The Art of Eating In

by Cathy Erway

  I spun around in my seat. The queasy feeling in my stomach persisted as I stared for a moment straight ahead into space. That space was actually the back of my coworker Keith’s cubicle, and his computer monitor was right then tuned to Facebook. I got up and went to the ladies’ room, half expecting to retch into the toilet. But nothing came.

  “I feel like I’ve been shat on by a million birds,” I told Matt that evening. We were standing in my kitchen, getting ready to make an easy dinner and crack open a bottle of white wine that was sweating on the counter. I’d invited a few friends over for a simple dinner a couple of days before, but everyone else had fallen ill or, in Karol’s case, had literally fallen, while jogging, and was nursing a bruised knee.

  “And this woman works with him?” Matt asked after I explained my discovery earlier that day.

  “Yep.”

  He pulled the cork out of a bottle with a pop. “How old is she again?”

  “She’s thirty-five and miraculously still has acne.”

  “Well, cheers to that,” he said, and handed me a glass. We clinked and both took a sip.

  Matt thought for a moment. “Sometimes it’s good to make a clean break, to have less reason to think about it. You and Ben haven’t spoken in weeks, right?” he said. I nodded.

  “With me and Jill, just the other day I got an e-mail from her, saying she was mad at me for something I apparently did when we were dating,” Matt said. He went on to describe how his ex-girlfriend, Jill, had nagged him because she found out he had gone on a tour with “Wildman” Steve Brill recently, and one time while they were dating Jill had been talking excitedly about Brill’s tours and Matt had shown no interest whatsoever.

  “So three years after we broke up, I can still be a bad boyfriend,” he concluded.

  “That doesn’t sound right at all,” I said after a pause.

  “Nope.”

  We spent the rest of the night talking about failed relationships and thankfully more pleasant topics, gossiping, cooking black beans and rice, and putting on CD after iPod track after record. By the end of the night, I felt about eight hundred times better than I had earlier in the day, almost jovial. I knew in my heart that I was over Ben already. But rejection, and especially betrayal, are hard things to swallow. They can be treated only by friends who know how to make light of the situation, I think.

  That weekend, I went to a birthday party in Williamsburg. When I left the party, it was only eleven thirty or so, and the spring night was mild and crisp. I was in good spirits, enjoying the air against my face after having been inside the stuffy bar. So I picked up my phone and dialed Karol, who lived nearby and who I could bet was hanging out somewhere in the neighborhood. She was. She told me to come meet her at a bar where she was playing pool with a couple of friends.

  Almost immediately after joining them at the table, I met Nick. He and a friend were standing by the pool table watching Karol’s game, since they had written their names on the board to play next. He had shaggy dark hair and a two-day scruff, and he leaned in and started talking to me suddenly as if we were old pals. He stuck around over the next hour or so, and we chatted in between watching and playing rounds of pool. He said he was in New York for the summer only, heading off to grad school in Chicago in the fall. In the meantime, he was working at a coffee shop and picking up freelance translation jobs on the side. I told him what I did and mentioned my food blog. As a way of explanation, I’d handed him my minicard for the blog.

  Around two or so, Karol and I were still hanging out and shooting pool, but Nick’s friends were piling into a car outside. It had begun to pour; splatters of rain and lightning were showcased through the windowpanes from where we were standing, and Karol and I resolved to wait it out before going home. We ended up staying for a couple of hours longer and at least that many more drinks.

  When I got home, there was already an e-mail in my in-box from this Nick fellow.

  “On the off chance that your handing me your card was motivated by something other than career advancement ... ,” it began.

  It was short and to the point. Basically, he wanted to go on a date.

  I told Karol about it on the phone the next day.

  “So are you going to go out with him?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. What’d you think of him?” I asked.

  “I totally can’t even remember,” she said, groggily. “But you thought he was cute, right?”

  I had. It was just one of those things, plain attraction.

  “But I have serious concerns that he may be younger than twenty-five,” I said.

