I reached out to rip the sign down, but Sasha caught my hand.
“You can’t do that.”
“She’s right,” Elliot said. “Trying to out-vandalize this guy is not the way to go.”
Funny, just as I was having doubts about his state of mind, he was having doubts about mine. When he suggested I take the rest of the day off, I didn’t even try to argue.
I didn’t get much of a reprieve, though. Before I’d even made it back to my apartment, my cell was ringing. It was Marnie. I figured I’d better answer; I’d promised Elliot he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.
Marnie didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “We have a problem.”
“What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
“What?”
Maybe I was starting to lose it.
“Nothing. What’s the problem, Marnie?”
“Have you seen the Times today?”
I hadn’t, but I happened to be standing in front of a stack of papers on display outside the organic grocer that used to be a regular grocer. I scanned the front page.
“You’re right. That gridlock in Congress is a bitch.”
“The Metro section, numb nuts.”
There it was above the fold, accompanied by a photograph of a sprawling rooftop covered in rows of soil. Standing among the rows were John Cardini and several others I recognized as members of the Rita’s crew, in various stages of planting, hoeing, and watering. Behind them, in the near distance, an archetypal New York City water tower and the American flag; in the far distance, the spires of Lower Manhattan. The headline was, “For One Brooklyn Restaurant, Farm to Table is Just a Few Blocks.”
“I’ve got to call you back,” I said.
The story was written by a real estate reporter with name recognition. It started by setting the scene (“Bushwick, Brooklyn is as far from pastoral as it gets...”), then morphed into a typical dubious trend piece (“A new breed of urban farm, more ambitious than the familiar community garden, is appearing in cities across the country.”), before hitting the colorful highlights of Rita’s rise to glory (John’s quasi-military background, the brick oven from Sicily, the wacky pizza names), of which Times readers apparently could not get enough. I was four graphs in before I got to the facts I needed: The rooftop in question belonged to an old industrial building owned by a big-time developer. He delivered a bland quote about energy efficiency and sustainability. The reporter mentioned the tax abatement he’d be getting, but reading between the lines, I suspected there was more to the arrangement. My guess was that the farm was the first step toward converting the place into a green condo like the one in Gowanus.
The farm itself was 40,000 square feet, more than four times the size of ours. Only about 25,000 square feet would be cultivated in time for harvest this fall, and the produce—mostly tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, herbs, and leafy greens—would go straight to Rita’s kitchen with plans to sell to other restaurants next year. In his quotes, John was clear that this was a for-profit venture, and he was confident it would operate in the black. The seed money to start the project had come in large part from donations made by Rita’s patrons. “These are people who care about Brooklyn and care about where their food comes from” he said. “They want local, and they’re willing to pay for it—so that’s what we’re giving them.” In my mind’s eye, I saw those gold piggy banks from Chinatown loafing on the tables at Rita’s. They winked at me.
But the best was yet to come. The donations from Rita’s patrons were matched dollar-for-dollar by none other than Tommy Brutti. He was excited that the first grant from his new foundation would help fellow restaurateurs set New York City on a course toward a truly local food system.
“This isn’t the same old philanthropy,” Brutti said. “We’re not sticking a few sorry tomato plants in a schoolyard, hanging up a sign with my name on it, and calling it a day. This is social entrepreneurship, and I expect that others will see this as a worthy investment.”
Reading on, I learned money wasn’t the only thing Brutti was contributing to the endeavor. The article named Greta as the farm’s manager and gave her a graph of her own to expound on the farm’s outreach to the community. Tours and volunteer opportunities were already available upon request, and a full-scale education program with workshops on earth science and nutrition would be up and running in time for the new school year. The article also credited Greta with coming up with the name: Crop Top Farm. I could just picture the merchandising opportunities John had lined up.
There was more—a perfunctory tip of the cap to Duncan Donner and In It Together, a wide-eyed account of how the soil was hoisted up to the roof by crane—but I couldn’t bring myself to keep reading. I could barely direct my fingers to dial Elliot’s number.
“And here I was thinking you don’t know how to relax,” Elliot said.
Following Marnie’s example, I skipped the banter. Elliot was quiet for the six minutes or so it took me to read him the story.
“Fuck,” was all he said when I was done.
“Yeah.”
“Is that the Times?”
“Yeah.”
“It sounds like the Times.”
“It’s the Times.”
“Fuck.”
I waited for him to collect himself.
“I’m in Rita’s at least once a week. Nobody said a word.”
“Must have slipped their minds.”
“Now that I think about it, Greta’s been asking me a lot of questions about the curriculum. How it’s going, who we’re working with...”
“She clearly feels invested in our success.”
“Okay,” Elliot said. “I’m going to Rita’s.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
There was a long pause. “Don’t bother. I’m right around the corner. Anyway, John’s not the kind of guy you gang up on.”
At that point, the idea of never again setting foot in John Cardini’s lair sounded pretty good to me. I wished Elliot luck and scheduled a debrief at Flake in the morning.
