Benny didn’t get it.
“It was unknowable,” Margaret said. “Even the animals didn’t know.”
Olli looked across his corner of the table at Benny. “You may not believe it, but we’ve had this discussion before.”
“Trout’s Kawasaki episode is an example of the same kind. It is unknowable whether there will be a recurrence. We attach a probability to it, but beyond that we don’t know.”
“Long live the Human Genome Project,” Olli said.
“Which actually scares me more than it encourages me,” Margaret said, interrupting Olli. “Something about the Tower of Babel. Sorry. Can’t help it.”
“My favourite Papist,” Olli said, smiling.
“Hey, guilty.”
Olli was silent for a couple of seconds. Jeremy took Benny’s gaze and smiled at her. She returned the warmth with her eyes, the glass of golden Essencia hovering in the air below her lips. He felt a bootless foot slide across his shoe and settle between his legs, her heel on his chair. Jeremy could see from the corners of his eyes that Margaret was looking at Olli and that Olli was mesmerized briefly—one of those fleeting involuntary meditations—his eyes locked on the glistening heaving liquid in the bottles in front of him.
“I figure that the fear of knowing is like the fear of God,” Olli said finally. “And who fears God any more?”
“Godfathers,” Jeremy said. “It’s our job.”
“Besides you.” Olli said. “I just think accepting something as unknowable is a cop-out. It was a comforting thought behind which hid the prejudice and intellectual narcissism of a couple thousand years. I can appreciate that there was a certain security to be derived. It provided people with something like roots. But I prefer to celebrate the absence.”
“We don’t root any longer,” Jeremy said. “We hover.”
“Not bad. Who needed roots in the first place? Somebody told us we needed them and we believed.”
“You root, you lose,” Jeremy said.
“It’s true,” Olli said. “When the future is a promise that we can be anything we want to be, those with roots lose out. The lesson of the Tree of Knowledge is that Adam and Eve should have dug it up, tore it out of the ground and made a raft out of it.”
“Blasphemy,” Jeremy said. “But then, I’m a bit nostalgic about roots. At The Paw, after all, we’re all about reminding people what it was like to be rooted in one place. To eat things from our own soil, know what that soil could produce.”
There were times when Olli wanted to tell his friend to just cook and be quiet. That must be the beauty of cooking, he frequently thought: There wasn’t much ideology behind it. “How’s it going down there, anyway?” he asked.
Jeremy and Benny exchanged another glance. Then a smile. Benny couldn’t hold it, and started laughing.
Olli and Margaret smiled politely.
Jeremy straightened his face. “Not altogether smoothly,” he said, answering Olli. “Although not without promise.”
“Maybe you need new ideas,” Olli said, shaking his head a little. But an idea did swim through just as he was speaking. With the restaurant established now, with the money he was making on the Tree of Knowledge. “Like a new look,” he finished.
Jeremy was curious; Margaret, dubious.
“I agree,” Benny said.
“Money would obviously be an issue,” Olli started, and for a moment it crossed his mind to suggest lunch later that week.
Jeremy caught the whiff of something. “Money is an issue. And there is a potential investor.”
“Oh,” Olli said. He should have known. “Do we get to know who?”
“No,” Jeremy answered. “But food-wise, he’s big. Redmond big.”
Margaret wasn’t saying anything. The news surprised her, and she couldn’t decipher the quality of Jeremy’s response to it. The whole idea of a large investor was antithetical. Not to Olli certainly, not in that world. But for Jeremy in the world he was exploring.
“And?” Olli said, exasperated. Even Benny was looking at him curiously, with real focused interest, waiting for this response.
“I’m on the fence, truthfully,” Jeremy said at last.
“Take it,” Olli said simply. He had a wash of warm feelings for his old friend that he wouldn’t want to express in any way other than with these words. Take The Money. Free yourself of the hassles I have watched you deal with, year after year.
