"Hon?" He stood dwarfed beneath the altar.
"What is it?"
"Come look at this."
She sauntered over to his side. He was looking at an old photo under glass, marked with the legend, Father Merced, 1867. The holy man looked wholly unimpressed to be having his photograph taken—the expression reminded her of those old photos of Native Americans, who believed the camera would steal their souls. His brow was creased, his face pitted with dark shadows.
"Creepy dude, huh?" He pointed at the newspaper clipping beneath, which showed the same stern-faced, silver-curled, robed missionary, standing in front of the Mission with his hands tucked into the opposite arm's sleeve. The caption read: Father Merced believes his life's work preserving Monte Verde's Roman Catholic basilica is a Missionem a Deos (Latin: 'Mission from God').
David bent to read another article beside it: 30-Day Standoff Still a Mystery. After a moment of silence, he said, "Listen to this," and read the rest aloud. "'Father Antonioni Merced's infamous standoff with the Yuman tribe in August of 1852, in the middle of what was known as the Yuma War, still baffles local historians. Merced and the few townspeople taking sanctuary at the basilica while a handful of Yuman warriors surrounded it had somehow survived without any source of sustenance aside from font and well water, which they had rationed. After close to thirty days, the United States Army stepped in, easily fighting off the remaining Yuman warriors. When asked to comment on their miraculous survival, a decidedly healthy-looking Merced simply said, 'When we were starved, God brought us food, and we ate.'
"'Local legend has it US Army infantrymen found several small bones littered among the Mission's stove soot believed to be human, although all townspeople imprisoned there were accounted for.'"
He stood and peered around. "Colorful history, this place. You think that's the same stove we saw in the living quarters?"
"Creepy and a cannibal," June said, wrinkling her nose at the Priest's photo.
"You just said a mouthful," David joked. The two of them laughed.
Out in the parking lot, a few day laborers were trimming trees and blowing leaves. June hated leaf blowers: so loud and obnoxious, such a waste of gas, spreading the leaves around, when it would be more efficient to suck them up into a bag, or rake them into piles. She felt like they had to be bad for the environment, as well; there were already twenty or more California districts with a ban on them. A ban on lawns would cut down on a lot of problems, too, she considered: less wasteful water usage, less gas required for lawnmowers. But man's fascination with having greener grass than his neighbor would outlive both of them. The tides will have risen, drowning cities and farmland, and the people of the future would be tending little green blocks of grass high on towers in the mountains, or in their underwater domes.
THUNK!
The tree branch crashed down on a white sports car parked two down from their sedan (a silver Hummer H3 took up the two slots between its smaller cousins), scratching the paint along the passenger door, cracking the windshield, and scattering leaves in all directions. David and June were passing the car when it fell, and stepped out of the way, startled.
"Hijo de puta!" the poor guy said, looking both angry and terrified. June couldn't blame him. If there was anything she could have done to help, she would have done it. But there was nothing.
Maybe they've got a union, she thought. Not likely, but maybe.
The other man, in his blue checkered shirt and dusty khakis, shut off the leaf blower and ran to his coworker's side. He tossed the tool aside and the two of them removed the tangle of branches from the car. There was no doubting the terror on the face of the man with the heavy steel hedge clippers, his Stalinesque mustache curled upward in a frightened snarl, his eyes wide, trying to look in all directions at once. The car's owner was nowhere in sight, but he would come out soon, and then—
"Somebody's getting fired," David said, rather glib, and got into the car.
"Maybe it's not that expensive to repair," June said hopefully.
David looked at her with a patronizing grin. "On a Maserati? That car's worth more than those two guys put together could make in ten years." He slapped his palms down on his thighs. "You hungry?"
Not anymore, she thought, an anxious tightening in her guts making her feel slightly queasy. But I suppose I could eat.
AMBROSIA LAY AT the foot of wooded mountains, a small restaurant with all the characteristics of a cottage in the English countryside. Smoke billowed on a westward wind from the stone chimney, and with its straw-thatched roof, June felt like the place could easily catch fire at any minute. With no other civilization in sight for miles, it would burn to the ground before any emergency vehicles arrived at the scene.
