“Eh, I don’t know.” Nick Cruickshank would like to shove him to the ground, like Rodney did on the last tour; it’s instinctive with someone like that.
Now his wife, Kimberly, joins them, chomping relentlessly on her chewing gum. “Any new arrivals?”
Nick Cruickshank thinks that this place is rapidly becoming unlivable, inside and out. “Come on, put something decent on, I’ll take you on a damn ride.”
Wally and Kimberly barely nod; they’re probably hurt at being so rudely deprived of the chance to keep insisting.
Nick Cruickshank walks out the back entrance, goes to look for René about the horses, though he’s almost certain that Aileen has already put him to work, like everybody else.
TWENTY-THREE
MILENA MIGLIARI STANDS next to the batch freezer, entranced by the sound of the blade that stirs and stirs the mix of the fior di latte to which she’s dedicated herself after throwing out the ruined batch of chestnut. Fior di latte is a flavor she comes back to when she needs a fresh start after a failed or disappointing experiment; it’s a place to begin again. There’s something revitalizing about fior di latte: like a blank canvas, an unwritten page containing a thousand potential stories or none at all. It’s such a profoundly familiar flavor, yet so difficult to put into words. Creamy, not quite. Sweet still doesn’t define it. Light, soft, essential, candid, snowy? Homogenous, yes, it coats your tongue, creates a patina that’s nonetheless quick to dissolve, fleeting. There’s nothing predetermined about fior di latte: its apparent simplicity opens onto a universe of soft and velvety nuances that caress the tongue and palate and bring with them memories of naïve thoughts, fresh impressions, innocent experiences of taste and smell. If there’s one flavor of gelato that disproves the notion of gelato having a season, it’s fior di latte. It goes well in spring, in summer, in fall, in winter, in any weather, on any day, at any time. Like any flavor, its quality depends on the quality of the ingredients, and how you help them express themselves rather than debase them. Most gelato makers use milk and cream from the supermarket; others use junk, such as denatured and devitalized UHT milk, or even worse, rehydrated powdered milk, or condensed milk. Then to conceal the bad taste and make it more pleasant they mix loads of sweetener into the mix, whether saccharine or fructose or dextrose or high-fructose corn syrup; they add vanillin and other artificial aromas, and best-case scenario carob flour to thicken. The result is that commercial fior di latte is often one of the most sickeningly sweet, pointless, and sticky flavors of gelato around. It’s empty, bland to the point of being completely without character, a flavor for someone who doesn’t know what to choose.
All her milk comes from Didier, who grazes his brown alpine cows on the pastures near Montauroux and lets them feed on fresh grass and sun-dried hay, depending on the season. They go inside only when they feel like it, and even then they’re treated with every possible regard, including the music he plays for them every so often on the hurdy-gurdy. They produce much less milk than cows that are shut up in stables between iron bars and stuffed with industrial feed, but it’s so naturally creamy that there’s no need to add any cream at all, and it has wonderful grassy and floral hints that change from one day to the next, sourish-sweet, honeyed, alive. It’s the foundation of all her flavors, and the reason she decided to dedicate herself exclusively to gelato, passing on sorbets. (Sorbets are a whole different world: watery, sugary, grainy, they melt in your mouth before ever appeasing your tongue with the delicious, enveloping, insistent density of gelato.) Given that pasteurization alters any flavor, she employs one that’s very brief and at a very low temperature, 140 degrees for thirty seconds tops. To sweeten the mix she uses concentrated grape juice, sometimes acacia honey, sometimes agave syrup, then adds Bourbon vanilla from the island of Réunion; and each one of these ingredients makes a tiny but noticeable contribution to the flavor’s final character. Fior di latte is one of the best flavors for verifying the difference between pointless gelato and intriguing gelato, between one that you’re tired of after a few spoonfuls and one that grabs you right to the end. It’s taken her a long time and lots of trial and error to make a really good one, and she still feels like there’s more to discover. Really; it’s not just a cliché.
