by Cathy Erway
“Smells good, whatever it is,” said Richard.
It did smell good. I wondered whether they were all hungry. I wanted to kick myself for not coming up with something to serve as an appetizer. It had all seemed so simple: Cook up a big pot of something, spread it on the table, and eat. That at least was the way Erin and I had enjoyed our dinners before. When you’re cooking, you often get to taste as you go along, having scraps and other little “chef’s treats.” This time, only I had that privilege.
I suddenly remembered that I needed to get the rice started. I pulled out my old rinky-dink rice steamer from a cabinet; it made a cacophony of clangs as it hit every other pot on its way. I quickly filled it with my approximation for four servings of rice, topped it with some water, and flicked on the cooK switch. A few moments later, I thought it better to play it safe and prepare at least enough rice for six. The steamer coughed up a faint cloud of vapor when I lifted the lid. Holding the bag of rice in one hand, I quickly poured another stream of grains into the bowl, filled the upturned lid of the steamer with some water from the faucet, and clanged it down shut.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
An all-too-familiar pinching sensation warmed three spots on my shin and ankle. I looked down just in time to see Dracula slink away, having sunk his claws into me three times in the mere blink of an eye. I was wearing jeans, but still, without those boots, I could feel my skin welling up with little droplets of blood. The cat was now looking quite cozy, sprawled out on the living room floor as if expecting a nuzzle in return.
“How do you live with that thing?” Richard asked. “I should have brought Amazing over tonight.” Amazing, a pit bull terrier, was Richard and Sam’s dog.
I scratched my leg.
“Why don’t you come over here and stop cooking for a moment,” said Ben.
“All right.” I glanced at the partially covered pan on the stove; the brown sauce was gently bubbling, and the pan emitted a steady puff of steam from one side.
“So how’s your blog going?” Sam asked.
“Oh, it’s going. Right now, I’m just trying to get a handle on all the technical stuff,” I told them, truthfully
“Your brother helps with all that, doesn’t he?”
“Yep. So it’s just a matter of tracking him down on the phone and asking him to fix stuff.” I saw that everyone in the room had a drink in their hands but me. I got up to get another beer from the kitchen. Dracula took that as his cue to reenter the living room.
“Don’t come any closer,” Richard warned. He was waving the cat away with one baggy-panted leg.
“Good kitty,” said Ben. No one was convinced.
Dracula slinked into one corner, eyeing each of us dartingly His predator instinct settled on Sam, and he began to move in on his next target.
“Okay, you can come closer ... if you want to be nice...” Sam offered her hand to the cat, who immediately struck at it.
“Ow!” She frowned at her finger, with its newly acquired claw streaks.
“Maybe it’s time he lost his privileges?” Ben suggested.
I nodded in agreement. We’d have to shut him up in Erin’s room. I went into the bathroom to search for the Band-Aids. When I came back to the living room, the cat was nowhere to be found.
“He went under the couch,” Sam said gloomily
“Let’s wait for him to come out from there, then chase him into Erin’s room,” Ben finally said after a pause.
“Can I use this broom?” I went into the kitchen and pulled the broom out of the corner. “Maybe it’ll help get him out.”
“Mm, I don’t know about that,” said Ben. “You don’t want to provoke him any more.”
I put it down. We all stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. I could smell the san bei gi simmering away. “Why don’t we just have dinner first?” I suggested. There were nods all around the room.
I went back to the kitchen and removed the lid from the pan. The chicken was clearly cooked, the drumsticks looked ready to fall off the bone, and the ginger and garlic were soft and red-brown. The rice cooker hadn’t yet clicked off to indicate that the rice was fully cooked. In another pan, I heated some oil and a coarsely chopped clove of garlic. I spread some trimmed green beans onto the pan once the oil had begun to pop, added a pinch of salt and pepper, and tossed in some water to quickly braise them.
Sam scooted in to help me. I set her to work getting the plates together and bringing them to the table. Once all the plates were on the table and the drinks renewed, it was time to set out the courses. I took out a large serving bowl from the cupboard, the only one big enough for the main course. Part of a set that Erin and I had bought on the cheap, it had orchard fruits brusquely hand painted around its muddy beige border. I almost laughed at how wrong it looked once the san bei gi was poured inside. I’d never before given a second’s thought to my tableware when I planned on having people for dinner. To me it was all about the food, but carrying the main course to the table, I realized my first rule of hostessing for the night: how much presentation should play a role.
For lack of another serving bowl, I simply took the rice steamer over to the table and placed a large spoon on top of it for serving. We could just barely fit all of our plates onto the square coffee table with the bowl of san bei gi and regular dinner plate that I’d plopped the finished green beans on. So I ended up moving the rice steamer to the floor. Dinner was served.
“Shall we toast?” Ben suggested.
We clinked beer bottles. Everyone looked around the table and at their empty plates, and made a move toward the rice.
“Ouch! This thing is hot,” Ben said, brushing his hand against the metal of the rice cooker while piling white tufts onto his plate. My guests awkwardly passed the steamer around the table, being careful not to touch its sides. It didn’t make things easier that the rice was filled to the brim, and a bit on the dry side. It looked like I had cooked enough rice to serve at least ten.
