sitting at a small round table, scrolling through her BlackBerry. She perks up as she spots me heading her way.
“Six more reservation requests,” she says. “Word travels fast.”
I slide into the wooden chair across from her and sling my purse over the back. “So that puts us up to what? Sixteen?” I do some hazy math. “We can’t fit sixteen in that dining room. At least not comfortably.”
“I know,” Rachel says, nodding. “That’s why I’ve come up with an idea. Blake is away from Friday until Tuesday morning, right?”
“Yeah …”
“So we can hold two or three dinners in one weekend.”
“Three?” I snort loudly. “No way.”
Rachel furrows her brow. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no way I can make that work.”
She purses her lips. “Well, sure, not with that attitude.”
“You don’t get it. Aside from the fact that we’re talking about holding dinners in my landlord’s house, I can’t front that kind of money—at least not yet. We made a decent profit last night, but not enough to bankroll the shopping for three dinners in a row.”
Rachel sighs. “Fine. I see your point. What about two dinners? Saturday and Sunday? You’d have twice as much stuff to prep, but we’d use the same menu both nights, so you’d only have to do it once.”
“I still don’t love the idea of using Blake’s house.”
“Hannah, it’ll be fine. The place was spotless when we left last night. I thought cooking was your passion—I thought you wanted to give this a shot.”
“It is. I do.”
“So? Let’s do this. Two dinners, Saturday and Sunday.”
I stick out my jaw and tap my foot nervously against the floor. “Maybe.”
She grins. “I know that tone. That means yes. Yes?”
“I …” I watch as the smile on Rachel’s face grows. “Okay, yes. Fine. Yes.”
Rachel claps her hands together and pulls out a tan moleskin notebook. “Great. Let’s start with the menu. We need a new theme. Any ideas?”
“Actually … yes.”
Ever since we came up with the last dinner’s theme, I’ve been brainstorming other ideas that might work with a group—concepts that would bring together the notion of culture and tradition and would allow me to share my stories and encourage others to share their own. I started thinking about my favorite foods and what I miss since moving to Washington, and that brought me to my hometown: Philadelphia. I thought about cheesesteaks and hoagies, tomato pie and roast pork sandwiches, water ice and Philly-style soft pretzels and black cherry Wishniak soda. All of those foods are woven deeply into the fabric of my childhood, and I haven’t been able to find a decent version of any of them since I moved away from home. So my latest idea—the one Rachel, the taskmaster, has yet to endorse—is to base a menu around Philadelphia’s favorite foods, which I’ll deconstruct and reinvent and whose origins I’ll explain to our guests. Sure, the motivation is a little selfish, but I want to deconstruct a cheesesteak, and by god, that’s what I’m going to do.
And selfish or not, I think people will connect with the idea behind the dinner: the way food tethers us to our personal history. For me it’s Philadelphia, but for someone else it’s London or Boston or Nashville. You move somewhere new and suddenly you can’t find the foods you grew up with. It’s the sort of experience that makes you feel like you’re from a place—mentioning a favorite food and having everyone look at you as if you’re crazy, not because they don’t like that particular food but because they’ve never even heard of it.
Rachel brightens as I describe my idea and go through the possible menu options. “Love it,” she says. “Fantastic.”
She star
ts scribbling in her notebook, outlining ideas for table decorations and lighting options. As I rattle off menu ideas—pretzel bread, mustard sauce, lemon water ice, cheesesteaks—she makes bullet points and annotations, noting what colors the menu might involve and how that might play into the overall color scheme. As someone to whom “color coordination” means wearing all-black, I am at a loss.
Rachel jots down a few more notes, and I glance at what she’s written down under MENU. “By the way, I’m making pork this time,” I say. “Like it or not.”
“As if I could stop you. Do whatever you want. You’re Hannah Sugarman. You’re in charge.”
And for the first time in a long time, I smile with pride at that pronouncement. “That’s right,” I say. “I am.”