The thickening, at any rate, is probably the part of the preparation that most fascinates her, when the air is engulfed by the liquid mixture and as if by magic transforms the mix little by little into a dense, light, pasty cream. In minutes emerges a gelato that’s very close to its final form, but with a temperature of about 17.5°F, its structure is still precarious: all it would take is a blackout like the one Wednesday morning to make it dissolve. She has a five-quart batch freezer with manual extraction; she chose it because she didn’t have the money for a larger one, and because she really only needs it to make small quantities for same-day consumption. There are gelato makers who use much larger and more sophisticated machines, others who work with liquid nitrogen, not to make better gelato but to make it more quickly, and more of it. “Optimizing the procedure,” as the websites put it, or “maximizing the output.” She’s always curious to learn about new technical developments, but even if she had the money there’d be no pleasure for her in turning this lab into a sort of space station, with computer-controlled robots doing by themselves in totally predictable fashion what she does by hand with small variations from one batch to the next. She likes the idea of being able to make mistakes, as she just did with the chestnut; she likes the inherent risk.
And these days in particular the whole liquid nitrogen business is even less convincing than usual, reminding her as it does of what Dr. Lapointe said, about women who get their eggs extracted before they turn thirty and have them conserved at very low temperatures with the very same liquid nitrogen, to have them nice and ready for whenever they decide to start a family, five or maybe ten years later. Lapointe calls it “social egg freezing,” because the goal is to conserve the coming years for a single’s life dedicated to career or partying or exotic travel without the obstacle of children, postponing them for when there’s a man who wants them or an optimal financial situation or a couple that’s stable (or dying of boredom). The idea fills her with sadness, but she’s probably the one who’s wrong; in fact, she certainly is. And anyway she has no desire to think about this subject, but the thoughts keep coming back to her of their own accord, with unrelenting insistence.
When the thickening is finished she has Guadalupe help her transfer the fior di latte into the steel container, and the container into the blast chiller, which in a few minutes brings the temperature down from 17.5 to -4°F, reducing the part of unfrozen water that would make it lose creaminess and volume. Then they transfer the fior di latte into the pan behind the counter, next to the persimmon. Taking off their covers and looking at them like this, they make a beautiful pair: white and orange, an excellent autumn combination.
Milena Migliari suddenly feels like she doesn’t have much more to do: the shop is empty, the town practically deserted, there are very few cars passing by on the main road up above, a mere four flavors of gelato available at the counter. Two more days and it’ll be Monday. She counts them on her fingers, though there’s no need: Saturday, Sunday. One, two. Plus today, which is already winding down before her very eyes.
TWENTY-FOUR
NICK CRUICKSHANK GOES to round up three horses in the paddock, seeing as, like he imagined, René has been co-opted by Aileen for the preparations for tomorrow’s party. He grabs them one by one by the halter, ties them to the post: Tusk, Muck, and Michelle. With energetic strokes of the scrubbing brush he removes the dry mud from their backs, flanks, stomachs, hoofs, then dusts them off, energized by his irritation at the invasion inside and outside his home. He goes into the saddle room to get bridles, saddles, and saddlecloths, prepares one horse after another in a sequence he knows by heart, even if he’s long been accustomed to someone else doing it for him; he tightens the cinch straps, adjusts the stirrups as best he can.
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When he goes back inside, the confusion is even worse than twenty minutes ago: there’s a steady stream of new guests, a continuous overlapping of gestures and voices. In the living room Aileen’s lawyer from Luxembourg is tickling the ivories with “Summertime,” unfazed that he is being listened to by actual musicians. Baz is talking about Indian music with Nishanath Kapoor, while Beth Bolton contemplates them like a pair of divinities that have miraculously landed on the same couch. Rodney pretends to listen to a boring couple who must be Aileen’s investors, or maybe partners in her charity programs. But there are at least another twenty or so people intent on giving off various poses and attitudes; they turn their heads toward him with varying degrees of interest. Nick Cruickshank excludes them from his visual field, focuses on Wally, who’s trying insistently to get Todd to taste his whiskey, even if Todd hasn’t had a drink in about ten years. Kimberly is hovering over the writer from Star Life as if they’re the best of friends; she cackles, gesturing needlessly. He heads straight for her like he’s crossing a battlefield, allowing no wandering eyes to distract him. “Are we going? The horses are ready.”