This wasn’t a very quaint or elegant dinner at all, I thought. Richard and Sam probably weren’t expecting a family-style Chinese meal, with communal courses placed in the center of the table, instead of individually plated dishes, either. Why did I think this style would impress my first dinner guests?
But then it happened: People actually looked happy while eating my messy, slurpy, Taiwanese meal.
In between bites, Sam managed to get out, “This is really good,” as she scooped up the san bei gi and rice with a fork. Richard and Ben echoed her compliments. I was enjoying the food, too, but a creeping sense of failure was still festering inside.
I suddenly cursed under my breath. The basil. I’d forgotten to add it to the chicken. Fresh Thai basil is practically one-third of the dish’s seasonings. Without it, it isn’t san bei gi. I opened the refrigerator door and immediately saw the full container of basil inside. I cursed again.
“What is it?” Ben asked, looking up from his plate.
I heaved a long sigh. “Never mind.” No one knew, and it was time to learn another important rule of hostessing: What your guests don’t know won’t hurt them. Especially if they’ve already complimented the dish.
As soon as I’d convinced myself my guests would be okay without the basil, I noticed that everyone was pushing their chicken bones to the side of the plate. I wondered whether I should place a bone plate in the middle of the table. Too barbaric?
“I forgot that Ben hates chicken with bones,” I remembered aloud, watching him twist his fork into the flesh of a chicken leg as if it were a bowl of spaghetti. I went back to the kitchen and grabbed knives for everyone.
“The bones are supposed to be good for flavor, though, right?” asked Sam.
“Yep. That’s why they’re kept in. But you can just sort of put a whole piece in your mouth and spit out the bones onto your plate if you want,” I suggested, describing the common Chinese way of removing mouthfuls of meat from the bones. Immediately I regretted saying it. I’d apparently crossed some unspoke
n cultural line; there was complete silence in the room for about a minute, and I didn’t get the sense that anyone would be taking me up on this suggestion.
I was piling a second helping of green beans on my plate when I heard the first moan. It was a deep, guttural sound, its tone undulating and sorrow stricken. It didn’t sound like a cat at all, really. More like a dolphin. A dolphin in distress.
“Um, Cathy, the cat is crying,” Ben said.
“Yeah ...”
“And it’s making hissing noises,” Sam added. She was sitting on the love seat, right above where the sharp hissing noise was now coming from.
My first instinct was to bend down and peek underneath the couch. I quickly realized that I shouldn’t if I wanted to keep my eyes.
“Glarrrggg ... glarrrggg ... glarrrggg,” the cat went on, doing his warbly dolphin-moan thing again, this time even louder.
“Is he okay?” asked Ben, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. In all the months I’d known Dracula, I’d never heard him make such noises, either.
“I have no idea. We should really try to get him out of here. He’s just afraid of new people.” I picked up the broom again. I couldn’t wait to get him inside Erin’s room and shut the door.
“Uh, what are you going to do with that?” asked Richard suspiciously.
“You know, just sort of nudge him out from underneath there.” I placed the bristle end of the broom underneath the couch and gave it a gentle wave. An angry hiss erupted from below.
“It sounds like the devil!” cried Sam.
A marbled paw shot out from beneath the couch and beat three times on the back of Richard’s sneaker.
“Holy—!” Richard swung his legs in the air as if he were on a carnival ride.
“Hissssss!”
The paw shot out again, this time swatting furiously at the air. Everyone had gotten up from their seats and retreated to the far end of the room. We witnessed three other strikes from the paw against thin air. The furry arm made no appearance for another few moments while everyone watched, breathlessly. I began to move the bristle end of the broom toward the couch. Holding it from the end of its handle, I dipped its bristles underneath the couch again. I felt it just brush against something, the cat, probably.
“Glaaarrrl Glaaarrrl” He was wailing loudly now. The dolphin in his throat had been harpooned.
“No, stop. He’s freaking out,” said Sam.
“He’s going to kill us all,” said Richard.
“Well.” I put the broom aside. “What now?”
“Here, the only way to make him go into Erin’s room is to not stand here, waiting for him to get out,” said Richard. “Right now he doesn’t want to see us when he comes out.”
“Okay. So let’s wait in the hallway?” suggested Sam.
“Yes, but then he’ll have to walk by us on his way to Erin’s room,” I said.
“Or we could wait in your room?” Richard suggested.
“It only fits a bed,” Ben cut in. My room was only a few square feet larger than a double bed.
“Okay ...”
“We could wait in the nook,” I offered.
“What nook?” asked Sam.
“But, Cathy, Dracula’s still going to have to walk by us if we wait there,” Ben said. The nook was a small alcove at the end of the hallway, just before the door to Erin’s room.
“Yeah, but he won’t see us in the nook until he’s at the end of the hallway, and by then he’ll probably just run into Erin’s room,” I said.
“Or he might turn around and run back here,” said Sam.
“Yeah, that’s a possibility.”
We looked around at one another for a moment.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
We decided to turn off the lights in the living room and hallway, thinking it might encourage a calmer mood. Taking our beers along with us, we headed for the nook. It was imperative to stay silent so that the cat wouldn’t know our whereabouts. We quietly moved aside some boxes and a chair that were crowding the nook and got settled in.
