The All You Can Dream Buffet

by Barbara O'Neal

  The air was soft and cool. Ruby slid her feet into a pair of waiting flip-flops, took the key to the trailer from a hook by the door, and stepped down, turning her head up to look at the unclouded dark sky, lit by millions—no billions!—of stars. The Milky Way swayed down the middle. The moon hung low to the west. Wonder swirled through her.

  And hunger. She was absolutely starving, her imagination dancing with visions of bread and sun-dried tomatoes, or maybe some fruit, or maybe even more than that. Maybe she wanted to cook and play and enjoy this beautiful moment, with her baby in her belly and the stars shining and night like an enchanted cloak over the land.

  She pulled open the screen door to unlock the trailer and stepped up, turning on the light by the door. Gleaming stainless steel greeted her—all the accoutrements of a professional kitchen, only mini-size. She and her dad had scoured the city and the Internet to get the fittings just right. The base was a 1968 Airstream Bambi, easily hauled by her camper.

  With a loan from her father, Ruby had the trailer gutted, the axles and floors redone, and all the minor refurbishments for the frame completed. Then her father jumped in. He fancied himself good at most creative tasks and loved helping her find efficient ways of refitting the trailer. He was the one who’d found the storage units with shelves that slid out. He found the stove, a six-burner in a miniature size, from a company in Europe, and helped choose the materials for interior safety and beauty. There was a double oven, since vegan baking was all the rage these days, and a bank of refrigeration along the back, divided into sections for energy efficiency, so Ruby could run some or all at a given moment. At the other end were a table and two bench seats, where she could sit to prep food.

  On a long shelf over the pass-through window was her collection of cookbooks. Tonight she reached for a favorite, Moosewood, spattered and waffled with use, and flipped through it for ideas, testing her body for what it wanted. Which also had to correspond with what ingredients might be available in the cupboards. She’d stocked up on the staples—pastas and nuts, dozens of spices and herbs, grains, flours, dry and canned beans, and bouillon. The fridge was nearly empty, since she’d planned to shop when she arrived, just to keep the weight down in the trailer. There was a large carton of soy milk and some fresh parsley and her ever-present lemons, onions, and garlic. She let her imagination swim toward what she wanted, seeing fettuccine, garlic … cashew cream. Just right. She began to hum to herself.

  There were a few luxurious items her father had installed to surprise her. One was a dock for her iPhone, which he paid for so they could say in touch. She plugged it in and pulled up a playlist she’d been adding to for years, then slid the volume down low. Glancing out the open door to the farm beyond, she clicked it down another notch. The chickens were probably sleeping.

  The other luxury item her father had installed was a restaurant-grade food processor fitted into its own cabinet for safety. She slid it out and assembled the bowl and blades. Even preparing to cook settled something in her, and she felt tension slide away, down from her neck and shoulders, through her spine, into the floor. A breeze blew in through the door, ruffling her hair.

  Cooking had been her refuge for nearly as long as she could remember. She’d begun with cookies and cakes as a child, then moved to main dishes. When it was time to go to college, she knew she wanted only to study cooking at a respected vegan school. There were not that many. She headed for New York and studied vegetarian cuisine, trying to find a way into the industry in the city.

  She poured two cups of cashews into a small saucepan and brought them to a boil for three minutes. It wasn’t the ideal method—it would have been better to soak the nuts overnight—but she was hungry now.

  Into the food processor she poured the nuts and a little more water. The recipe was something that always made her think of Liam, and she’d been avoiding it for that reason. But she couldn’t avoid it forever. Tonight her body ached for the creamy goodness, the sense of comfort that fat and solid carbs lent.

  She’d met Liam at the Green Table, a high-end vegan restaurant on the trendy Lower East Side. The chef, Kevin Morrell, had studied with Alice Waters and a handful of other sustainable-food advocates and had won a cooking show, which gave him the cash he needed to open a restaurant the right way. The food was entirely vegan, entirely perfect, but from a work perspective Kevin was known for his intensity. Liam was his sous chef, as calm as Kev was fiery.