“The horses?” The writer from Star Life immediately looks around, in search of her photographer and cameraman. “Hold on a moment, I’ll call Ed and Simon.”
Nick Cruickshank doesn’t even reply; he pulls Kimberly away by the arm, waves furiously at Wally, who as always takes whole seconds to react.
Behind the house Kimberly limps pathetically on the high heels of her musketeer boots. Blue shearling jacket with white down on the inside, white hot pants arriving just below the groin, semitransparent black stockings with a darker section at the knees: she hasn’t given the slightest thought to putting on something just a little more appropriate.
“You want to go horseback riding like that?” Nick Cruickshank points at her legs; he can’t believe he has such close ties with this sort of person.
“You didn’t give me any time to change!” Kimberly is absolutely convinced she’s in the right, chews her gum in a demonstrative huff.
“Yeah, you practically dragged us outside, fuck!” Wally comes immediately to her aid, two steps behind with his sluggish stride, zipping up the silvered down jacket he grabbed on the fly.
And yet Nick Cruickshank thinks that Kimberly and Wally Thompson aren’t even the most obnoxious people he’ll have to deal with over the next few days: their flaws are so glaring as to be almost reassuring, and he knows them so well. He’s reminded of dozens of other so-called friends and acquaintances who upset him so much more, with their mental mirrors, their stares impervious to light. “Let’s get moving, before those Star Life jackals find us.”
The two Thompsons follow him grudgingly, to the wood construction of the saddle room. Seven or eight pairs of riding boots of different sizes, well oiled and polished by René, who must certainly feel a sense of waste at how little they get used, are lined up on the low shelves. Wally tries on one pair that’s too tight, another that’s too loose; the third time’s lucky. He marches back and forth in the limited space, like a slightly haggard reserve soldier who’s still animated by bellicose impulses, stomping emphatically on the wooden planks.
“Don’t you want to put a pair on, too?” Nick Cruickshank looks at Kimberly’s musketeer boots, with the decorative zippers on the sides; he leans out to look back toward the house, fearing he’ll see someone coming.
“No, these’ll work fine.” Kimberly clicks her heels together a couple of times as well, grimaces in what might be pain but could also simply be one of the expressions she and Wally use to fill up their days of intellectual emptiness.
Nick Cruickshank slips on his boots, takes two red riding helmets more or less of the Thompsons’ size off the hook, hands them to them.
Kimberly cautiously presses hers down over her puffy hair, tightens the chin strap uncertainly. With her jaw constrained she finds it harder to chew her gum, but she chews it just the same.
But Wally sniggers, steps back half bent over, as if to demonstrate that he’s wise to the gag. “Naah. What the fuck do I need that for? I’ve been riding a lot longer than you, thank you very much!”