Mossy, hewn-stone gateposts that could have been missing pieces of Stonehenge bookended the long, cobblestone drive. A sign hung from the left stone, the name AMBROSIA carved roughly into black, split wood and painted Venetian red. Beyond Ambrosia's leaded glass windows, silhouettes shifted and rustled in the soft warm glow like restless spirits.
"I feel like we should have come for elevensies," David said as he lifted the wrought iron knocker and clanked it against the struck plate. June looked at him blankly. "Because this place looks like it's made for hobbits." He gave her a look of commiseration. "You all right?"
"Just hungry," she said, forcing a smile.
He put a comforting hand between her shoulder blades. "Well, let's rustle up some grub, huh?"
The double doors opened suddenly and a lithe man stood before them in the entryway with an expression of bafflement. He wore a velvety black vest over his white silk shirt, with his dark hair oiled flat to his scalp and a thin, slightly curled mustache.
While the French waiter eyed them suspiciously, June thought she heard the theme from Hitchcock's Vertigo play lightly over some hidden sound system—but in a moment, she realized it was the final aria of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Another benefit of a classical education, she thought. She recalled that Wagner's music had been used by the Nazis in the concentration camps for "reeducation." The thought troubled her, the music felt tainted.
An odd thought to come unbidden, Juniper.
Thank you, Mother.
"May I help you?" The contempt in the maître d's voice was undeniable. He was French, though; contempt was inherent in the accent.
"Uh, yes," David said, "the staff at the Seaside Inn sent us."
The scowl cleared, replaced by a thin smile. The man wasn't quite ready to embrace them into the fold, but an invitation had been extended, and he was apparently required to accept them on a trial basis. "Ah, oui, monsieur." He stepped aside and ushered them to the left with the arm he'd draped with a napkin. "Follow me, please."
June began to salivate the moment she stepped in: hot grease, savory sauces, spiced meats and roasted vegetables—the mingled smells overwhelmingly pleasant, bringing back faint memories of dinners prepared by Griselda, the Dreese family's personal chef. The restaurant was dimly lit by oil lamps and Dutch chandeliers; the tables—there were only seven, six of which were occupied by couples enjoying appetizers and apéritifs in quiet contemplation—draped with the whitest white tablecloths, placed in a horseshoe shape around the chef's station. A heavyset, dark-haired man in chef's whites moved his arms wildly, like a man conducting a symphony, as he prepared their meals before them. Flames shot up from his hands, a sorcerer's trick, and as he flicked his wrist, a bouquet of meats and vegetables shot up from the pan. The food seemed to hang suspended in the dim light before him, until it fell, and he caught it in his pan.
The diners applauded lightly.
Just in time for the show, June thought.
Aside from the tables, the décor was bizarrely eclectic: a grayed old ship's wheel; a pitchfork that could have been the very same tool Wood had painted in American Gothic; several brass plates, making her think of Dickens; yellowed scraps of parchment encased in glass alongside pinned butterflies and dusty moths; pencil sketches
of homely men in top hats and top coats, and pretty women in hoop skirts and bonnets; another of the restaurant's façade, technically impressive but completely devoid of any character the house possessed; a cuckoo clock, an old spice rack, and a flocked gold mirror, its warped glass reflecting a dark, alternate version of Ambrosia in which the chef now returned to the main kitchen.
David followed the Frenchman to the empty table in the middle, as she followed David, disregarding her distorted, somewhat monstrous mirror image.
The maître d' pulled out both chairs, waiting until they were seated to speak. "Tonight's meal will begin with a squab ravioli—"
June tuned out after the first dish. As a child, dragged to stuffy country clubs and dimly lit restaurants smelling of pipe tobacco and oiled mahogany, while the waiter had droned on she'd imagined herself sitting in one of those shopping mall-bright restaurants where kids from public schools went, the places where play was as important as the food—more important, with playground equipment and video games, Whack-a-Mole, and animatronic animals singing songs on stage, or clowns roaming the premises, twisting balloons into exotic shapes. There were no fireplaces large enough to seat and cook an entire family; no portraits of ugly old rich men, each lit by his own brass directional lamp; no disgusting vegetables to shovel into her mouth—or hide in her napkin—just so she'd be allowed dessert. There, the ballroom was filled with rainbow-colored rubber, and had only seen an adult when one of the children lost her gum among the balls, or peed himself.