By the next morning, The Dupont Circle Supper Club’s in-box is overflowing with requests. Even with two dinners in one weekend, we can’t keep up with the demand. Other bloggers have posted about our underground venture, and soon the DC food blogosphere is alight with news and reviews and information about The Dupont Circle Supper Club. The e-mails pour in faster than we can read them, and Rachel finishes cobbling together an official Web site to field the many questions from prospective guests. We can’t tell people too much about ourselves, and our schedule is a moving target, subject to Blake’s travel schedule and the congressional calendar, but we dangle enough bait to satisfy people’s curiosity. And yet, even with a Web site and FAQ section, the volume of e-mails continues to explode, at a rate that is both exciting and completely overwhelming.
I barely focus on my work all day Monday, spending most of my day drawing up shopping lists and preparation timetables and cooking schedules. I print out and squirrel away a few more recipes in my secret recipe folder, and each time Mark comes out of his office, I minimize my screens for Epicurious and Food & Wine and Saveur and instead bring up screens from Bloomberg and the Financial Times and Reuters. Luckily, Mark is too busy humming his regular rotation of Verdi and Puccini arias at full volume to notice I even exist.
When I return from work on Monday, I stumble into my still-damp, still-smelly apartment and, as soon as I do, Blake calls.
I stare at the screen, debating whether or not to pick up the phone. If I pick up, he might scream and shout and tell me he knows all about the supper club and, after more yelling, evict me. If I don’t pick up, my apartment might smell like a bat cave until the end of time. How to decide?
“Hey, neighbor,” Blake says as I pick up the phone. The smell, I conclude, is too much to bear. “How’s the apartment?”
“Um … still a little wet and stinky, actually.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk,” he says. “I saw your e-mail and checked it out earlier today. You did a good job with the bleach and towels, but you need to use a dehumidifier for a while.”
“Okay …”
Blake laughs into the phone. “Don’t worry. I’ll hook you up. And a guy is coming out later this week to fix the gutters—for real this time.”
“Great. Thanks.”
My ceiling creaks as Blake paces back and forth above me. “No problem,” he says. He suddenly stops moving. “By the way, did you leave some ice cream for me in the freezer?”
My stomach flip-flops. “Sorry?”
“There’s a container of homemade ice cream in my freezer.” I hear him smack his lips. “It tastes a little like honey? With something crispy in it?”
The ice cream. Shit. How is that still in there? Rachel told me she double-checked everything. “Um … maybe …”
“Maybe? The container has SUGARMAN written on it.”
I clear my throat. “I mean yes. It’s a … gift. For you. For the Jewish new year.”
Blake pauses. “It’s half eaten.”
“Right. Yes.” Fuuuuck. What is happening? “I … originally made it for myself,” I say, the words flying out of my mouth faster than I can control them. “But I couldn’t stop eating it, so instead of gaining twenty pounds I thought I’d give it to you instead.”
What? Does that even make sense? No. No, by any measure, my explanation makes no sense at all. But, as usual, my mouth works faster than my brain, the result of which is sure to be disaster.
He chuckles. “Okay …”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, no—it’s fine. I mean, don’t make a habit of wandering through my house while I’m away, but I appreciate the gesture. The ice cream is amazing, actually. Some of the best I’ve had.”
“Thanks …”
I hear Blake swallow on the other end of the phone. “No, wow, this is really good.” He takes another bite. “For real. You should pack this up and sell it. Have you ever considered going into business?”
I gulp loudly. “I’ve thought about it.”
“You should. Although not out of that apartment. That’s the last thing I need.”
“Oh …?”
He laughs. “Haven’t you read my election platform? We’re having major problems in Dupont with undocumented restaurant workers and restaurant owners not paying their taxes. A bunch of frustrated restauranteurs are supporting my campaign. I don’t need someone running an unlicensed ice cream operation out of my basement.”
He laughs again, louder this time, obviously amused by the absurdity of this scenario, and I attempt to join in, but what comes out is a halfhearted, “Haaaaa … aaa … aaaah …” which is really code for “shit, shit, shit!”
Blake pulls himself together and sighs. “Sorry. I’m just teasing.”
“That’s okay. It was … funny.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, right. Anyway, I’ll get that dehumidifier to you ASAP. And in the meantime, thanks for the ice cream. Semi-weird trespassing aside, I think you might be the best tenant I’ve ever had.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“No, seriously. My last tenant almost burnt down the house, and the one before that stole my grill. But you,” he says through a smile, “you make me ice cream. Really good ice cream. I think you’re a keeper.”