I was still staring at the Times piece, and just as I hung up, my eye was drawn to a detail in the background of the photo: behind John and the others, a series of wooden posts stood against the parapet, each with vines spiraling down its length. The vines were mostly leaf, but if you looked closely, you could see they were studded with nubs of pale red.
“Motherfucker.” Fucking fraise de bois.
Lone Ranger
A Park Slope mommy’s club had annexed Flake, so we took our business outside. We sat on the curb while Elliot nursed his coffee, the waft from his cup strong enough to cut through the curdled sea smell of the canal and make my mouth water. Flake did a $4 pour-over using Stumptown beans roasted in Red Hook. Despite a gnawing headache, I’d decided I couldn’t afford a $4 coffee of my own.
Elliot recapped his showdown with John. “He said it wasn’t personal.”
“Don’t tell me he used the words...”
Elliot nodded. “‘It’s just business.’”
“So he didn’t even say sorry?”
“He said he’d been upfront about his interests. When he saw the way things were going, he had no choice.”
“He could have chosen not to poach our biggest donors.”
“Well, Tommy Brutti was his connection to start with, so I can’t really blame him there.”
I told him about the fraise de bois.
“That didn’t come up,” Elliot said.
“I’m sure he’s fucking over so many people, it’s hard to keep track.”
Elliot had nothing to say to that, so I kept going.
“What I don’t get is why he snuck around behind our backs. Why not come to us and say, ‘Hey, this isn’t working for me. Let’s figure it out’?”
Elliot took a slow slug of coffee, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He swirled what was left in the cup like he could read our fortune in it. I could tell he was stalling.
“Spit it out.”
> He took a measured breath. “John felt like he wasn’t clicking with certain members of the team. He thought it was best if he did his own thing.”
“‘Certain members’ meaning me?”
Elliot left the answer unsaid.
“So this is my fault now? Because I didn’t kiss his ass like everyone else? My bad. I didn’t realize mercenaries were so sensitive.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. He didn’t like Seth either.”
I knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but somehow that just made me pissier. “I bet you still meet his approval, though. Right, Miss Congeniality? How did you two leave it, anyway? No harm, no foul? Free Psycho Kale’ers for life?”
“Actually, he offered me a job.”
If I hadn’t been too poor to buy myself a coffee, I’d have done a spit-take. “What?”
“He wants me to run the education program at Crop Top. Got the money set aside and everything.”
I felt a rush in my gut and armpits. There was absolutely no way I was capable of running the farm without Elliot.
“What did you say?”
“I told him we’d come too far. I couldn’t abandon my partner.”
“That’s noble and everything,” I said. “But if you want to take the job, I’m not going to stand in your way.”
“It’s not just you. Part of the reason we got into this in the first place was so we could be our own bosses, right? Besides, I really think we’re over the hump now.”
“You do? Because I feel like we might be under the hump.” Elliot ticked off our accomplishments on his calloused fingers. “We got the thing built. Then we got it rebuilt. We hosted our first group of kids, and they ate it up. We’ve got a bulletproof logic model, and our curriculum is the shit. If we can just make it to the start of the school year, we can get the parents on our side, and this Contreras bullshit will all blow over. Then it’s harvest time, and by winter we’ll have solid outcomes we can take to Prometheus.”
Listening to him, I could just about believe it. “So you don’t think John fucked us?”
“Only if you buy the idea that we’re in competition.”
I could see where he was going. “They’re for-profit. We’re notfor-profit.”
“Exactly. They’re a large-scale agricultural operation with a sideline in education. We’re all education all the time.”
“Tommy Brutti doesn’t want to stick a few tomato plants in a schoolyard. Well, we do.”
Elliot tipped an invisible cap in my direction. “Now you’re talking.”
“We’re not setting up on some random rooftop and telling schools to come to us. We’re customizing solutions for each school we work with.”
“Customizing solutions? Nice.”
I’d picked it up from Seth’s website and held onto it for the right occasion. But just when I was getting warmed up, the Times photo snapped into my mind.
“What about the fraise de bois?”
“Fuck the fraise de bois!” Elliot said. “If Gollick wants to throw a little money at Crop Top, what’s it to us? He’s got enough for everyone. And we still have something John doesn’t, something way better than fraise de bois.”
“Viv.”
Right on cue, Elliot’s phone buzzed. Sure enough, it was Vivienne. Elliot put her on speaker.
“We were just talking about you.”
Her voice came out trebly, small. “Boys, we have a problem.”
The door of Flake creaked open and a tyke with cerealcommercial-blonde locks toddled past us into the street, perhaps drawn by the sparkle of broken glass. A shriek of “Liam!” followed him, but for a long, unsettled moment that was it. The boy looked at me, and I could see the doubt in his elfin eyes. Maybe mommy wasn’t coming to the rescue.
* * *
The problem of the hour was this: Gollick’s office had sent a check. That sounded like good news—manna from heaven, even—until Vivienne revealed the dollar amount: $5,000.
“A first installment?” My voice had breached the line between hope and desperation.
“That’s what I thought,” Vivienne said. “Then I saw the note in the memo section. ‘Good luck with your endeavor.’ He didn’t even write it himself, the weasel. Must have dictated it from the Temple Mount.”