Now that vegetables were an essential part of the dining experience, the need to play had been displaced by the urge to seek out new foods, new wines, new flavors and smells and sights to tantalize the senses. So far, Ambrosia hadn't disappointed—and she'd only just been handed a menu, a slip of paper smaller than an 8-by-10 photograph and as bone-white as Ambrosia's business cards. She held it up and studied it in the candlelight. There were little more than twelve dishes; she wanted to eat every one of them. David couldn't have anything from the ocean, so the lobster bisque and insalata di calamari (technically an Italian squid salad, not Spanish, but the desk clerk had mentioned that Ambrosia served many "ethnicities") were both out. If she kissed him later with the ocean on her lips, his face would blow up like a puffer fish.
What she could really use right now was a drink. The incident in the parking lot, not to mention the possible fate of their chambermaid, had weighed heavily on her mind on the drive over, but since she'd be driving back, she would have to take it easy. A glass or two couldn't hurt, though, and would definitely do the trick. David had taken care of that: he'd ordered a bottle of red wine while she'd been ruminating. They could have saved forty dollars if they'd brought one with them, even allowing for the corkage fee, but she was glad he'd ordered it.
"Thank you," David said to the waiter, and June echoed the sentiment. The waiter left, approaching the couple at the next table, and David took her hand and brushed his lips against it. June gave him a smile, then surveyed the other "epicureans" dining with them tonight. The men, silver-haired and balding, wore open-throated shirts and blazers, with multiple rings on their rawhide-tanned fingers. The women, all of them young, wore cocktail dresses, cork heel sandals and shiny jewelry. They were healthy and white-toothed. One man wore a white straw hat cocked at a jaunty angle, as if, like the Carly Simon song, he were dining aboard a yacht.
She peered over the votive candle and wine goblets at her own man. He was scrutinizing the menu with a frown, deciding what he could risk, attempting to decipher the indecipherable fusion of several foreign languages. Would he age like these men? she wondered. At 31 his hair was just starting to recede. Would he ever go fully bald like his father? Crow's feet were just starting to claw tracks down the corners of his eyes, just as they were at hers. It gave him a distinguished look; she wished there were a female equivalent of "distinguished" that didn't sound like the hands of time were shoving her headlong toward Death's door.
Twenty minutes and a full glass of wine later, the chef emerged from the kitchen, rubbing his hands together in a circular motion, and smiling wide. The other diners applauded his arrival. David and June quickly joined in as the man gave a brief, uncomfortable bow. He began to cook then, and as he cooked, he spoke, like a man hosting a television show, in a slight, mysterious accent.
"These days, everyone wants to know where their dinner came from. What did it eat? Was it coddled? Did it have a good life?" He laughed contemptuously. "Ladies and gentlemen, we don't even ask this for our friends and neighbors!"
Laughter and applause arose around them. June looked across at David and saw that he was smiling in baffled amusement.
"I believe someday soon these questions will be moot," the chef said, pouring oil and ladling garlic into a sauté pan. He sprinkled, he doused, he sauced. "Meat will be grown in laboratories, like vegetables in a greenhouse, independent of the animals to whom they belong. The pigs and cows and little chickies will be free to roam the countryside. And with no use for them, they will die off. They exist at the terminus of evolution, only permitted to survive because of our need for them as food. You mark my words. By the end of this century, meat will be manmade and its sentient cousins will be well on their way to extinction!"
There were murmurs of dissent. A man at the far table to their left, sun-browned skin stretched taut over his bones like a canvas, scowled and hissed.
"I know," the chef said with a playful smirk. "A despicable thought. But it comes closer to reality each day. As a species, we must rise above the herd, so to speak. Pigs are smarter than some primates, they say. Cows are as diverse as dogs and cats and people. We must not fall into the trap of letting these animal activists—these terrorists—we must not let them teach us we are no better than the animals we eat!"
Applause. A ball of orange flame plumed up from the chef's pan. David shot June a look that said, Do you believe this guy? Do you believe them? June patted his hand and sipped her wine. Believe him or not, what the man was cooking smelled divine, and as far as she was concerned, this tortured genius could spout whatever bullshit came into his fat head.
He garnished, he sautéed, he tasted. The chef's nimble fingers molded dough and slid dishes into the oven. He added pinches of sugar and paprika and basil. And all the while, he intoned his manifesto, not addressing his crowd but rather an unseen visitor. Certainly, he'd never once looked his guests in the eye.
She thought: This is a photograph. The textures, the colors, the play of light in the other diners' faces. His facial expressions, like a man possessed—and if he was possessed, it was by a love of food—his gregarious hand gestures and movement, movement, movement. This would make a great shoot. Call it "Kitchens in America." And this place, Ambrosia, this would be the centerpiece. This could go in a gallery.
"Do you hear that?" The chef listened for a moment, his ear cocked toward the ceiling and the music as he stirred the contents of a pan, spun the lid of a pot, sucked a daub of sauce from his thumb. "Lovely piece, isn't it? I sincerely believe everything about the experience of eating should be sensual, but particularly the cooking. Eating is a ritual, wouldn't you agree? If eating is ceremony, cooking is the preparation for the ritual. Part of my ritual includes listening to the Great Works—such as Tristan und Isolde, the lovely opera you hear now, by Richard Wagner." (He pronounced it the German way: Reeckhard.) "When feeling contemporary, I enjoy Glenn Gould." He grinned, almost peculiarly sly. "Or Sammy Davis, Jr."
There were light chuckles at this. Repeat customers, no doubt. June didn't quite get it, and neither did David, from his dubious, slightly salivating look.
Mere moments later the food was plated and waiters emerged from the kitchen to spread it out before them. The humble chef slipped out during the confusion, back into the shadows of the kitchen.
Maybe I'll come back the day after tomorrow, June thought. Ask if he'll let me snap some photos.
With that decided, she began to eat: sliced cured meats and sausage and tartar
e, rustic cheeses and bright yellow tortillas heaped with potato and caramelized onion, small plates of duck confit and rabbit croquettes, Scotch eggs, meatballs cooked in white truffle oil, a soup made from chaud-froid. But the piece de resistance was the bone marrow: salty, greasy, rich and buttery. They scooped it straight from a severed hunk of bone onto crusty herbed bread and stuffed it into their salivating maws.
All thoughts were forgotten: she simply savored.
They spoke very little while they ate, only pausing to swallow a mouthful of wine and marvel with grunts and moans at how delicious everything tasted. The other epicureans leaned over their tables and spoke in hushed tones to their server and to each other. The head waiter, the Frenchman, plucked dishes from a stonework pass-through, only going into the kitchen occasionally. June had inquired, and discovered the chef was Austrian. It seemed the only thing Spanish in this Spanish restaurant was the use of the word "tapas."
And the food was a delight; June was definitely eating her words tonight. She didn't think she'd ever had anything quite like it in her life, and David had probably never imagined such rich flavors existed in the world.
"It really is the food of the gods," he remarked, still chewing. He picked up a greasy bit of sausage. "I don't know what this is, but if it's a leetle piggy," he said, affecting the chef's accent, "it's the best damn pig I've ever tasted."
"We should ask," June said. "It can't be beef. Maybe it's bison?"
"Could be that super-meat he was going on about. Grown in labs." David clearly hadn't grasped the point of the chef's sermon, but June didn't bother correcting him, too stuffed to argue. "Hang on, I'll ask." David spotted the head waiter and flagged him down. "Excuse me." His voice, louder than anything aside from the pop and crackle of the stone fireplace in the far corner and the opera oozing from hidden speakers, roused the other patrons from the soporific effect of their meals.
The waiter approached. "Oui, monsieur?"
"We were wondering—" The man with the hat turned to glare at them. "—what type of meat is in this?"
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