I laugh nervously as the floor creaks beneath Blake’s feet, the floorboards sounding old and weak, as if they could break any second. “Oh, I’m a keeper, all right,” I say. “That’s for sure.”
Paging Lucifer: save me a seat. I’m headed your way, sooner than either of us expected.
CHAPTER
seventeen
Almost burning down the house is much worse than respectfully, cautiously holding a secret supper club in that house while the landlord is away. Right? Right. And stealing a grill—that’s definitely worse. We haven’t stolen anything. Except the port and scotch, I guess, but we were borrowing those, really. We’re going to replace them. So, in that context, I am a good tenant. Well, maybe not good, but decent. Ish. Decentish.
The point is, we’ve already taken twenty-four reservations for this weekend, so we can’t back out now. Or we could, but we’d risk ruining our supper club’s reputation just when it’s on the rise, and I’d lose the one thing that makes me happy these days, the one thing I look forward to more than anything else. And, dehumidifier aside, my apartment is small and cramped and generally unpleasant, meaning Blake’s house is the only location that makes sense. To me. As for the general public … Whatever. This supper club is the only bright spot in my life at the moment, and we’re not calling it off. End of story.
Thursday afternoon, I sneak over to Rachel’s desk, making sure Millie and the other research assistants are out of sight. “Could you cover for me for an hour or two?” I ask.
Rachel tosses a folder into her desk organizer, a vintage two-tiered oak box she bought on Etsy. “Sure. Where are you off to?”
“Penn Quarter farmers’ market.”
“Near Chinatown? That’s kind of a schlep for groceries. You’re sure you don’t need my help?”
I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. If Mark or Millie asks … say I’m at the dentist or something.”
“The gyno,” Rachel says. “Alwa
ys say the gyno. No one can argue with that.”
“I’d rather you not share my gynecologic goings-on with Mark and Millie.”
She shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
I slip out of the office and scurry up Eighteenth Street toward the southern entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro stop, which sits smack on the circle, right next to an outpost of Krispy Kreme. That I manage to board the escalator without being sucked in by the smell of fresh, hot doughnuts is a testament to my willpower—of which, admittedly, I have almost none.
“I’ll be back,” I whisper over my shoulder at the Krispy Kreme sign as the escalator descends into the black pit below. Riding the escalators at Dupont Circle always feels like plunging into the great abyss. The daylight suddenly disappears at the start of the tunnel opening, and the stairs plummet downward into the darkened tunnel, at an angle that makes it nearly impossible to see where the downward journey ends. At 188 feet, the north entrance is steeper and scarier, but the south entrance nevertheless feels like an amusement park ride, albeit one lacking any sort of amusement whatsoever.
Metro pass in hand, I charge through the turnstile and down another set of escalators and manage to squeeze through the doors to a red line train just before it leaves the station. Clutching one of the metal poles with one hand, I glance down at the piece of paper crumpled in the other, on which I’ve written a brief sketch of the menu for Saturday and Sunday:
Red and white wine (TBD)
Victory Brewing Company Prima Pilsner
Soft pretzel bread/spicy mustard sauce
Cheesesteak arancini/homemade marinara sauce
Deconstructed pork sandwich: braised pork belly, sautéed
broccoli rabe, provolone bread pudding
Lemon water ice
Commissary carrot cake
I’m particularly proud of my riff on the pork sandwich, one of Philadelphia’s lesser-known specialties. Everyone presupposes the cheesesteak is Philadelphia’s best sandwich, when, in fact, my favorite has always been the roast pork. Juicy, garlicky slices of pork are layered with broccoli rabe and sharp provolone on a fresh roll, the rich juices soaking into the soft bread while the crunchy crust acts like a torpedo shell, keeping everything inside. The flavors explode in your mouth in each bite: the bitter broccoli rabe, the assertive cheese, the combination of garlic and spices and tender pork. That’s what I’m going for with my deconstructed version, and if all goes according to plan, the dish will be a knockout.