“Maybe it’s not what it sounds like.”
“Trust me, it’s what it sounds like.”
Elliot and I looked at each other. I’m sure my face was just as slack and empty as his. We’d already spent twenty times the amount of Gollick’s donation on construction and reconstruction. Kat would be expecting her first month’s wages within a matter of days.
“I tried getting in touch with him,” Vivienne said, “but his cell doesn’t work over there. How convenient, right? I swear, I have half a mind to send that check back.”
“No!” Elliot was just a split second behind me.
“I have other friends, you know. We’ll just turn the ribboncutting ceremony into a fundraiser. Some wine and cheese—no, make that crudités from the garden—some kids singing ‘Old MacDonald,’ we’ll be flush in a matter of hours.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the ribbon-cutting ceremony was a dead end. Crudité? Even if our first planting hadn’t been desecrated, we’d be lucky to scare up a few wan stalks of celery before the fall. Wine was a non-starter; it would take half of Gollick’s contribution to keep Vivienne’s crowd well-lubed. Hell, we couldn’t even book the singing kids, not with everyone at the two schools either avoiding us or openly rooting for us to fail.
Even if we could pull it off, my guess was that Marnie’s enthusiasm for planning a big to-do was on the wane. Why, I could hear her asking, would anyone important want to wallow in some sad pile of dirt, when they’d just read about a far more impressive farm in The New York Times? Crop Top was four times the size of Raise the Roof; John was already a recognized visionary and media darling; he had the support of Tommy Brutti, an icon renowned the world over for his passion and integrity. Any potential donor showing up at our gate would recognize immediately that Crop Top was bound to be more influential, more successful, just plain better than we’d ever be. How we were going to raise the money we needed to settle our accounts was more than I could contemplate; my pressing concern was getting our hands on the money we did have. That brought on a queasy realization: we never got around to forming a 501c3.
“Who did Gollick make the check out to?” I asked.
There was a staticky rustle on the other end, Vivienne sighing. “I was getting to that. It’s made out to ‘Farm Project, care of the Begin to Win Foundation.’”
Made sense. Begin to Win was the only licensed nonprofit with a connection to the farm. Then why did I feel so uneasy? I was about to say something—what, I don’t know—but Vivienne cut me off.
“I already talked to Arthur and Barbara. They’re happy to handle the money for us, but they’re going to charge a twenty-percent administrative fee.”
“Twenty percent?” Elliot had been in a daze, but now his head snapped up just as mine was dropping to my chest. We must have looked like the world’s most pathetic puppet show.
“They say they’re incurring a lot of costs we didn’t disclose. Staff time, materials.”
“What materials?”
“They said something about pens and popsicle sticks. Frankly, I think they’re upset about that little incident the other day. They were hoping this would be a PR coup, and now they’re being petty.”
“This is extortion,” I said. “Tell them, we can’t give them more than ten percent.”
“I know how you feel, kid, but you don’t try to bargain with people like this. It won’t fly. The sad fact is we need them more than they need us.”
“But I’m having a baby!” It felt like the words were being ripped out of me. If we hadn’t been in the middle of a forsaken industrial hinterland, I would’ve turned heads. Instead, there was only Elliot, blinking at me in confusion.
“Did I hear tha
t right?” Vivienne said.
“Sorry,” I said at a more socially acceptable volume. “Tricia’s pregnant.”
A jubilant yip came from Vivienne’s end. “This is fantastic news! Children and work are life’s greatest joys, I always say. Just don’t ask me to rank them.”
Last I heard, Vivienne wasn’t on speaking terms with her daughter, a fragrance maker with her own boutique in the Village.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” she said. “The money is out there. It always is. And forget about Arthur and Barbara and their damn administrative fee. I’ll write a check to cover it.”
Better make it cash, I thought.
* * *
We needed to give Seth a heads-up on our little cash flow issue, and since Green ’Burgs was just a couple of blocks away, we figured we might as well get it over with. We came bearing a selection of fruit tarts from Flake, the money I’d saved by skipping coffee sacrificed to the cause. Seth seemed starved for company. He said it had been quiet around the incubator; the sneaker designers had already moved out, and the indie hip-hop moguls didn’t give off an approachable vibe. We let him regale us with news of a commission to spruce up a traffic median in the Bronx. We humored him as he brainstormed about a partnership with the Flake ladies whereby Raise the Roof would become the official supplier of berries for their tarts. Then we dropped the bomb.
Sounds stupid, but I was startled by how abruptly Seth’s mood shitfed once we admitted we couldn’t pay him. The guy had been so affable and obliging since we’d started working with him, I’d all but convinced myself he’d roll with the punches, commiserate on the lousy hand fate had dealt us, suggest a payment plan or some other practical accommodation. Not so much. Instead, he went through a time-lapse version of the five stages: denial (“This is not happening. Tell me this is not happening.”), anger (“You motherfuckers! I should’ve known you’d fuck it all up!), bargaining (“How much cash do you have?”), depression (“This is going to ruin me.”), and...well, we never quite got to acceptance. Instead, we circled back to anger and stayed there.
In the Weeds Page 17