“That’s it?” Margaret said. “You don’t know anything about this guy, and you tell him to take it.”
“It sounds really exciting,” Benny said.
Olli started to say something to Margaret, who had turned to answer Benny. Jeremy stared around the table at each of them in turn. It had never occurred to him that they would have strong feelings on how he should manage his culinary and financial future. And now everybody was talking at once. Margaret was saying that big is not necessarily beautiful. Talking about personal visions and integrity, and wasn’t it important to have independence? Olli chiming in with asides about reality and practicality and economies of scale. He heard Benny say something about the growth of a vision. About how a new look, new people, new money … how these things would facilitate evolution. At the Inferno Pender, for example.… She continued to surprise him with her sense of the possible, her belief in the future.
The conversation rolled on. He wasn’t even included.
Jeremy sipped his Bushmills and leaned back from the table. He let his eyes drift along the length of Margaret and Olli’s loft, the sound of their voices discussing the issues surrounding his situation filling his ears. He took in the proud size of the place, the brightly lit cityscape. He let his eyes follow the vestigial crane tracks still hung on the roof. He followed these back to the loft railing. And as he traced his eyes along this structure, his unfocused gaze snagged on a small irregularity at the smooth, stainless steel rail.
It was Trout. He was staring down from above, eyes locked on Jeremy.
It made Jeremy start. It brought him forward in the chair, like he had been pushed from behind. He returned his glass to the table with a cough.
“You OK?” Margaret said, reaching over to pat his back. Benny and Olli stopped talking and were also looking at him.
“Fine,” Jeremy said.
They resumed talking. Jeremy cracked another glance upward. Of course, his godson was gone.
When they were ready to leave, Olli made them wait while he ran into the kitchen, opened and shut cabinet doors. He found what he was looking for and returned to the hall.
It was a white mug with green embossing. A silhouette of a tree, with a single pear-shaped fruit and a coiled serpent at the base. Underneath the drawing, the words: Tree of Knowledge ’97. Yum Good.
“If there’s fruit to be eaten …,” Olli said to Jeremy, shaking his head.
“Eat it,” Jeremy finished.
Olli nodded, wide eyed, as if to say, What else?
Margaret and Benny had a sisterly hug. Then Benny drove him back across town into the West End.
They were parked on Haro Street in front of his building. She’d been up only once, and Jeremy thought it would be an excellent opportunity for a second visit, but she couldn’t. Early morning tomorrow at the Inferno Pender.
“You have an early morning too,” she reminded him.
“I’m gassing the morning service,” he said. “Opening at eleven. Focusing on dinner.”
She took this news in. “I’m glad,” she said finally.
“You have to move one way or the other,” he added, smiling just a little.
She nodded. They looked at each other for a few seconds.
“You think I need a new look,” he said, returning to the matter raised at dinner.
“Lose the cowboy boots,” she said.
“Hey, these are new.”
Benny became serious again. “Sure. There’s more you could do with the place. Lots more.”
“I feel like something is coming,” he said eve
ntually. “Something is about to happen.”
“Good or bad?” Benny asked him. She was looking at him calmly, her chin resting on her arms, which were crossed on the steering wheel.
He wanted to tell her about Trout, about the Professor. Trout at the top of the box, at the rail, fixed on him and waiting. The Professor in his tent, in his corner of a strange land. Also waiting. Waiting for his next move, anticipating his next action. About how these thoughts filled him with a sense of the future.
But in the end he only said, “I don’t know. Good, I hope, or good ultimately.”
She smiled as if she had arrived at this conclusion already and enjoyed him catching up to her.
THE HELP FUNCTION
Wednesday was the turning point. A nadir for Jeremy, even in the most confident frame of mind. As a chef, he was inverted within each working day relative to the norm, starting slow and ending very loud and very late. But his whole week was also upside down. Mondays they were closed; a hungover Jeremy typically slept in. Tuesdays were low-key, foodie nights, when they were lucky enough to get them. By Wednesday the weekend was already looming—walk-in nights, money nights. The future seemed to hinge on Wednesday, and so Jeremy didn’t coast down to the weekend from Wednesday like the rest of the world. He struggled up.
