Out to Lunch

by Stacey Ballis

  “Did you give Georgie my number and tell him I would go out with him?”

  “What? You said you weren’t exclusive. Georgie’s a great guy.”

  “Wayne. I know what I said, but I’ve been single a long time. Don’t you think if I were going to spark to Georgie I would have done it already?”

  “I thought you needed a nudge.”

  “Wayne, please don’t try and fix me up.”

  “But you aren’t exclusive.”

  “I’m also not actively on the market.”

  “That Brian guy is slippery, he’ll trap you.”

  “I promise you, Georgie is not the guy to prevent Brian from trapping me.”

  “Okay. I was just trying . . .”

  “I know. It’s very sweet. Just don’t, okay?”

  “Okay. Am I still house-sitting with the dogs next weekend?”

  “Yes, please, if that’s still fine.”

  “It is. But I wish you weren’t going.”

  “It’s just a weekend in Saginaw. Two nights. I’ll be back Sunday.”

  “Weekends like that lead to exclusivity, and you know my vote on that.”

  “He just wants you to have the right love.”

  He wants a punch in the mouth. GEORGIE?

  “He’s trying.”

  Yes. Yes he is. VERY trying.

  “Thank you, Wayne. If I promise to not come back exclusive, can I still go?”

  “Yes. I’ll be there Friday.”

  “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Brian made it back from Aspen in time for dinner on New Year’s Day, demolished the food and wine with me, and asked if I would join him for a weekend away in a friend’s weekend home in Michigan in a couple of weeks.

  “Boy, do all your friends have extra houses to loan you?”

  “Yep. I only hang out with people who have multiple houses.”

  “Guess I’m going to be off the list.”

  “You just haven’t found your second home yet.”

  “Yes you have.”

  “Guess I haven’t.”

  “YES YOU HAVE.”

  Aimee and I fell in love with an old stone mas in the south of France. It used to be a mill, and had a huge main house with three outbuildings on the property. We swore we would buy it and renovate it as our vacation home together. We got close to doing it too, but then she got sick and there went the dream. The Voix keeps telling me to do it anyway, but I know better. It’s too much; I can’t do it on my own, and wouldn’t want to.

  I agreed to the weekend away. Wayne agreed to dog sit. Originally I wanted him to just take the dogs to his house, but then he said that he had some sort of massive Terminix bomb thing he wanted to do and that he would just house-sit and dog sit. At that point, despite the fact that I’m reasonably sure that between Chewie and Hurriwayne my entire home will be leveled while I’m away, I couldn’t really say no. Plus I really didn’t want to know why he was having the house bombed, and once he assured me that whatever the issue was it wasn’t transferable to my house, I caved. Thankfully, Wayne needs access to a television at all times, so he will stay in the guest room. The idea of Wayne in my bed just completely makes my skin crawl.

  Meanwhile, why can I have a TV in the guest room and not the bedroom?

  “Because a guest room is like a hotel room, and guests need a TV. Your bedroom is your sacred space, and you need quiet.”

  You and your freaking rules.

  “You’re the one who always listened.”

  I’m starting to wonder why.

  “Because I’m always right.”

  Well, there’s that.

  * * *

  I may be a little nervous about going away with Brian, but I’m very ready for a break. Chewbacca continues to Jekyll and Hyde all over the place, two days of being an angel, followed by a day of eating the furniture. Plus now he has begun humping everything in sight. Volnay put the kibosh on things quickly when he attempted to violate her in her sleep, but my couch cushions, table legs, and guests have not been so lucky. The breeder said we should wait till he is six months old to neuter him, so I have another two months to live with a horny humpmonster. Plus he is apparently in the ninety-ninth percentile for weight and height, clocking in at nearly fifty-five pounds already. My vet said he is likely to end up somewhere in the 125– to 135-pound range when he is full-grown. Great. My dog is going to be MY ideal weight.

  Yesterday he did his test run at the doggie day care that Alana uses, and it was gently suggested that I not bring him back. Ever. Something about him getting out of his crate and into the office and eating most of a printer and someone’s shoes, and going all date rapey on a shy Bernese during playtime. So embarrassing. Now I have to try and find another place to take him so that he can get some good socializing when puppy kindergarten is over next week. I’m just not really a good dog park person. Probably because I’m not really a good dog person, come to think of it.

  I’m up and packed early, even though Brian isn’t picking me up till three thirty. Wayne is coming at three. By nine, the dogs are walked, the house is pretty Wayne-proofed. I’ve moved anything both breakable and valuable into the butler’s pantry cabinets, which lock. I’ve put all of my small valuables and personal papers in the safe. Yesterday I roasted a chicken and grilled a large steak, both of which are in the fridge along with a case of beer. There are carrots and green beans blanched, so he just has to heat them up, and two bags of frozen French fries. I’ve got a folder ready for him with instructions for all the appliances and electronics.

  By ten, I realize that I have to do something, or I’m going to twiddle my thumbs all day. I decide to bake something for Wayne, leave a little bit of delicious for him for the weekend.

  In the pantry I look to see what ingredients I have on hand. Bars of bittersweet chocolate and dark cocoa powder put me in the mind for something decadent and rich. And then it hits me.

  “Blackout Elevator Cake.”

  Exactly.

  Aimee and I once got stuck in a load-in elevator at an event venue en route to an engagement party due to a blackout. We were there for nearly four hours. The only thing we had with us was the dark chocolate layer cake I had made as a surprise for the groom, who hated the lemon chiffon his bride-to-be had chosen. I meant to sneak it into the party, and serve him a special slice, and then send the rest home with him. He never got it. Aimee and I sat in the dark, eating cake with our hands by the light of our cellphones and laughing and telling stories and sharing our mutual fear that we would have to go to the bathroom before they found us. We did not. But when they finally got us out, our teeth were black from the chocolate cookie crumbs, Aimee had frosting in her hair, I had chocolate pastry cream dolloped in the middle of my bosom, and we both had fudge frosting under our fingernails. We were both half-sick, and the cake was half-gone, and it was one of the best days of my life.

  The cake turns out to be the perfect idea. The focus baking requires settles my mind and my nerves, doesn’t let other thoughts sneak in. Stirring the pastry cream and putting it in the blast chiller in the island, a total chefly indulgence that I have never once regretted. The house filling with the scent of rich, dark chocolate as the cakes rise in the oven. The treat of the moist trimmings as I even up the layers before spreading the thick custard filling between them. The fudgy frosting smoothed perfectly over the whole thing, and then immediately marred with chocolate cookie crumbs.

  Blackout Cake is almost enough to make me want to stay home. But more than that, I think Wayne will be delighted. It weighs about forty-two pounds as I shift it out of the kitchen and onto the counter in the Kitchen Library, shutting the door behind me. Chewie is not just getting heavier by the day; he is also getting taller, and has become something of a counter surfer.

  By the time the cake is finished, I’m calm and collected. I forget how much my sense of self is connected to the kitchen, to cooking. From the moment I went to culinary school twenty years ago, right up until
the moment Aimee got sick, cooking was my center and the main occupation of my mind. Even when we sold the business, just four months before Aimee’s official diagnosis, back when we thought that her permanent fatigue was a result of the relentless nature of the company, I went from overseeing the catering aspect of the company, to a return to the cooking I loved most, hosting dinner parties for friends and family, hanging out at the Library testing new recipes and making customers and staff my guinea pigs, teaching the occasional class with Andrea.

  “You have to get back in the kitchen.”

  I know. I just . . .

  “No excuses. You have to cook. You need to get the Notebook out again.”

  The Notebook has been with me for twenty years. Aimee gave it to me for a graduation present when I finished at Le Cordon Bleu. It’s a handmade journal, must have over four hundred pages, ten by twelve inches, and bound in soft gray distressed leather. It looks like a witch’s grimoire of spells, or the kind of notebook Marie Curie would work problems in. And it is about two-thirds full of my chicken scratch, notes for recipes, ideas of flavors that might pair well together, techniques I want to try and improve, drawings of plating ideas. It used to be that when I was stressed, or excited, or sad, or bored, I would go to the Notebook and then to the kitchen.

