A puttana is an Italian whore, and in Italy whores have a somewhat more reputable standing than they do elsewhere. For centuries they’ve been glorified in both classic opera and popular song. Among their many noteworthy attributes, Italian whores are reputed to be responsible for the development of a much beloved pasta sauce, pasta puttanesca, a spicy and salty dish made with capers and anchovies. Its chief attraction, aside from its wonderful flavor, is that it can be prepared quickly—in other words, between clients.
Michael launches into a rendition of the “Drinking Song” from La Traviata, which he sings with wide, sweeping arm gestures, causing Renata to look around embarrassed. Michael isn’t drunk, just silly, relaxed, and in a good mood. He’s just landed a plum assignment, editing a book by the Berkeley cooperative responsible for improving the quality of California school lunches, which will mean lots of trips to Berkeley, several opportunities for meals at Chez Panisse, and even the prospect of a meeting with Alice Waters, who is a member of the co-op and one of Michael’s idols.
“More herring, anyone?” Michael says, raising the almost empty crock of smoked herring pâté we’ve ordered as an appetizer with our drinks. I shake my head. My impromptu trip to Il Vinaio has put a bit of a damper on my appetite, and I’ve ordered only an endive salad for dinner. Renata and Michael, on the other hand, have ordered half the menu, moules marinières for Renata and roasted potato and leek soup for Michael, then carbonnade à la flamande and chicken waterzooi, which they are planning to share.
Michael and Renata fill me in on the latest New York gossip until the starters arrive. Michael tastes his soup, pronounces it excellent, and offers Renata a spoonful, which he feeds to her, delicately holding his napkin under her chin as she sips. It is the type of intimate gesture, sweet and touching, that makes me slightly squeamish to watch.
“Oh, this is wonderful. Mira, you must try some. Michael, give her a taste.”
“So, Mira, what’s this about a new business venture?” Michael asks, offering me some soup.
“Jake’s grand plan to take over the restaurant world, you mean?” Renata pipes in. Michael shushes her.
“Well, I’m not exactly sure,” I tell them, wiping a trace of soup, which happens to be delicious, from my chin. “But from what I understand, a group of investors is interested in backing Jake in a multi-venue package that would encompass Grappa, Jake’s new enoteca, and a large restaurant venture in Vegas. They’re looking for some additional investors and have asked me to take over Grappa.”
“Wow, that’s pretty impressive,” Michael says, spreading some pâté on the heel of a baguette.
“Ill-advised, in my opinion,” Renata says. “I always knew Jake had an egomaniacal streak.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Lots of the big-name chefs are doing it.”
Michael says, “Mira’s right, and every one of them has been successful. There are some unsaturated markets out there; it makes good business sense to move now, while prices are depressed. Wait too long, and you could get shut out.”
“You want to know something?” Renata says, looking from me to Michael and shaking a butter knife. “Jake is not big-time.”
Even though she has just finished ranting about Nicola, Renata’s ire surprises me. “Since when are you so angry at Jake?” I ask.
“Mira,” Renata says, ignoring my comment, “what you loved about Grappa is the intimacy, the fact that you recognize the people you’re feeding. Cooking is an intimate act, or at least it should be. I shouldn’t need to remind you that the notion of the chain restaurant is not Italian.”
“Come on, Renata,” Michael says, leaning forward and wiping the remains of his soup with another piece of baguette. “We’re not necessarily talking Olive Garden here.”
“Feeding people and getting rich are two different things. One is a noble calling, the other pure gluttony,” Renata says.
“Look. No one is suggesting opening up an all-you-can-eat buffet. At least I don’t think they are. I guess I don’t really know,” I tell them, remembering the arrival of the FedEx man at my door Thursday afternoon bearing a first-class ticket to New York on USAir, a voucher for a suite at the Trump Soho, and an official-looking letter from the AEL Restaurant Syndicate inviting me to a meeting on Saturday morning. Beyond that I don’t know a single thing about these people, or their plans for this supposed restaurant syndicate.
“Besides, since when are getting rich and feeding people mutually exclusive?” Michael asks. “What Mira should be interested in is getting Grappa back. Everything else is incidental. If she gets rich in the process, so be it. Call it an occupational hazard.”
