Delicious!

by Ruth Reichl

  Later that fall, I foraged for matsutake mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest with a guy who insisted on blindfolding me and driving me around in circles for an hour so I’d be unable to divulge his secret spots. Jake liked that one so much he promised to promote me the next time something opened up. But I wasn’t holding my breath; nobody ever left Delicious!

  Between my regular job, writing articles, and working at Fontanari’s, I was too busy to lament my lack of a social life. Still, it wasn’t a complete zero: The Delicious! people often gathered after work, and Sammy regularly invited me to fantastic dinners in his glass dining room.

  I was feeling so much more anchored that when Dad called, begging me to come home for Thanksgiving, I actually considered it. “I know you needed to get away,” he said, “and I’ve been trying not to bother you, trying to let you build a new life. But, Billie”—I could feel him swallowing his emotions—“it’s been over a year since I’ve seen you. And I just miss you.” I didn’t say anything, and Dad spoke into the silence. “I know Genie won’t be here. But do it for me. Please?”

  How could I refuse?

  “Thinking about going home without my sister makes me nervous,” I confided to Diana. She and I had an easy friendship, unlike anything I’d known before. We went drinking once a week, and she often ditched Ned and his burgers so we could share a serious meal. One night, after the third glass of wine, I said, “Remember that night—God, it was more than a year ago—when we first went to dinner?”

  “You mean Nowhere? When you gave me the beret?” She reached up and touched the hat; she wore it all the time.

  “I was so nervous about that. I thought if you hated it, it’d be really awkward and you’d hate me too.”

  “Hate you? With that palate? Are you crazy? What I remember most about that night is how Tom kept trying to get us to identify his secret ingredients, and you nailed them every time. He was so impressed!”

  “But it’s so easy.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that.” Instantly, I felt awful; I kept forgetting that it wasn’t that way for everyone. “It makes me feel worse. You’re like one of those people who can hear a tune once, sit down at the piano, and just start playing it. It’s so unfair. Speaking of which …”

  I knew what was coming next: Diana had been trying to get me to give her the Cake Sisters recipes since the day I was hired.

  “I tried making your gingerbread again last night, and I can’t get it right.”

  “I can’t give you the recipe. You know I promised my aunt I’d never give that one away,” I said for at least the hundredth time. “I’m sorry. But think how great you’ll feel when you finally get it.”

  “I will get it. Someday. But I know this is your revenge for all the awful things I said to you that night. I still feel bad about that.”

  “Don’t,” I told her. “It was kind of a relief, because I knew you’d never say stuff like that to someone you didn’t care about.”

  ON THE LAST DAY of October I woke to the shock of early snow; a freak snowstorm had blown in, covering the streets with a dense white blanket. I’d now strolled New York’s sidewalks in every season, enough to know that etiquette proscribed eye contact. But the unexpected Halloween weather surprised us into friendliness, and I walked to work smiling at everyone I passed. By the time I reached the Timbers Mansion, my cheeks were red.

  My phone was ringing when I got to my desk. Young Arthur’s early, I thought, recognizing the number and noting the time. Mr. Pickwick called every Monday promptly at ten. I picked it up to hear his clipped speech. “I need Jake ASAP,” he barked. “Put me through.”

  I transferred the call, thinking nothing of it, and sorted the morning mail. I printed out Jake’s calendar for the day and brought it into his office.

  He was sitting at his desk, holding the phone away from his ear as if it would scorch his skin. His face looked as if his bones had melted.

  “Jake! What?” I thought he was having a heart attack, but he waved me away. Sherman lay belly-down beneath the desk, one paw across his nose. The air felt radioactive; I fled.

  Seconds later I heard the phone slam into the cradle, and I tiptoed back and peeked in. Jake’s face was gray. He was holding a piece of paper, watching it tremble with a kind of disbelief. “Call everyone into the …” His voice cracked. “Photo studio,” he finally got out. “In an hour. The entire staff.” Then he got up and closed the door, leaving me standing there, biting my nails, terrified about what was going to happen.