  “Now that is highly possible,” Karol said, with a firmness that made it sound like she was finally waking up a little.

  My guess on Nick’s age was based on the crowd at the bar that night, which was rife with barely of-age drinkers, and the fact that he was going to grad school in the fall. But here’s why I decided that even though he might be young, immature, or for all intents and purposes just not Mr. Right, I’d still go on a date with him: He was leaving New York at the end of the summer. So, what did anything matter, really? It actually sounded great-there’d be no pressure, no worries, nothing. Except for figuring out what to do on a “date.”

  Instead of a restaurant, maybe it was time to move the all-important date meal to a home setting. What would be the perfect date meal? I began to wonder. It’s a term you hear thrown around a lot, though when it came to the actual food I could think of no limitations to or clear objectives regarding what was on the plate. Was it something elaborately planned, executed, and plated just so, or a slap-dash, easy meal so there was enough time left for the really fun stuff? Was it a bloodred, juicy steak? A communal bowl of spaghetti to slurp at like Lady and her Tramp? Seafood didn’t smell to me right for this category. Neither did anything that was too cheesy or garlicky. I could see how a really rich, chocolaty dessert could be defined as romantic, but that was no main course.

  One of my favorite short stories, “The Nice Restaurant,” by Mary Gaitskill, is about a couple dining out one night. The woman, Laurel, is said to be much older than her youthful, energetic companion, Eric. While they are sitting in the restaurant together, Eric says of Laurel: “Your face was just wildly expressive right then.” She replies, “I just got sucked into the whole you know, nice restaurant thing, then got disgusted by it all too quickly.”

  Then, after a leisurely meal, the narrator concludes this about Laurel’s feelings toward Eric: “She absolutely loved him. Even though she knew they wouldn’t be dating longer than a few months.”

  I think the story is saying, in a way, that the nice restaurant dinner is sort of like a cad: It has the power to temporarily seduce, transport, and haunt. But the effect is short-lived. You go to the restaurant fully aware of the limitations of its spell; you date him, even though you know he won’t be there in the long run. But you do it anyway.

  What I wanted was this, the reckless seduction, passion, however fickle it may turn out. The “nice restaurant” factor—but at home. I wanted to see my apartment transformed into this ultra-romantic place, too, so that the mood could exist in an enclosed bubble for that time and place. And I wanted it to be gone in the morning. Theoretically, this would be impossible to do, since my home would still be my home, and I’d have to do the dishes and take the trash out, just as usual. But, with a little imagination, I wanted something greater than the sum of the parts of an extraordinary meal to take place in my home.

  Nick called me the next day. I had responded to his e-mail saying he could give me a ring sometime, adding that my number was on the card. It was Sunday, and my schedule that week was packed, so when he called, we decided to try to hang out the next weekend. We settled on Saturday but made no certain plans.

  Later on in the week, Nick e-mailed me, asking for suggestions. I had a couple of ideas: there was a supper club that we could drop into for cocktails. I was friends with the group that ran it and had gotten into the habit of doing so,
even without coming for the sit-down menu. Then, there was a new cocktail bar we could check out, I suggested.

  He e-mailed back: “Do you ride a bike? What about a bike ride in the afternoon; then we could maybe check out the supper club, or the bar.”

  Wow, biking around for a first date is totally my speed, I thought.

  “I have plans with friends until 5-ish,” I wrote back. “But I’ll be out with my bike anyway. Give me a call.”

  We met up at the entrance to Prospect Park, where I’d just finished picnicking with some friends. We didn’t end up going very far. We began riding but stopped at the statues in Grand Army Plaza. There was a fountain with a statue of the sea god Neptune surrounded by mermaids, and we discovered the engraved figures of a horse-mounted Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant on opposing sides of the arch’s interior. It amazed me that I’d never thought to actually look closely at these sculptures, in all the times I’d ridden or walked by them.

  “This is the arch that makes everyone in Brooklyn feel like they’re in Paris,” I said of the Civil War memorial that was the centerpiece of the plaza. It was just beginning to glow from blue stage lights set along its sculpted face, and we were standing underneath its huge, arched ceiling. I hadn’t ever described that observation before; nor could I remember if anyone else had first made it, but the words spilled out from my consciousness as if they’d been there all along.

  We also biked to the Brooklyn Museum a short few blocks away. The vast, curved stretch of front steps before the entrance was filled with people just leaving a big exhibit. The water fountains that lined the sides of the museum spouted tall shoots of water in procession that splattered to the pavement.

  “So, what do you want to do now?” Nick asked.

  I was out of ideas, so I went with the easiest answer. “Want to go get a drink?”

  We settled down at a table in the backyard patio of a small nearby bar. Over our first drinks, Nick happened to mention the age of one of his siblings, so I casually asked him his age.

  Twenty-four! My fear was confirmed. What was I doing, raiding the nursery? I mean, I was no geezer at twenty-six, but I didn’t think I’d want to be hanging out with the twenty-four-year-old version of myself anymore. I looked around, panicked for a moment. I was tempted to run back to the relative safety of the inside of the bar, which was full of mature, safe, normal-aged strangers. But instead, I managed to swallow a sip of my wheat beer, getting a taste of the bitter lemon rind that had been hanging on the rim of the glass a moment ago but had sploshed into the drink when I picked it up with a jerk, and to listen to the rest of whatever the hell he was saying.

  He had a five-year-old sister?! His parents, God bless their sprightliness, were in their late forties?? I finished my beer in one glug.

  “Do you want another drink?” I interrupted. We both looked at his glass, which was just less than halfway full.

  “Um, no—well, okay, sure,” he said.

  I went inside to the safety of the bar. I ordered another round of drinks from the bartender, silently cursing over the fact that he didn’t offer to pay for them—the immaturity! When the bartender handed me my change, she flashed a quick smile. With thick dread-locks and smart-looking glasses, she had a beautiful smile. She also looked exceptionally bored that night. She turned to gaze glumly at the customers seated around the bar, waiting for someone to need her service.

  As I walked back outside with our drinks, I suddenly felt very lucky to be where I was right then. It was unusually warm that spring night, and I was celebrating that by having drinks on a patio and having a conversation with someone who was completely new to me. What did it matter if he was two years younger? Maybe I was the one who was being immature about this age difference.

  We ended up staying at the same bar until well after midnight, talking, drinking, and at one point breaking out the Trivial Pursuit game that was stashed on a dusty shelf. Starved, we feasted around eleven o’clock on some flatbread with herbs I had baked that morning and took to the park with me earlier in the day, wrapped in foil. I’d crunched down on an apple a little while before that and noticed Nick watching enviously as I did. Luckily, I had plenty of the herbed bread with me in my bag to share. So this was not eating out in New York while dating, I thought. Not a very glamorous example, I had to admit.

  “What else do you have in that cavernous bag of yours?” Nick asked.

  I pulled out a blueberry cereal bar: dessert.

  Outside, as we were unlocking our bikes to leave, I strapped on my helmet and heavy bike lock.

  “Well, it was nice hanging out,” I said.

  He paused as if I were going to say more.

  “It was nice hanging out, too,” he said.

  With that, I waved and pedaled away. I could feel Nick’s eyes on me as I turned a sharp corner and rode out of view. He’d seemed stunned when I said good-bye without any mention of hanging out again. But even though I’d had a good enough time, I wasn’t sure how much I really wanted to hang out with him again. Plus, I couldn’t wait to go home and make some noodles.

  The following Wednesday night, I was standing in my kitchen, licking ice cream off a spatula. I’d just churned up a batch of fresh basil-infused ice cream and was trying it for the first time. My cell phone rang at ten thirty. It was Nick, and he said he had been hanging out with friends in the neighborhood. He asked if I wanted to grab a drink somewhere. I hesitated. First, it was a weeknight. Then, I had to clean up this ice-cream stuff. But earlier, I’d picked up a six-pack of beer, and I was downing one at the moment. So I offered him some beer and ice cream at my place instead.

  About twenty minutes later, Nick pulled his bike into my apartment and awkwardly left it at the door. I offered him a beer and a bowl of basil ice cream. He glanced at the pots of herbs I had placed on my windowsill, which included basil.

  “I’ve never heard of basil ice cream before,” he mused.

  “It’s not that unusual,” I said. “Actually, my friends and I had some once, at a restaurant, one of the last times I went to one. That was about a year ago—no, more like two.” I suddenly realized how long it had been since I had been served a scoop of ice cream in an unfamiliar bowl.

  We settled at the table and talked for a while. We quickly got on the topic of philosophy, as Nick had been reading a lot lately to prepare for grad school. I’d taken only one crash course in the subject in college and had a pretty limited knowledge of Western philosophy, so I was attentive to Nick’s ramblings, even though, deep down, I couldn’t help thinking the study was just a lot of hemming and hawing without action.

  I noticed that Nick didn’t really finish his ice cream, and that irked me a little. I finished mine and went for seconds. It had a very strong presence of sweet, Italian basil leaves, from soaking a couple of handfuls in the milk and cream. It was deep, almost jade green in color.

  After a very long time talking, I looked at my watch. It was almost two in the morning.

  “Well, you probably need to get up for work in the morning,” Nick said, taking the cue.

  Finally, I thought to myself. I was afraid he’d never say it.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  He got up to get his bike, and I followed him to the door. But then, as we stood and looked at each other for a moment, I had a feeling the night wasn’t over.

  Like a pair of tigers, we both sort of lurched at each other’s faces at once. The kiss lasted long, too long, and I was standing too close to the hallway to my bedroom. Something came over me—a tide of recklessness—and as we gravitated through the hallway, cloying and dropping clothes, shoes, I almost felt like I was in a movie of someone, or something, not like myself.

  But, when I woke up the next morning to go to work, with another body beside me, it was clear that was not the case.

  Back to the perfect date meal: Perhaps the right meal really could make or break a date. What would that be? I was fond of making beautiful, picturesque, and dainty one-p
erson courses for myself, whenever I felt like I needed a special treat. I was also fond of making ice cream. When would I have the chance to put it all together, a complete meal, for someone when it really mattered?

  I shuddered, thinking of all the times I had tried to impress Ben with a romantic, home-cooked meal. I also had a strange feeling that I never wanted to see Nick again. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was cook a perfect datelike meal for myself—and myself alone.

  That night, I came home with a single chunk of tenderloin wrapped in butcher paper. (I’d asked the butcher not to bag it further.) I turned the television to the news as I put on a pot of water to boil, adding two red potatoes. I had some wasabi mayonnaise in the fridge from a previous maki roll-making mission. Also there was a wedge of plain white cabbage, along with the usual jars and bottles of Asian condiments. All together, I had the makings of my perfect meal.

  I was planning to blog about what I made for dinner—a perfectly seared, ten-minute tenderloin steak, marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil beforehand, a spicy braised cabbage side, and creamy, wasabi-spiked mashed potatoes. But when I was done eating and rinsing the dishes clean, I walked into the bathroom and began to run a hot bath. Afterward, blithe and bleary from the bath’s soporific effects, I turned in early. It was perhaps the single greatest meal in the history of one-person dating, and the greatest single-person date.

  Nick had followed up with an e-mail earlier that day. In it, there was a link to a website.

  “Read the part about the Italian name for basil,” he wrote.

  I clicked on the link and found a page that described various beliefs and legends about the sweet basil plant. First, there was a Hindu story about basil. The next legend was the one from Italy. My eyes scrolled through the text, catching, “it is used in love spells,” and “a pot of basil on a windowsill is meant to signal a lover.”