“Amen to that,” Renata says, raising her glass of Riesling. “And to our renewed business relationship,” she adds, turning to me. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I assume you will be needing my services once you are back in command at Grappa?” The waiter places a large plate of mussels in front of Renata, who immediately scoops a few onto my bread plate.
“Oh—of course, but wait a minute here—I’m not, I mean I haven’t committed to anything yet. The meeting isn’t until tomorrow. I’m not really in a position to—”
“Do me a favor,” Michael interrupts. “Just let us know how the meeting goes. It’s the kind of thing we might be able to throw a little capital toward, provided the returns look decent.”
Renata raises her eyebrows.
“You know I’ve always wanted to own a restaurant,” Michael says, turning sheepishly to Renata. “And besides, even you told me you thought it was a good idea.”
“Maybe so, maybe in the abstract it is, but Italians don’t do business with people they don’t like. And I don’t like Jake or that, that—cagna.”
“Down, girl,” Michael says, smiling. “I love that she’s so loyal,” Michael says to me, as he reaches over to pinch Renata’s cheek. “But if we don’t change the subject, my darling Renata will develop a good old case of l’agita. See,” he says, winking at me and turning to Renata, “I am learning something in that expensive school.”
Renata mumbles something in Italian that I don’t quite catch.
“So, Mira,” Michael continues, “tell us about Pittsburgh. Renata tells me you’re doing some writing? I didn’t know you had writing aspirations.” Even though I get the sense he’s just being polite, I’ve been dreading the question. Michael, after all, is a food editor. And because I’ve played up my role in the Pittsburgh newspaper world as part Bob Woodward, part Frank Bruni, I’m feeling, shall we say, a tad cornered.
“Well, it isn’t real writing. I mean, recipes are different. It’s more like just writing things down, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, but still, cranking out a weekly column isn’t easy.” Michael gives me an admiring look, and I don’t have the heart to tell him I’m really only developing and testing recipes and that, according to Enid Maxwell, I couldn’t write myself out of a paper bag.
“Are you going to keep doing it after you come back here?” Renata asks.
I hadn’t even thought about having to give up my column. Or where we’d live, or getting Chloe back into day care, which could take several months. I hadn’t thought about a lot of things. All, it seems, I had thought about was Grappa—and Jake—and not necessarily in that order. Suddenly the room feels too warm. I pick up my water glass and drain it in a couple of long, thirsty gulps; it’s instantly refilled by a hovering waiter.
“You know, there’s no reason you couldn’t try to get your column syndicated,” Michael says later, over dessert and coffee. “In fact, I think it’s a good idea. Didn’t you say this editor wants you to wake up those tired Pittsburgh taste buds? Mira, most home cooks—and not just in Pittsburgh—are intimidated by things professionals take for granted. They view cooking as a necessity and a chore. Take Renata here,” he says, patting her gently on the shoulder.
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean? I love to cook!” Renata says, slapping Michael’s hand as he reaches
for a bite of her lemon soufflé.
“Renata, my love, you are an assembler par excellence. You have impeccable food sense and you know where in New York to buy the freshest and best prepared food. In fact, no one can assemble a better meal than you. But when was the last time you actually cooked anything?”
“Divino,” Renata says, closing her eyes and tasting the soufflé. She drops a big spoonful onto my bread plate, resisting my halfhearted attempts to refuse. Turning to Michael, Renata says, “Why on earth would anyone cook when you can just come here and eat this?”
Michael smiles at her and says to me, “Why would anyone write anything after Hemingway, or compose a symphony after Beethoven, or paint a landscape after Turner? It isn’t necessarily about doing it better. It’s about doing it.”
“Michael, that isn’t what I meant. It’s just, why should I slave away in the kitchen when I can just come here and pay for someone really talented to do all the work while I enjoy the results?”
“Tell her, Mira,” Michael says, reaching back into Renata’s dish for another taste.