  The first time Ruby had seen Liam, he was peeling curls of carrot into a bowl. He worked cleanly, quickly, and he was whistling to himself. His hands were works of art, long and powerful and impeccably clean, the fingernails perfect ovals. The skin was tanned, and his wrists were covered with golden hair. She wanted to paint those hands—they made her think of a monk cooking in some medieval monastery, an idea that seemed ridiculous considering she’d never even been to Europe, so how would she know what that looked like? But it was clear, the picture: Liam in a rough brown robe, his sleeves rolled back on his forearms, herbs hanging to dry behind him, a skinned rabbit on the wooden table beside the cutting board.

  It made her dizzy. She even smelled the dill and the blood. She was wondering how she, the lifelong vegan, would know that skinned animal was rabbit, when he caught sight of her. “Hey,” he said in his low voice. “You must be Ruby.”

  She looked up, still feeling disoriented, and was snared in his pale-green eyes. She fell in love just that fast, at first sight. It was as if she’d known him forever, as if she only had to remember his name. Her heart did not beat faster, but it filled with a sensation like sunlight, like music.

  He gave her a quizzical expression. “Where do I know you from?”

  A laugh fizzed right up through her throat. “I don’t know! The fourteenth century?”

  He gazed at her for a long time, looking at her eyes and mouth and breasts, and that giddiness danced through her. If she could have, she would have kissed him right then, right there, but she would wait for him to realize they were in love.

  Which he did, by the end of the day. It was fast and clear, their beginning. He brought her to his tiny rooms over a nightclub that sent pulses of sound and beat through the floor, and they made love all night, barely pausing to eat. It was as magical as anything she had ever known in her life. By the end of the month, they found an apartment together and were inseparable for six years.

  In her food trailer in the middle of the night, Ruby boiled water for fettuccine and chopped onions and garlic to brown in olive oil. The scent filled the air.

  Liam, Liam, Liam. Her monkish lover. That part had proved to be achingly all too true. He was sometimes difficult to live with, hard to please in his shunning of pleasures. He gave up wine or bread. He fasted. He ran, for miles and miles and miles. He sometimes would not make love because he was giving that up for a stretch.

  But he loved her as insanely, as possessively, as unmistakably, as it was possible for a man to love a woman. That was one of the things she loved most about him—his fierceness, his intense passion when he let himself go, his undeniable, romantic, jealous love. He hated when other men looked at her, always feared one would catch her eye. He worried that he was too old for her, twenty-eight to her twenty when they met. He worried that she would drift away.

  Nine months ago, he had announced out of nowhere that he was leaving. He moved out of their apartment into the apartment of another woman. Ruby had been absolutely shell-shocked. It made no sense. It was anti-sense. She’d had no inkling whatsoever.

  Whatsoever.

  She’d been a nutcase, sure there was some mistake, that he would come to his senses, that something was playing out on a karmic level, maybe, and he’d come back. They were working together still, and he sometimes seemed as if he could not resist her—taking her in the walk-in, fiercely, or as if he was angry. She allowed it, gave in to it, hoping something would jolt him, wake him up to the reality of their union. Once, breathing hard after they fucked in the tiny service bathroom dow
nstairs, she put his hands on her face and held them there. “It’s me,” she said. “Me.”

  He kissed her so hard it was like a punch, then ran away.

  The whole thing began to take its toll on Ruby. Her friends started worrying about how much weight she’d lost, how much she was drinking, how—well, how badly she was falling apart. She was their rock. They tried to be hers in return.

  At last she’d found enough courage to leave the job and ask her dad if she could head back to San Francisco for a little while, just until she got her head together. Paul Zarlingo was an eccentric, an inventor who’d made millions on an invention during the dot-com boom. He spent his days puttering around his glass-fronted oceanfront mansion, inventing all kinds of things. He had patents on more than seventy inventions.