Nick Cruickshank thinks that it’s true: when the Bebonkers began earning serious money, starting with the release of their third album, Wally was the first to dedicate himself methodically to the acquisition of status symbols, from a Ferrari to a mansion in Kent to show horses, astride which he could be photographed by magazines and even interviewed on television. The other band members followed close behind, whether it was buying a small building in Chelsea to be more at the center of the action (Nick), delving into luxury sailboats (Rodney), attending auctions at Christie’s (Todd); ever since it has simply been a question of continuing to accumulate more and more possessions. Even if they don’t really need them, even if they don’t really like them. On the other hand, almost all the so-called stars whom he knows spend enormous amounts of money doing things they absolutely hate, buying themselves homes on tropical islands where they can’t stand the climate or in cities where they live like recluses, buying works of art they don’t know the first thing about, filling their homes with furniture and silverware and porcelain they themselves find horrendous, collecting prestigious vintages of French wine they have to struggle to choke down, dedicating themselves to extreme sports that only end up making them look foolish, crossing the world to go to a party for someone who’s not even really their friend. They do it out of a sense of social insecurity and accumulative greed, sure, but mainly to present some tangible evidence of their success to parents, neighbors, rivals, and the millions of perfect strangers observing them from a distance. Again, it’s a question of not disappointing other people’s expectations; the greater the expectations, the greater the effort not to disappoint them. As far as the morbidity of the mass media, the constant attempts at intrusion and the snap judgments based entirely on appearances are concerned: as Rodney once said in an interview, the only thing worse than having all eyes on you is being left alone because nobody cares about you.
“So, where are the horses?” Wally starts up with the insistence again, abandoning the role of foot dragger he’s played up to this point.
Nick Cruickshank leads the Thompsons to the paddock, where the three black horses stand tied to the post, saddled and ready, with their long manes and tails.
“Those?” Wally starts laughing, turns to Kimberly, then to him. “These are a bunch of fucking ponies!”
“They’re horses from Mérens. Also known as Ariégeois.” Nick Cruickshank knew perfectly well how the ignorant and vulgar imbecile would react, it’s not as though he didn’t; but it still rankles him.
“They’re ponies; sorry to break it to you.” Wally spends his life comparing what he has to what others have; it’s an endless exercise. And since he’s totally lacking in intelligence and taste, the only parameters he has to fall back on are cost and size. He weighs up and compares everything, all the time: his electric basses, his dick, his bank accounts, popularity with fans, number of interviews, the poor things he’s managed to get into the sack, the ones he’s married, houses, cars. When the comparison is unfavorable to him, as it often is, he holds terrible grudges; when he thinks he’s got the edge, he prances around like a peacock.
“They’re horses. Look on the Internet if you need confirmation.” Nick doesn’t put much emphasis in his voice, because getting sucked into Wally Thompson’s comparison games would be too degrading.
“No, my boy, mine are horses. Hanoverians imported directly from Saxony, with a pedigree this long, five-nine at the withers.” Wally the jackass; he’ll never grow up.
“And they make you feel like a better man? More accomplished, more important?” Nick Cruickshank would like nothing more than to give him a nice kick in the shins, or in the balls.
“What the fuck does that mean?” Wally chuckles in that obscene way of his, between throat and nose; he turns back to his wife. “Babe, these look like horses to you? Honestly?�
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Kimberly chews her gum, with some difficulty due to the chin strap, shakes her head. “They’re really small and kind of ugly.” Whereas she looks like an oversized little girl, her face swollen with Botox or whatever she had herself injected with, her big head beneath the red helmet.
“Do you want to go or not?” Nick Cruickshank has to make a titanic effort to control himself. “You’ve been bitching and moaning about this damn horseback ride for two days.”
“Yeah, horse.” Wally has absolutely no sense of limits; the worst part is that he thinks that at this point he doesn’t need one.
“Let’s get going, come on.” Nick Cruickshank opens the paddock gate, ushers the horses out. He tightens Tusk’s cinch, hands Kimberly the reins, helps her up onto the saddle, moves her legs to regulate the stirrup leathers, seeing as she would never think to do it herself.
“Don’t get too frisky with my wife over there, eh?!” Wally naturally doesn’t let the chance go begging: he winks, chuckles.
“Not to worry.” Nick Cruickshank once more fights the urge to say what he’d like to say.
Kimberly lets herself be waited on as if by a stable boy, inert up there on the saddle, no intention of saying thank you. It isn’t hard to imagine how these two boors behave with the people who work for them: showy rudeness, demonstrative arrogance. How can he still think of them as the lesser evil, compared to the rest of the invasion troops inside and outside the house, and the reinforcements arriving between now and tomorrow morning?
Imperfect Delight Page 18