The second Wednesday in an otherwise upbeat July was tougher than usual. Despite a fully blooming Vancouver summer—business ticking along in the heat—Jeremy had a message on his home voice-mail from American Express. Somebody named Derek, who didn’t state the reason for the call, only said: We’d like to talk to you at your earliest convenience, Mr. Papier … He hadn’t even received his Amex bill.
Disturbed, but certain he had done nothing wrong, he ignored it.
Dante called the next morning. Just catching up, he said, although Dante was a conversational heat-seeking missile. Within a few minutes Jeremy realized they had segued from talking about Chicago to talking about The Paw, about business volumes, and then—literally at the moment she walked through the door—they were talking about Jules Capelli.
“You just don’t understand,” he was saying to Dante as she burst into the kitchen, her expression typically sunny.
Dante laughed and took the cell phone away from his ear. “I don’t understand,” he said, talking to someone off-line. Then quietly, mouth now very close to the phone, close to Jeremy’s ear: “I think I understand that I’m offering you help, yes?”
Jules wasn’t waiting for him to get off the phone, exactly; she was beginning the prep routine. But she turned and said hello, and he fussed with things on his desk and pretended to look something up in the phone book, until she finally said, “Who doesn’t understand what?”
“Oh, you know,” Jeremy said, thinking. “Xiang is putting us back on cash again.”
“I see,” Jules said, wondering why he was lying to her, and about what in that case.
It wasn’t a complete lie, in fact. Xiang did put them on cash the previous week. Jeremy had been looking for value, cutting corners, even jeopardizing what they were trying to do with his efficiencies. It hadn’t been a great year for wild sockeye, prices were up at the market and farmed Chilean salmon finally made it into the seafood risotto. It didn’t taste bad, exactly; it just didn’t taste right. He was adjusting seasonings when the reason came to him. A fish pen up the coast from Santiago might as well be up the coast from Osaka or Vladivostock or Campbell River. The fish in such a pen lived independent of geography, food chain or ecosystem. These salmon were perfectly commodified as a result, immune to the restrictions of place. There was no where that these fish were from. And to what end had he made this critical sacrifice, made this culinarily homeless risotto that no amount of saffron butter would resurrect? He had still managed to bounce a cheque. He was paying more in credit card interest than he was in rent to Blaze Properties, and he somehow … well, it happened: A lousy thirty-eight-dollar cheque for potatoes and onions bounced, and Xiang was mad at him. He put them back on cash.
He wondered if Jules was now angry with him too. Or worse, fearful of their future. Her voice had been edged with vulnerability. He knew that he held some key ingredients for their joint future and was himself scared by nothing more than the thought that he could misuse these ingredients and hurt her. She loved this place that they had built together. She had poured her tender intensity into it, and through it into him. There was intimacy in that, intimacy that could be betrayed. They both knew it, although Jules remained outwardly unshakeable. In fact, she chose that moment to suggest that Jeremy cease comping the assiette du fromage to even the Last Chapter folks or their most regular foodies, even if they had just polished off the most expensive dinner/wine/dessert combination on the menu.
“It’s a bit rookie, isn’t it?” Jules said. “A bit eager.”
All things considered, he didn’t mind the suggestion. And after they were finished a very slow Wednesday evening, with far less kitchen chat than they normally enjoyed, he yielded to temptation and went and drank enough Irish whiskeys at the Marine Club to have a hangover on Thursday. He didn’t really remember getting home, but he must have fumbled his keys into the tiny keyhole of his aluminum mailbox because—standing blearily in front of his bathroom mirror holding a mug of coffee the next morning—there was a letter taped to his mirror, unopened.
He looked at it stupidly, letting the coffee do its faithful work and burn a tiny hole down through the middle of his sensory constitution like drain cleaner. It had the return address Simms, Brine and Lothar in Toronto, which rang no bells. He pulled it off the mirror and hefted it in his free hand. One sheet, maybe two. He put it down again nervously.
He punched up voice mail instead, stalling.
You have [pause] five messages. Nellie the computer-generated voice-mail matron sounded remonstrative about such a middling number of messages. One new message meant: Someone out there wants to talk to you, be happy! Five were enough to imply you weren’t staying on top of things. He once heard her say fifteen. Totally different again. She sounded astonished, impressed. She sounded like she wanted to meet him.
Margaret. Benny.
Derek.
Hello, Mr. Papier. Derek at American Express Cardholder Services calling again. I would really appreciate it if you returned this call when you got in.…
He had to put the coffee down, but he still found it in himself to delete the message.
His father had phoned twice.
Jeremy. It’s your father. There was a long pause, and despite a screeching bird in the background the Professor’s silence cut the recording off. He phoned back. Can you spare yourself? I had hoped … ehem … well … Listen. How about at the lagoon, Wednesday week? Late is fine. You work until one, two o’clock, I think. Yes, all right then.… Let’s say two.
Babes in the Wood research, Jeremy thought. Like I have time.
After he’d showered, his head cleared a bit. He dressed, pulled on his cowboy boots and went out. He waited at the elevator and listened as, back down the hall, his phone began to ring. Perfect. The elevator was coming. It dinged open in front of him.
They really wanted to talk to him, didn’t they? he thought.
“Hello?” he said, out of breath.
“Mr. Jeremy Papier?” A voice that made it immediately clear he should not have taken the call. “Doug Acer, calling from Simms, Brine and Lothar. We’re representing Canadian Tire in their claim of … what is it? Well, I guess you owe them three thousand bucks or something. You’ve received our letter, Mr. Papier?”
Jeremy’s eyes fell to the envelope now lying on the coffee table.
“Just a friendly call. I wondered if we could settle this thing up? It’s Jeremy, right?” the lawyer said.
Jeremy agreed that it was, sinking down into the couch as he spoke. His face rested on the phone and the open palm of his other hand.
“We can go two different ways on this one, Jeremy,” Acer was saying, a discernible edge of meanness in the voice. Acer
was bored mean, thought Jeremy. Twenty-five years old, just finished articling. Acer’s Wednesday was a zenith, and he was looking down from the peak of his week into the delicious trough of his after-work drinks on Friday and saying, “.so basically, we can pay this thing up right now or go to court, which is kind of a waste of everybody’s time, don’t you think?”
Jeremy was silent.
“Do you have a lawyer, Jeremy?” Acer asked him. “Should I be talking to your lawyer?”
Now Acer went quiet and waited.
“I’ll pay,” Jeremy said.
He could hear Acer sit up. “Certified cheque.”
“It won’t be certified,” Jeremy said. “I’ll mail you a regular cheque.”
“All right, all right,” Acer said. “So, we have some interest at 28.8 percent per annum. Let’s say four thousand dollars with fees.”
Jeremy was awake now, if nothing else. He was thinking through the ways he might swing it. Some combination of advances. He could see fifteen hundred dollars, maybe—two thousand tops—by month end.
“Sooner is good, later is bad,” Acer said. “How about today?”
Jeremy wrote the cheque with Acer still on the line. He addressed and sealed shut the envelope after hanging up, and was just about to leave for The Paw, get on with his day (ideas for dinner were already forming) when he grabbed the phone again.
“Mother’s maiden name, please,” the Amex woman said.
He told her.
“Just a moment, please.”
Out towards the park Jeremy could pick up the movement of people down the paths that funnelled into the West End. Slow moving twos and threes and ones, emerging from the forest to enter the daytime and the city. To comb the dumpsters, to hope their hopes, to string together their moments as best they could.
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