  Of course, Paul told her to come home. Ruby packed up her life in the apartment she’d shared with Liam for six years and cried her eyes out. He was supposed to pick up his things after she left, then turn the keys back to the landlord, but he showed up early.

  Ruby had built up some resistance, but not as much as she wanted. He stood in the doorway, his pale eyes blazing. There were blue shadows beneath them, as if he had not slept for days, and she felt a pain go through her. “Why is this happening?” she asked, breaking again.

  He pushed into the room and held her. “Don’t cry, Ruby,” he said. “Please don’t cry. I’m so sorry. I can’t explain, but it has to be this way.”

  She hit him then, the only time in her life she’d ever hit anyone. She slammed her fist right into his ear and cried out when he grabbed her wrists and yanked her to him, and they kissed so hard, banging teeth and lips, that her mouth bled and was bruised for days after. They fell to the bare wooden floor and fucked right there in the middle of the empty apartment. Her back was burned from the intensity of it, and his knee was bleeding by the time they were finished. Her shoulder showed a bruise where he’d bitten her, and he had a bloody hickey on his neck and long scratches down his back.

  Without a word, he stood up, put on his clothes, and left.

  Now, at the lavender farm in the middle of the night, Ruby gently stirred fettuccine, those loveliest of long noodles, into boiling water. She put her hand over her tummy, which rose in a softer arch than she had expected, a pillow tucked beneath her apron. Conceived in fury, in anger, but nonetheless conceived.

  A miracle. Against all odds, she was carrying a child. She had not let them tell her yet whether it was a boy or a girl. Maybe she wouldn’t ever let them tell her, and it would be a surprise. Not very practical but fun.

  When the pasta was finished, she tossed it with sun-dried tomatoes soaked in herbed oil and white beans sautéed with onions and garlic, and sprinkled it all with coarse grains of cracked pepper and Himalayan salt, then poured the cashew cream over it, stirring it all together. Some greens—spinach or kale or collards—would have added the right note of earthiness, but this was great. Brilliant, even. She took off her apron and settled in the open door with the plate in her lap.

  She inhaled, then tasted her creation and sighed with happiness. Overhead, the Milky Way still shone. The moon had moved toward the horizon, illuminating a stand of trees. An animal skittered through the bushes close by, then peeked out through the leaves. Only its bright eyes floated in the dark. Ruby took another bite, watching.

  The animal slid from the cover of leaves and slunk toward her, body close to the ground. A cat, Ruby realized, and the muscles in the back of her neck let go. “Hey, kitty. Want some?” She tossed a tidbit on the ground. After a minute, the cat crept forward and sniffed it.

  “No good, huh?” Ruby said, and smiled. The animal, a very small black cat with a blaze of white down its chest and white paws, settled a few feet away, perfectly calm, and watched with round yellow eyes. “I guess cats like a little more blood.”

  Ruby tossed some more food on the ground and nonchalantly continued to eat her pasta. The kitten crept forward a quarter inch at a time, until close enough to sniff, then carefully lapped up a bit of the food.

  It was then, as she contentedly shared the night sky with a tiny cat, that Ruby felt the baby move. At first she didn’t realize what it was, and then it came again, a fluttering, then a longer swooping sensation through her middle. In wonder, she curled a hand over the spot, but she couldn’t feel outside what she felt from the inside.

  “Hi, baby,” she said. “I am so glad you’re here.”

  When she looked up, the kitten had disappeared, but it didn’t matter. The night was filled with wonders. Stars and food and babies moving.

  “Wow,” she said, looking up toward the sky. And again, “Wow.”

  From the woods nearby came a snuffling sound, and a growl, and a scuffle. Ruby stood up, peering into the blackness, fearing for the kitten’s life. The cat shot out of the trees, racing right toward her, and past her, into the trailer. Another animal followed on the cat’s heels, a ragged-looking dog that halted, head down, eyes glowing, when it spied Ruby.