I know what Michael means. If someone told me that I could travel anywhere and eat anything I wanted, choosing, if I so desired, to eat only in Michelin-rated restaurants for the rest of my life, but the price for such a gourmand’s dream would be that I could never cook again, I’d turn it down without a moment’s hesitation. It’s about doing your best by a pile of mussels sweet from the sea, or holding a perfect tomato, warm, rosy, and smelling like summer, and knowing that there are a dozen ways that you can prepare it, each one a delicious homage. I look away, unable to answer Michael. Maybe it’s seeing Jake again, or being back in New York, or talking food while eating a great meal with people you care about; whatever it is, it’s been building since the instant I stepped off the plane at LaGuardia. Suddenly, I don’t know how I have been able to resist it all these months, the raging itch to be back in a kitchen.
I shake my head and stand up. Michael and Renata, spoons poised, look up at me. “I’ve got to go,” I tell them.
I grab my purse and deposit a kiss on each of their cheeks.
“Where are you going?” Renata calls after me.
“Michael’s right. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Before Chloe was born, Jake and I used to volunteer in a soup kitchen near St. Mark’s Place in the East Village on our days off. Mostly, the food we prepared was simple stuff, making a couple hundred peanut butter sandwiches at a clip, or dumping a dozen cans or bags of stuff into a twenty-gallon soup pot, using whatever was on hand in the kitchen to feed as many people as possible. It wasn’t the kind of thing that required any sort of culinary ingenuity or skill, but one look at the satisfied expressions on the faces of New York’s cold, hungry, and homeless come supper time on a winter’s night, and you would’ve thought we were Eric Ripert and Alain Ducasse dishing up homard thermidor.
The place is still there, and even though it’s after nine, there’s a line coming out the door. Despite the fact that it’s June and the days have been warmish, the impending chill of a late spring evening threatens, and the place is full of people looking for a decent meal and a full stomach to help fend off the cold and the damp. It’s been over a year since I’ve been here, but I enter through the alley door, don a stained and tattered apron, and join the volunteer cooks. “Yo, lady, long time no see,” says a man wearing paper slippers, whose name is Boulie, as he raises his fist to mine.
“Hey, Bo, how are you?” I say softly, touching my knuckles to his. “What do we need?”
“I got some sammiches going on over here, and we got a big casserole over there, needs some finishing. Jump on in,” Boulie tells me, wiping his hands on his apron and flashing me a smile. That’s how it is here. No one ever assumes anything or expects you to show up, but there’s always room for one more, and they’re always glad to see you.
Tonight the kitchen crew consists of Boulie, a couple of white kids sporting dreadlocks and wearing NYU tee shirts, and an older woman named Mary, whose hair is dyed an unnatural shade of aubergine. Mary is probably pushing eighty, although she’s taken some pains to conceal it. She smiles warmly at me when I show her how to chop the pile of old onions she’s busy working on. The trick is, I tell her, to keep the root intact, anchor the tip of the knife on the chopping block, and move only the back end of the blade. Her mouth widens into a big, round “O” revealing no teeth, just a mouth full of tender, pink gums the color of pencil erasers.
We work more or less silently, the two young kids and Boulie moving to the steady beat of reggae music piped in through a small, cheap boom box stained and spattered with tomato sauce. I set to work chopping several heads of wilted celery. The casserole Boulie mentioned is several pounds of graying, chopped meat, browning in an ancient cast iron skillet and halfheartedly tended by one of the two boys. I sauté the mound of celery, throw in some of Mary’s onions, and, a couple of carrots later, it’s approaching palatable. Because little here is ever fresh, the challenge is to make something out of the donated castoffs. When I was at Grappa we, like many other successful restaurateurs, had done our part, donating bread and rolls and leftovers, things we couldn’t recycle or sell, to the various soup kitchens around the city.
I wonder if Jake’s kept up this practice, and if Boulie knows whether or not he has. More likely, consistent with the philosophy of never having any expectations, nobody here knows, or cares, where any of this stuff even comes from. It is a challenge to serve a meal here, but no more so, I suppose, than it is to eat it.
After a couple of hours, my legs begin to ache, unaccustomed as I’ve become to standing so long on my feet. The knife slips and I slice my finger, a ragged cut made worse by the dull blade. “Shit!” I cry, looking around for the nearest kitchen towel to staunch the flow of blood, but seeing nothing, shove my finger in my mouth. Boulie comes over and, laying a hand on my arm, leads me to the first aid station.