  “It’ll cure what ails you.”

  And maybe she’s right. Maybe some of my aimlessness is simply not feeling useful or needed or productive. It’s ironic really. We did such a good job of building our business, it didn’t need us anymore. And such a good job of training our staff at the Library, it runs like a clock without us. If only Aimee had been as successful in preparing me to live without her.

  * * *

  Here we go!” Brian says, opening the door of the cozy-looking cottage tucked away on a lovely street in the very quaint village. We step inside and he turns on the light. It is a little bungalow, the perfect kind of place for a quiet weekend away. Saginaw is about a four and a half hour drive from Chicago. We got through two of Wayne’s ’80s driving CDs that he gifted me after our road trip before Brian called uncle in the middle of Adam and the Ants. He’s not a car karaoke guy, apparently.

  We get the car unloaded, and head out to a place called Jake’s for burgers, since it is already after eight, and neither of us is much in the mood to try and cook anything. Back at the cottage, Brian lights a fire, and we open a bottle of calvados that I brought with me.

  “This is nice. Thank you for bringing me.”

  “Thank you for coming. Am I allowed to say that I appreciate the peacefulness?”

  I laugh. “You mean because there isn’t a huge puppy alternately humping your leg and eating your pajamas?”

  “Yes. That.”

  “Well, the good news is that I signed him up for the next level of training, so we are going to commit to making him a good Canine Citizen, and the vet says the humping and rambunctiousness will go away once I get him neutered.”

  “Well, I suppose that is something. And finally you found a good use for Wayne. Maybe you could get him to dog sit now and again at home. I’d like to wake up with you at my place once in a while.”

  I lean forward and kiss him. “I bet that could be arranged.”

  What we begin on the couch in front of the fire, we continue in the bedroom, and after, I fall into deep and satisfied sleep. The phone wakes me at six.

  “Whaddizit?” I whisper sleepily, having tiptoed out of the bedroom and downstairs.

  “First off, everything’s fine,” Wayne says.

  “I’m pretty sure that isn’t really true if you are calling me at six in the morning on a Saturday. What happened?”

  “Well it’s a funny story, really . . .”

  “Pretty sure that isn’t true either.”

  “Well, the thing is, we’re at the emergency vet.”

  Well, now I’m awake. “What happened? Is it Volnay?” The idea that my sweet old girl might go without me there makes my heart clench.

  “No, she’s fine. But, um, I sort of left that cake, which was totally awesome, by the way, you should be a professional chef or something!”

  “WAYNE!”

  “Oh, yeah, anyway, I left the cake on the kitchen counter when I went to bed, and then Volnay came and woke me up at three, and I thought she needed to go out, but it turns out Chewie got onto the counter and ate the rest of the cake, and he looked really uncomfortable, and when I checked online to see if I could, you know, give him some Tums or Pepto or something it said that chocolate is like toxic to dogs so we hightailed it to the all-night emergency place, and they pumped his stomach, poor guy.”

  Shit. Shitshitshitshit. One weekend. I wanted ONE weekend. I can feel my recent goodwill toward Wayne, well, waning. “Is he okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, a total trouper. The doc said he probably prevented most of the damage when he threw up.”

  “You mean when they pumped his stomach?”

  “Nah, I mean when he threw up at home. I dunno if the living room rug is gonna be the same, but it probably saved his life.”

  “What was he doing in the living room?” Only took me the better part of eighteen months for my rug guy Mickey at Al-Sahara to find the perfect large rug for the living room. In creams and golds and taupes. Which are definitely not going to recover from dark chocolate dog puke.

  “I must have left the kitchen gate unlocked when I went to bed.”

  One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  “Anyhoo, he’s fine, strong as an ox, doc says not to worry I can take him home, it’s just, um . . .”

  “Good god, Wayne just spit it the fuck OUT.”

  “The bill is more than I have left to spend on my credit card, so I need you to give them your card to pay for it or they won’t let me take him home.”

  “Fine. Put them on the phone.”

  He hands me off to a nice woman named Cindy who explains that in addition to the ninety-nine dollar emergency after-hours visit charge, my pup has received a stomach pumping, activated charcoal, an IV to replace electrolytes and flush his system, monitoring, some tests . . . grand total seven hundred eighty-five dollars. I give her my credit card number and tell her to put the large idiot back on the phone.

  “Hey, cool, all set. So don’t worry at all, I’m gonna take him home, lock him up tight, clean the rug, we’re all good here. You have a great weekend, and sorry I had to wake you, but if I left him here they were going to charge a boarding fee . . .”

  “It’s fine, Wayne. It’s fine. Thank you for taking good care of him.” The phrase sticks in my throat, but at the end of the day, even if it is Wayne’s stupid fault the dog ate the cake, at least he did all the right things. I’ve heard of dogs actually dying of chocolate poisoning, and while I would have gladly killed the dog myself more than once in the past month, I find I don’t actually want him dead.

  “Hey, no problem! I’ll see you tomorrow! And Jenny, look, I know that Chewie seems to have been something of a consistent problem child, I didn’t really think about it when I got him for you, but if you can’t handle him, you know, if he isn’t the right dog for you, I’ll take him back.”

  “We’ll talk when I get home.”

  “Okay, just an offer. Have fun. Say hi to the Bri Guy for me!”

  I hang up, sit down at the kitchen table, and let my head drop until my forehead meets the cool surface. And then the sweating starts. And the heart racing. And the wobbly legs and the colon spasms and the race to the bathroom. You’d think I ate a whole poison chocolate cake. I’m back in the kitchen, clammy and still sweating and heart fast, but with a somewhat calmer stomach, when Brian comes down, rubbing his sleepy eyes, hair still weirdly perfect.

  “Hey. You’re up early.”

  “Sorry. Small emergency back home.”

  “Let me guess. Wayne burned down the house? Blew up your car?”

  “Chewbacca. Ate a whole chocolate cake. Three a.m. emergency vet run, which Wayne couldn’t afford to pay without my okay.” />
  “Good lord, it never ends. Is the dog okay at least?”

  “Right as rain according to the vet. Strong as an ox and twice as graceful.”

  “I knew it was a bad idea for you to let him stay at your house.”

  “Well, I didn’t have much of a choice. Wayne’s place is being fumigated, and the kennel politely declined our business.”

  “Still. I don’t know which is worse, Wayne or the fucking dog he foisted on you.”

  “Hey, people make mistakes. Dogs are just dogs. The dog could have died and Wayne did all the right things to save his life, and wouldn’t have even told me till tomorrow except Aimee’s stupid rules meant he didn’t have access to enough funds.”

  “Leave me out of this one.”

  Have I told you lately about the general direction in which I would like you to fuck?

  “Ouch. You’re really not a morning person.”

  “I still think you should get rid of that damn beast. Hand him back to Wayne with a ‘thanks but no thanks’ and be done.”

  And then something weird happens. I stop sweating, all at once, like flipping a switch. My heart rate normalizes. And I start to cry. And I’m not a crier. Especially with guys. Never have been. But all at once the whole thing hits me, and all I can think of is my poor Chewie, so sick and unhappy and I wasn’t there. As panicked as I was that something might have happened to Volnay without me, there is something that is now just sinking in. Wayne’s offer to take the dog away, Brian’s insistence at getting rid of him; my heart hurts.

  I look up at Brian through tears. “I LOVE that dog. He’s going nowhere. And you’d better figure out how to tolerate him, because me and him? We’re a team. We’re family. Package deal. And I would really appreciate if you would, one, stop telling me to get rid of him and B., perhaps show the tiniest bit of compassion for my dog who could have DIED tonight.”

  And that? Right there? Was a beginning and an ending. It was the beginning of a deep love affair with a badly behaved dog, and the ending of my lovely weekend away with Brian.