  An hour later we filed into the studio, past a group of ominous-looking men in shiny suits. I was startled to find Young Arthur standing awkwardly among the cameras and the lights.

  We stood in a loose semicircle, kitchen people on one side, editors on another. The art department huddled together, but Richard took one look at Jake’s face and went to stand beside him.

  Young Arthur cleared his throat, as if he needed to get our attention. “After much consideration …” You could tell he was hoping to sound apologetic. “We have decided to close Delicious! The advertising environment is challenging just now, and we are going to concentrate our efforts on our other publications. I’m very sorry.”

  Most of us were too stunned to do more than stare at him with our mouths open. Everybody knew that the magazine business was having a hard time, but we hadn’t known things were this bad. Delicious! was over one hundred years old, an American institution. When he finished talking, the only sound in the room was breathing.

  Until Maggie burst into tears. I was shocked, but then I remembered that she’d been at Delicious! for almost thirty years. For the first time ever, I felt sorry for her. What would she do now? And then it hit me that Maggie was not alone: None of us had a job anymore. I looked at Richard, at Diana, at Jake; in the last two minutes, all of our lives had changed.

  Jake went over to Maggie, patting her shoulder and handing her fancy cocktail napkins that had been laid out for a shoot, until she finally got herself under control. “How soon do we have to leave?” she asked, her face wet and swollen.

  Young Arthur pulled at his shirt cuffs and stared at the floor. “I think that’s immaterial,” he mumbled. “You can be out of here very quickly.”

  “A couple of weeks?” The question came from Diana; I was sure she was already making a mental inventory of her kitchen.

  “Oh, no.” Young Arthur looked over at her. He seemed taken aback, and the tension in the room eased as we realized we were going to get a small reprieve. “It’s the last day of October. Your passes will work today. And tomorrow until five P.M.”

  “Tomorrow?” Diana gasped. “You want us to get everything moved out by tomorrow night?”

  “Yes.” Young Arthur actually smiled. “You won’t be taking much.” He threaded his way through the cables. “I wish you all much luck,” he offered when he got to the door. “Human Resources will be over shortly to answer any questions.”

  “Wait!” shouted Maggie.

  He turned. “Yes?” He peered at her. “Maggie, isn’t it?”

  “I just want you to know,” she threw at him, “that your father is rolling in his grave. This was his first magazine, the start of the Pickwick empire, and it was always his favorite.”

  “You may very well be right,” he replied. “But my father, you know, is in that grave he’s rolling around in.” He walked out, leaving a stunned silence in his wake.

  We stumbled out of the studio in a collective daze, eager to flee that unhappy room. I went next door and found the kitchen in chaos. The cooks had been preparing to photograph a Southern feast, and every counter overflowed with food.

  “My pork shoulders!” wailed Maggie. “I spent a week finding enough for this shoot. We’ve got fifty pounds of blue crabs and twenty-five pounds of sweetbreads too. I wonder what they’re going to do with all that?”

  “That’s not your problem anymore,” boomed one of the suited men who had accompanied Young Arthur into the building. Five pairs of co
ld eyes watched us, missing nothing. Lori was carefully wrapping a knife into cheesecloth. “Where do you think you’re going with that?” one of them asked.

  “It’s my knife,” she said defensively. “I got it when I graduated from culinary.”

  “Too bad.” The goon wrenched it from her hand. “You had no business bringing personal equipment into this kitchen. The equipment all stays here; it’s company property now.” He flung the knife onto the counter, where it clattered violently before coming to rest.

  “Time you got new knives anyway, Lori.” Paul tried to soothe her. “It’s been a long time since you graduated.”

  “They’re supposed to last a lifetime,” she snapped.

  Paul handed her a glass of wine from an open bottle sitting on the counter. It was eleven in the morning. “No point in leaving this for the Pickwicks.”

  One of the men glanced up at that, staring pointedly at the glass. Paul stared back, daring him to claim the wine as Pickwick property. The man’s shoulders shifted uncomfortably inside his suit, but he blinked first. Paul ostentatiously took a giant gulp, sucking air noisily into his mouth like a professional wine taster. The goon gave him an ugly look, but he walked away, motioning for the others to follow.

  Diana was silently emptying her shelves, packing up her cookbooks, rolling her secret spices into the vintage aprons she liked to wear, and I watched her, thinking, She’s too calm. She didn’t even seem angry. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  She kept methodically transferring spices, flour, and cans from the shelves to a box. “Plenty of other jobs out there for trained cooks.”

  I looked at her face, awed by her composure. Most of the cooks were crying as they packed. The magazine business was changing, and jobs were hard to get; test kitchens like this were a thing of the past. Would they have to work freelance from now on? Goodbye, benefits. My stomach felt as if I had swallowed stones, and I found myself holding it with both hands as I went back to my office. Brown cardboard boxes had sprouted through the hallways, and I gave one a vicious kick and listened to the satisfying thud as it went end over end down the stairs.

  Jake was in his office, hunched over his desk; Richard sat on the other side, looking grim. They waved me in.

  Jake was forlorn. “Richard thinks I knew what was going on. He can’t believe Young Arthur would do this without warning. He thinks I knew about it, that I’ve been working behind the scenes, trying to change their minds. Will you please tell him the truth?”

  “Richard, if you’d seen Jake when the call came … I’ll never forget the color of his face. He didn’t see it coming.”

  “Those bastards!” Richard slammed his fist onto the desk as he got up. “Right before the holidays? Couldn’t they have waited?”

  “I feel like such a fool.” Jake watched Richard leave. “How could I have been so blind? I knew that ads were down.” He was making a visible effort to control himself. “I wish Sammy were here. It’s unfortunate that he chose this particular moment to be traipsing around Turkey. We could use some of his lovable energy right about now. He’d calm everyone down. Did you call him?”

  “I’ll try.” I called his hotel in Istanbul, but the clerk informed me that he was up in the mountains and could not be reached.

  “I left a message,” I told Jake, “but they didn’t know when he’d be back.”

  “Damn!” Jake sounded bereft. “I just wish he were here; nothing gets him down.” Then he folded his hands on the desk and looked up at me. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

  It was only noon, but in the three hours since Young Arthur’s call, Jake had aged; every one of his fifty-four years was now engraved across his face. I patted Sherman, thinking that after today I might never see him again. Or Richard. Or Sammy. I felt sick, and for a panicked moment I was afraid I was going to throw up on Jake’s desk. I concentrated on swallowing the feeling.

  “So do you want to?” Jake’s voice seemed far away.

  “Want to what?” I hadn’t been listening.

  Jake shook his head. “Focus, please. I was saying that Young Arthur wants to keep someone on to honor the Guarantee. He thinks cutting it off so suddenly would be bad for the company’s image and would somehow hurt the other magazines. Totally irrational, if you want my opinion … Anyway, I told him if anyone was going to do it, you’d be the one.”

  “They’ll keep paying me even though they’ve killed the book?” It sounded crazy. “How long can that possibly last?”

  “He didn’t say,” Jake admitted, “and it’s a good question. I don’t imagine it’ll be forever. But people hang on to their back issues, and Young Arthur wants to keep the readers happy. There was something about throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or maybe he has fantasies of bringing it back when the economy improves.”

  I don’t know what he saw on my face, but something made him add, “You’re a good writer, Billie, but you don’t exactly have a huge body of work under your belt. Finding a new job is going to be a challenge in this economy, and it’s always easier to find one when you have one. Freelancing is tough. What have you got to lose by staying on awhile? This entire staff is going to be out there looking for jobs. I’ll do what I can for everyone, but it’s not going to be easy.”

  I thought about all the editors, copy editors, and art people knocking on doors, begging for jobs. I wondered about Sammy. Then I thought about Paul, who had two kids, and the copy editor, who had three. How long did unemployment benefits last? I was suddenly exhausted by it all. I couldn’t think. Jake watched me, waiting.

  The silence stretched. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Jake’s voice sounded firmer. He got up from his chair and paced around the room. “Now, can we get back to work? There’s a lot to do.”

  The phone began to ring almost immediately. I hadn’t thought about the press. Delicious! was a beloved institution, and the magazine’s demise made news around the world. Reporters kept calling Jake, begging him to tell what he knew and when he had known it. When the reporters couldn’t get him, they questioned me, and over the next day, I discovered that endings have their own odd thrill. In the mania of the moment, it’s possible to forget what you are losing.

  Most of us spent that first night in the office, drinking our way through the liquor closet. By morning the office had a rakish look, less grand old mansion than post-rush fraternity shambles. As we taped up the last of the boxes, Jake ordered coffee and the doughnuts filled with chocolate mousse that Jacques Torres made especially for him. We were trying to sober up on sugar and caffeine when Maggie issued an unexpected invitation. “Come to my place tonight,” she told everyone, “and we’ll have a proper wake.”

  PEOPLE’S HOUSES ALWAYS surprise me, but in my wildest imagining I’d never have expected Maggie to live in a cozy old Brooklyn brown-stone filled with rock posters from the eighties—Bruce Springsteen, Guns N’ Roses, Talking Heads. I was staring up at a Cyndi Lauper poster when she staggered over.

  “Girls just want to have fun.” She could barely get the words out. “They’re real, if you were wondering.”

  Jake gave her a sidelong glance. “How drunk are you?” He looked a little worried.

  “Very,” Maggie replied, “and I intend to stay that way for quite a while. Do you know how many years I worked at that damn place?”

  “You know I’m there for you if you need me.” His voice was low, and he put his arm around her. I averted my eyes; it was an oddly intimate moment.

  “I’ll be okay.” She pushed him away and looked defiantly up at him. “I’m going to start a catering business.”

  Jake burst out laughing. “You? People would pay good money to keep you away from their parties.”

  “I am offended.” She sniffed. “I may not be Jake Newberry, but I can certainly cook well enough to please the Park Avenue set.”

  “Oh, come on, Mags. I’m not casting aspersions on your cooking. But you in the service business? Think about it.” Personally,
I kind of liked the idea of Maggie kowtowing to women meaner than she was, but I kept the thought to myself. At the moment we were trying to be kind to one another.

  “What about you?” Maggie challenged Valente. “What grand plans have you conceived?”

  He looked embarrassed. He fiddled with his glass and admitted he’d already gotten calls from New York magazine, Food & Wine, and Williams-Sonoma; he was booked solid for the next two months. Richard confessed that he too had been fielding phone calls by the dozen. “And you, Diana.” Maggie’s voice had an edge of bitterness. “I suppose that dozens of fabulous opportunities have come your way as well?”

  Diana’s usually open face closed up. “I’ve been waiting for the right moment to tell you this.” She was clearly uncomfortable, and she looked directly at me. “I actually got this job offer a while ago. Ned’s going to work at a start-up in Palo Alto, and there’s an opening in the test kitchen at Sunset magazine. I was confused about what to do, but Mr. Pickwick just made my mind up for me.”

  “What?” I was horrified to find that I was struggling to hold back tears. I should be happy for Diana; she had a job. But she was the one person I’d thought I’d get to keep.

  I gathered an armload of dirty dishes and retreated to the kitchen. I filled the sink with scalding water, squirted in the soap, and plunged my hands into the wet heat.

  “I’m sorry you’re upset.” Diana had quietly followed me. “You’re my friend, and I should have told you. But I really didn’t think I was going to go.”

  “No, it’s great. Really. When I get over how much I’m going to miss you, I’ll be glad you’ve got a job. But who’s going to bug me about my clothes now?”

  She threw her arms around me. “Don’t think you’re getting rid of me that easily.”

  I hugged back, drenching her in the process.

  “I’m going to email so often you’ll hardly know I’m gone,” she promised. “And I’m not about to give up on that gingerbread recipe.… ”