“Come on, lady, take a load off,” he says, easing me into a plastic lawn chair. He dons a pair of latex gloves and crouches in front of me.
The taste of my own blood, gray and metallic, lingers in my mouth. Boulie swabs my finger with an alcohol wipe and brings it close to his face to examine the wound.
“This is some cut. On a regular person, this’d need a stitch,” he says solemnly, holding my hand carefully in both of his.
Boulie takes my cut hand and gently forces it upward. “Keep it up, stop the bleeding,” he says, standing to rummage in the first aid kit. “One of them butterfly bandages, that’s what I’m looking for.”
“What do you mean ‘a regular person’?” I ask.
“You a cook,” he says, opening the bandage and kneeling again at my feet. “Cooks is tough,” he says, leaning close to apply the bandage to my finger. “Look at these,” he says, reaching over to take both my hands in his. He turns them over and with one latex-sheathed finger traces a knife scar that runs between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand. And then, he edges the sleeve of my shirt an inch or so up my wrist, revealing the half dozen puffy red welts where I’d been spattered by the scalding milk a couple of days ago. Boulie takes off his gloves, tosses them into the wastebasket, and splays his fingers out in front of him, displaying his own large, scarred hands.
He stands and raises his apron to his face to wipe his brow. “Go on home. It’s close to midnight, and you shouldn’t get that finger damp. Give it a rest. Keep it up, know what I mean?” He gestures with his arm, raising it and patting the elbow.
“Thanks, Boulie,” I whisper, standing on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I’ll see you again.”
“I’ll be here. As long as people keep eating, I’ll keep cooking.”
chapter 29
The meeting, scheduled for 10:00 a.m., is being held in a private residence at Trump Soho, just upstairs from where I’m staying. I wake early and force myself to be content with the in-room coffee service until at least seven thirty when I can reasonably call Hop
e. I’m hoping she will invite me over to my old apartment for coffee, but there is no answer when I call. I’m considering going out to the Beanery, or one of my other favorite breakfast haunts in the West Village, but then think better of it; I’m not sure I trust my resolve to stay away from Grappa, should I be that close, and after the pain of Il Vinaio last night, I’m not sure I’m ready. So, I order breakfast from room service and sit in bed flipping channels, munching croissants, and making crumbs all over the six hundred–thread count Frette sheets, until it’s time to change into my J. Crew pantsuit and venture upstairs.
When I get off the elevator on the eleventh floor, I am immediately met by a tall blond woman wearing an expensive-looking sheath and sandals with five-inch heels the width of toothpicks. She greets me by name and ushers me through a door into a large, well-appointed living/dining suite. A long table is set with an enormous, oiled olive wood bowl filled with dozens of perfect looking green apples. A few fanned AEL brochures grace each end of the table. The sideboard is laid with a series of domed chafing dishes, cut crystal flutes, carafes of juices, and buckets of champagne. Without asking me, she pours me a glass of champagne, and then, hand poised over the selection of juices, she turns her megawatt smile my way and asks, “Bellini or Mimosa?”
Just then, the door at the far end of the room opens, and three men enter. Two men I don’t know, and Jake. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder if Jake would be here—or worse, Nicola—although I suppose it should have. For a second I look around frantically, fearing she may follow him through the open door, but she doesn’t. I reach for the flute. “Thanks, I’ll just have it straight up,” I tell her, taking the glass and downing a hefty sip as Jake and the two men advance upon me.
“Good to see you, Mira,” Jake says, extending his hand and not quite meeting my eye. As I reach for his hand, Jake pulls me toward him and kisses me perfunctorily, once on each cheek. His lips feel foreign, abrasive on my face. Gone is the instant familiarity. He looks older, tired, tight around the eyes. But the oddest thing about him is the way he’s dressed: pressed camel-hair trousers, a laundered white button-down, a beautiful cashmere sweater the color of a ripe cantaloupe, and a pair of well-shined Italian loafers. In fact, all three of them look as if they’ve stepped out of the pages of the Sunday Times Men’s Wear section, dashingly rumpled. The Jake I know is just rumpled—hold the dashing.
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