We sat there for five minutes, tuning in for any sound of the cat coming near. I took a slow sip from my beer. The only sounds in the whole apartment were from little waves of beer every time a bottle was tilted to someone’s mouth. This was ridiculous, I thought. My first dinner party had turned into some strange urban safari with very dangerous wildlife prowling around. I tried hard not to laugh. Then Richard’s eyes widened. Sitting across from me, he had the clearest view of the hallway.
“He’s coming,” he mouthed. A minute or two passed. I narrowed my eyes at Richard’s, as if to ask, “Are you sure?”
Very softly, the cat stepped into view. He stopped. I was afraid he might pounce. We turned our gazes to each other, the ceiling, anywhere but at Dracula. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the cat slowly lift a paw and take a hesitant step. Again he stopped. He turned to face the four of us for a moment, as if trying to place who we were. This is it, I thought. We were like sitting ducks in that nook. I thought of all the scratches and puncture wounds on my shins and tried to imagine how they would look on arms, neck, and face. Finally, he took another few steps and sauntered casually into Erin’s bedroom.
Everyone looked at me with bulging eyes. I could read their expressions instantly: Shut the door behind him now!
I tiptoed toward the door. I had to reach into Erin’s room to grab the knob, then swing it back toward me to close the door. A swish of air hit my face as it swung shut, trapping the cat inside.
We all erupted with a cheer.
“Oh, my God ... finally!” Sam sighed, lifting herself from the floor wearily. Ben’s face looked completely drained, as if he’d been holding his breath for the last five minutes. Maybe he had been.
I flipped the lights back on. We put on some music. I cleared the finished plates from the coffee table.
“Thanks a lot for dinner; it was really good,” Richard said.
I shrugged. It would have been better with the basil, I thought.
Whoops, and maybe dessert. For some reason, the notion of dessert had completely slipped my mind in planning the dinner. And with that, I made a mental note of hostessing rule number three: Guests might appreciate more than a piece of chocolate or a leftover cookie for dessert after a dinner party. For the time being, though, I took another beer out of the fridge.
Standing around the cat-free living room, we all shared another toast.
“To many happy not-eating-out nights. Hopefully none of them like this one,” Ben offered.
“To Erin, for taking care of Dracula,” said Richard.
“And me, for living with him,” I added.
“And you said that he never attacks Erin?” Sam said.
I nodded. I’ll never understand cats.
As the empty beer bottles piled up in the bin, metal caps crowded the tabletop, and we continued to chat, our conversations the rest of the night somehow never ventured far from Dracula.
“I’m going to have to get Amazing to come over here and show up Dracula,” said Richard.
“Stop, you’ve already said that three times,” Sam said, rolling her eyes.
When they were finally ready to start their long walk home, Ben and I accompanied Sam and Richard to the door.
“So... should we do this again?” I asked jokingly.
“Only if I bring Amazing,” said Richard.
“No, definitely, though. The dinner was awesome.” Sam smiled.
We said good night. I looked on sadly after the door was closed.
“So they had the night of the cat,” I mused.
“Yep,” Ben said. Noticing that I hadn’t been smiling, he added, “But dinner was very good.”
I frowned, knowing that it hadn’t been all that I’d hoped. Ben gave me a little hug.
Later, as I thought about all the things I could have done better, I had to hand it to restaurants for creating not only great food but distinctive atmospheres that heightened the food’s sense of
importance—and the diners’ sense of self-importance. We couldn’t have lowered ourselves that evening any more than by using our animal instincts to dodge a predator.
When dining at home, there is no room for illusions. I’d have to get used to that, no matter how much I managed to improve my entertaining know-how in the future. Entertaining at home will always throw wild cards at you—a noisy neighbor, forgotten ingredients, or a killer cat. But it also allows you to loosen up and put your elbows on the table—or coffee table—if you like, and fight back against that killer cat. So I had a little room to grow at entertaining guests. Unlike a rejected restaurant, though, I knew that my friends would come back again.
I didn’t see any reason to keep Dracula cooped up in Erin’s room once Sam and Richard had left, so I opened the door. I saw Dracula for a glimpse once more that night, while heading to my room to shuck off to sleep. He, too, was sleepy-looking and serene, curled up on the couch just as innocently as a kitten.
Late that night when Erin came home, I could hear her cooing and snuggling with him through the closed door of my room. A thought crossed my mind somewhere in between sleep and consciousness. It had something to do with reports I’d read in newspapers about cheap restaurants cooking up stray cats instead of chicken. For a moment, I could almost understand why.
Hearts of Palm Crostini
Since the dinner party in this chapter, I’ve come to rely on a few simple appetizers that keep guests from starving while I’m cooking. This one needs little preparation other than slicing the hearts of palm and scooping them onto the bread slices. Yet it’s always been a hit.
(MAKES ABOUT 24 PIECES)
1 French baguette, sliced into ½-inch rounds
1 15-ounce can hearts of palm, thinly sliced crosswise
¼ cup Italian flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil