by Ruth Reichl
“I’d love to!”
Jake wagged a finger at me. “Of course you would. Why else would you be here? That’s the whole point of being my assistant.”
“And Sal’s a wonderful subject.”
“No one better,” he agreed, winking as if we were coconspirators.
That stopped me. I’d been so excited at finally being asked to write that I’d overlooked the main point. I stared down at my plate and dialed back the conversation, thinking about Sal. I knew I couldn’t do it, couldn’t even ask.
I looked directly at Jake; he wasn’t going to like this. “I can’t ask Sal to go against his principles.” I hated the way I sounded. So prim.
Jake took a piece of tuna. “I thought you were ambitious. I don’t think I’m asking too much.” He flipped the fish expertly into the soy sauce, just a little dip, and put it in his mouth. “This is the first time an assistant’s ever turned me down.”
“I’m sorry.” He had to lean in to hear me. “I just can’t.”
“Well, find another story, then.” Jake was cold; I’d disappointed him.
“But what should I write about?”
Jake scanned the room for the waitress, made that little signing gesture, asking for the check. “That’s entirely up to you. But the job won’t be official until you write something for the book. And you’re turning your back on a wonderful story. You’ll never find anything half as good.”
Thanksgiving
Dear Genie,
Thanksgiving. Winter coming. Snow already. Hate the cold. Hate the short days. Hate the position Jake’s put me in.
You’d write the story, wouldn’t you? You’d charm Sal into saying yes. But I’m not you. Sal will never agree. And even if he did, how could I ever do him justice?
Still, I find myself watching everyone, storing away little tidbits, just in case, coming home at night and writing it all down. Yesterday I watched Mr. Complainer shifting in and out of line, calculating the odds, hoping Sal would be the one to serve him. All the regulars do it. It’s like they think they’ll get home and find some of his optimistic spirit wrapped in with the cheese. Rosalie, who misses nothing, caught me looking and misunderstood. She leaned over to whisper, “I’m pretty sure he’s single.”
I can’t even think about that right now. But I’ll admit that being around Sal and Rosalie makes me feel lonely; they’re such a solid couple, and they enjoy each other so much. I look at them and think how nice it would be to have a partner. And I do like Mr. Complainer: his energy, the humor in his eyes, the way he seems to get pleasure out of life. And he’s the most physical person I’ve ever met. He’s always putting his arm around Gennaro, as if he’s afraid the guy’s going to keel over. (Gennaro’s so fragile, we all worry about him.) If there’s a little kid in the shop, he’ll reach down and lift him onto his shoulders so the kid can see over the crowd. He’s not old, but it seems as if he’s lived long enough that he’s grown comfortable in his own skin. I like that. Still, he’s got such a crush on Sal that he barely even sees me. The other day his number came up when it was my turn to serve the next customer. He’s got an open face, and I could watch him struggling with himself, wondering if I’d be offended if he said he’d wait for Sal. In the end he gave me this big, sweet smile and asked for mozzarella.
“Ours or the imported?” It’s a kind of joke we have. He always buys Italian mozzarella, but I keep urging him to try Rosalie’s. She makes it every day and it’s really good.
He says ours isn’t made of water-buffalo milk, like it is in Italy, so it’s not the real thing. So I fish out a ball of the imported stuff, and as I wrap it I have a warm little feeling, knowing that we’ll go through this ritual the next time I wait on him, and the time after that. And then I feel pathetic; this is what I’m looking forward to? But enough about him.
Aunt Melba wants me to go home for Thanksgiving. She even sent me a ticket. She said Dad would be so happy to see me walking in the door but that he’d never ask me himself. I know she means the best, but you can’t be there and I’m not ready. So I’m giving thanks at Sammy’s.
“Just the two of us,” he said, which made me feel … special. I’m positive you’d love him too. Wish you were going to be with us.
xxb
I expected Sammy’s apartment to be as cozy and cluttered as his office, but he was full of surprises. Perched on the thirty-fourth floor of a new Chelsea high-rise, the place was all sharp angles and cold glass, with glittering views of the Hudson River down below. It was snowing, and the fat white flakes swirling past the windows made me feel as if I were trapped inside a life-size paperweight.
Sammy greeted me dressed in a Chinese gown made of heavy gray silk and embroidered with dragons. He took my coat, led me to a downy chair upholstered in deep red, and handed me a glass with a stem so fragile I was afraid it would shatter in my hands. I took a sip of the cold white wine, holding the liquid on my tongue as it filled my mouth with the taste of butterscotch and sunshine.
“Old Meursault.” Sammy almost crooned the words. “Life is too short for bad wine.”
“How old are you?” Suddenly I worried that I’d offended him.
“I’m sixty-two,” he said without a trace of embarrassment, “but age has no significance unless you have frittered your life away.”
“And do you think you have?”
“I would not state it in that fashion.” He drew the words out slowly. “Nobody has made merrier than I have. But I have always been persuaded that someday, when I grow up, I am destined for great things. And then I wonder when, exactly, I expect that will be.”
“What would you rather be doing?” I had thought Sammy, of all people, was satisfied with himself.
“Aye, there’s the rub.” He beckoned me into the dining room and struck a match. Sammy had covered the entire center of the table with flowers and candles, and soon the room was suffused with shimmering light. I drew in my breath; the flames were reflected in the windows on three sides, which revealed a panorama of the river. The table stretched between the windows, so there was an illusion of sitting on air. The table itself was spare, a simple piece of polished wood holding pure white plates as thin as eggshells. “Now, sit down, sit down; the soufflé is ready, and if we fail to consume it this very instant, it will fall.”
“No turkey?”
“My apologies if you are dismayed by my reluctance to hew to the standard menu. But I must admit that I have always considered the turkey a rather regrettable bird. I should have queried you in advance; are you very disappointed?”
“Not at all.” How could I be? Sammy’s gorgonzola soufflé was little more than intensely fragrant air, so ethereal it floated into my mouth, where it delivered a surprisingly powerful punch.
“Is your family devastated by your failure to join them for the festivities?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “It’s the first time that I’m not going to be there, and I expected Aunt Melba to invite a million people. But it turns out that she didn’t. She’s making dinner at her place, just Dad and her.”
“That has an intimate air. Are they very close?”
“Yes. They really enjoy each other.” As I said it, I realized I’d used the same words to describe Sal and Rosalie’s relationship in an email to Genie.
“But they are not a couple?”
“No!” The idea, somehow, was shocking. “Of course not. She’s my mother’s sister.” Aunt Melba was simply there, next door, a fixture.
Sammy seemed surprised by my vehemence. “In times past, you know,” he observed, “a man unfortunate enough to lose a young wife frequently married her sister. That way the children were not motherless.”
“Practical,” I allowed. “But unromantic.” But why had neither of them ever married? Never even dated, as far as I could tell. I had a quick memory of the family trips we took and the way Dad and Aunt Melba always made a big deal of getting separate bedrooms. Too big a deal? Had I been missing something all these year
s? I was remembering the way Aunt Melba always finished Dad’s sentences, recalling the affectionate smile on her face every time she looked at him, when Sammy got up again.
I rose too. “There’s no way you’re going to wait on me,” I said, collecting the plates and following him into the kitchen.
Sammy had roasted calamari until the tentacles were crunchy little bits, the bodies tender as velvet. Then he bathed them in a smooth pool of aioli.
“So much better than turkey,” I said as I forked up the last crisp tentacle. “What did you do before you worked at Delicious!?”
“I worked at many other magazines,” he replied. “But the truth is that I have been at the book since the dark ages.” He began to toss the salad, bitter greens in Champagne vinaigrette, but he stopped mid-toss. “Sammy before Delicious! is shrouded in the mists of time. I will have you know that I am an institution!”
The spare salad was perfect after the richness of the first two courses, and I ate in appreciative silence. Then Sammy served the simplest dessert—gently poached ripe pears bathed in a deep-chocolate–caramel sauce. “This is the best Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had.” As I said it, I realized the meal was a lot like Sammy—unique.
“Surely you exaggerate.” But he was beaming, and I was glad that such a small thing could make him happy. “This sauce, now—I learned to make it on the first voyage I ever took under the aegis of Delicious!”
As he spoke, I remembered how he’d started to tell this story when we first met, shocked to think it had been only a few weeks ago. Sammy had quickly become one of the best things about my life in New York.
“It was the seventies, a freelance assignment long before I was actually employed here. They sent me off with orders to unearth an unsung Tuscan hill town. I was astonished by my good fortune. Remy, the staff photographer—an exquisitely beautiful man—was with me. We bundled all his equipment into a rented Mercedes and tootled from one magnificent villa to the next, where we were seduced with gorgeous food and spectacular wines. The most memorable meal was lunch at a monastery where they raised all their own comestibles. In those days, that was almost unheard of—they even pressed oil from their own olives and churned cheese from the milk of their sheep. As we sat down to eat, one of the brothers decamped to the garden and returned with tomatoes; when we put them in our mouths, they still held the warmth of the air outside. The brothers produced wine from the grapes behind the monastery—rich old Sangiovese—and they grilled our lamb chops over cuttings from the vines. For dessert they presented us with this sauce over just-picked peaches.”
Sammy stared into the candles, as if the scene were unfolding in their light. “The meal was the epitome of simplicity, but it made me feel as if, until that moment, I had never really tasted anything. Later we wound our way through the hills, singing arias from our favorite operas as we peregrinated from one tiny town to the next. Late in the afternoon we suddenly found ourselves embroiled in a traffic jam. I believe it was caused by a religious procession. We sat there for quite some time, and then Remy leapt from the car, crying, ‘Let’s go!’ as he began to climb the hill. After a few kilometers we arrived at a sweet little pensione and engaged a room for the night. It was terribly romantic.”
“What about the car?” Had they abandoned it in the middle of the road?
Sammy waved his hand; to him it was an unimportant detail. “When we returned in the morning, the car was precisely where we had left it; the traffic had simply deviated around it. Nobody was in the least put out.” He stopped talking for a minute.
When he began to talk again, I was expecting him to reminisce about the good old days when Europe was an inexpensive playground for Americans. Or perhaps about the golden age of magazines, when editors sent reporters off on romantic excursions. But he surprised me again. “I got back into the car thinking how lucky I was to be aware of happiness. Most people don’t recognize their own good fortune until it has departed. And then it is too late.”
“What about Remy? What happened to him?”
“Our great romance ended when we returned to New York. I took a job with another magazine, but we remained friends. By the time I arrived at Delicious!, he had wearied of the metropolis and moved to Corfu, where he remains to this day, tanned and wrinkled. The last time I saw him he was clad entirely in white, redolent of coconut oil, and wearing far too many rings.”
I laughed; I could see Remy so clearly. “But you’re such an amazing cook. Ever think about opening a restaurant?” I was chasing the last of the chocolate around my plate.
“I told you.” He leaned across the table. “I am a very dilatory man. And I have wearied of myself. It is time that you sang for your supper. There is, for instance, the deep, dark mystery of why someone with your fine palate declines to cook.”
The candles flickered, as if a breeze had wafted through the room. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Fair enough. All things come to he who waits.” He wasn’t offended, but he was not about to let me off the hook completely. “But in that case you have to tell me what you are writing. Jake always demands that his assistants write an article before he deigns to bestow a permanent job upon them.”
I told him about the Fontanari idea and our uncomfortable lunch.
“You are surely aware that you had best find another story. Were I you, I would do so expeditiously. You may have noticed that all is not rosy in the magazine trade at the moment. Money is tight. Issues are thin. And, as I have already stated, Jake is not as nice as he thinks he is. He will not wait until eternity.”
“But I don’t have another story!”
“Then devise a way to do this one.”
“I can’t!” I’d expected more support from Sammy. “Sal would be furious.”
He waved his hand. “Let us, for the moment, put the issue of Mr. Fontanari and his scruples aside. Tell me about the shop.”
I began to speak, conjuring up the cast until they were all gathered at the table. I told him about Sal and how he talked all through the day, wanting his customers to love his food as much as he did. I told how he waited for Mr. Complainer to come in, about their call-and-response routine. I described the frail Gennaro, who came in daily for his mother’s cheese. Sal’s first love, Jane, was there, and his calm sister, Theresa. And, of course, Sal’s compass, Rosalie, making sure he never lost his way.
There was a long silence when I finished, as if Sammy were politely waiting for them all to leave the room. “You seem to know exactly what to write!” He folded his hands across his lap. “You toddle on home now and put everything down on paper, exactly as you told it to me.”
“But what about Sal?”
Sammy studied me, some unspoken thought flickering in his pale eyes. Then he pushed his chair back and left the table.
He returned carrying a dusty bottle of Armagnac. As he poured us each a glass, the rich, raisiny aroma rose into the air. “Courage!” He pronounced the word in French as he raised the snifter. “Trust yourself. You do not need Sal’s permission. Risk his ire. If you write your story well, if you write it honestly, he will not take offense.”
“You think?”
Sammy waved a large hand again. “Depart to your own domicile. Seize this opportunity while you have it; you never know what the future will bring. The difference between talking about it and doing it is doing it.”
HIS WORDS ECHOED in my head as I walked through the falling snow. The streets were eerily empty, the snow coming so fast it muffled sound and made my footprints disappear behind me. I got home and slogged up the stairs, leaving little mounds of snow melting in my wake.
I sat down, turned on my computer, and conjured up the crowded shop again. As they gathered around me—Sal and Rosalie, Theresa, Jane, Gennaro, and Mr. Complainer—their voices filled my head and I began to write, afraid to stop, afraid to think, afraid to jinx this. The words came to me in a furious storm, and by the time they ran out, the snow had stopped and the sun was rising.
I had no idea if the story made sense, but I was afraid to lose my nerve. I dropped an email to Jake, attached the story, and punched “Send.”
I was exhausted. Fontanari’s was closed for the Thanksgiving weekend, which left three whole days for me to fret. By Sunday, I was so jumpy that I paced restlessly around my small apartment and finally went to bed, where I was unable to sleep. The prospect of facing Jake was so terrifying that on Monday morning I almost called in sick. Instead, I took a long shower, putting off the moment of reckoning, and stopped to buy Sherman a smoothie on my way in.
“You’re late.” Jake’s voice was brusque. Sherman bounded over when he saw the Starbucks bag, jumping up for the smoothie he knew it contained. “You’ve been standing in line at Starbucks while I sat here wondering where you were?”
I poured the smoothie into Sherman’s bowl. “Sorry I’m late.”
“I’ve waited a long time for this story. But, Billie, I have to say”—he paused—“it was worth it.”
“You like it!” I could feel my face begin to glow.
“It’s wonderful.” He also looked relieved. I couldn’t tell if this was because he’d been apprehensive about my writing, anxious I wouldn’t do Sal justice, or distressed about finding a new assistant. “I like your approach, the way you’ve made Fontanari’s more than a cheese shop. And you’ve captured Sal, right down to his stupid, long-winded speeches. I hope he’s prepared for the onslaught. They’re going to get slammed. How’d you ever talk him into it?”
“I didn’t.” My voice was barely audible.
“What?” The word shot out of his mouth. “You’ve spent weeks taking notes, but you never bothered mentioning it to him? Billie, what were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t sure I could do this. I meant to ask Sal before I started, but Thanksgiving night it just … happened. It came to me all at once.”
Jake looked skeptical. “You wrote this in one night? The whole damn thing?”
I nodded.
“I suppose I have no choice but to believe you.” He fiddled with the pages he’d printed out. “But you had no business doing this before clearing it with Sal. It’s not like he’s some stranger. There’s absolutely no way I’d publish this without his permission.”