  Ruby froze, the food in her hand. It was not a dog. It was a coyote, with a gold ruff and a long tail and nose. It stared at her for what seemed like years, then abruptly turned and loped into the cover of the forest.

  Ruby looked behind her. The kitten crouched beneath the little table, eyes wide with fear, hair puffed out to double its previous size. Moving excruciatingly slowly, Ruby stepped into the kitchen and closed the screen door behind her. “It’s okay, sweetie. I promise. You can stay here for tonight. You don’t want to go back out there with that guy, for sure.”

  When Ruby approached, the kitten hissed, backing up as far into the corner as possible. “Okay,” Ruby said, raising her hands in surrender. “I won’t touch you.” She sat down on the floor in front of the stove and carefully pulled the dish towel down from the hook by the sink. She ruffled up the fabric a bit, then put it on the floor. She wished she had some food a cat would like.

  After a while, with Ruby sitting there cross-legged on the floor, the cat settled into a more comfortable position, paws tucked toward its chest, eyes starting to slant closed.

  Ruby yawned. She stretched out on the floor, tummy full, and closed her eyes for just a minute. Across her imagination drifted Ginny’s itinerary. Where was she now?

  Chapter 7

  As Ginny got back on the road after the stop in Rocky Ford, her belly was full of potato salad and fried chicken and pieces of three of her own cakes—one of which was the Black Forest cake that was one of her early hits, a version that took out a lot of the sugar in order to showcase the cherries. It was the one she’d chosen to shoot, asking if she could move it to the counter where indirect light flooded in from a skylight. She also shot group photos and many of the groaning table and set a timer so that she could stand with the others and have her photo taken with them. In the back of her mind, as she ate and talked and listened to the women tell stories of the blogs they’d have if they had one, and the books they’d read recently, and their own wishes for a good camera, Ginny composed a simple blog post.

  Her first from the road.

  As she headed down Highway 50, she felt triumphant and excited, rejuvenated for the last leg of her drive today. It was only five-thirty—plenty of time to get to Manitou before dark. She had a campground picked out, and tomorrow she’d spend the day exploring the little village and go to the top of Pikes Peak.

  She yawned, glanced in the rearview mirror at her home on wheels. Tonight she would sleep in it for the first time.

  The clouds caught her attention twenty minutes later. She glanced up at the mountains on the far horizon, thrilled that the landscape was changing. They were blue and sturdy against the western line of sky, but the tops were hidden in low dark clouds. She frowned.

  “Hold off until I get parked,” she said aloud. But she and the storm raced toward each other, and by the time she reached Pueblo, the sun—and the mountains—had disappeared. She wondered briefly if she ought to pull over, wait it out, but there was no wind,
no lightning, and Manitou was only another fifty miles or so, on I-25, a major highway. The radio warned of thunderstorms, but a traffic report said nothing about dangerous road conditions. No tornado watches.

  Just do it.

  She headed north, butterflies dancing. She was almost there! Her first leg done!

  Five minutes later, she drove into the rain. It was the most bizarre thing she’d seen on the road—on one side of the line, the highway was completely dry, and then she drove right into a heavy downpour complete with hail, so heavy it made the entire world dark and created a cacophony of sound, hammering on the roof and body of the car, sluicing off the Airstream behind her. Ginny put on her headlights and slowed down, her heart pounding as other cars rushed by, sending plumes of water arcing over her windshield.

  A midsize sedan whooshed by. She clutched the wheel so tightly that her hands ached, but she kept her speed at forty, no lower. Ahead of her was a pickup truck going roughly the same speed, and behind her was a little bug of a car, using the protection of the Airstream to stay on the road.

  Any minute now, she told herself, she would drive out of it.

  But mile after mile the rain poured, turning the highway into a river. The Airstream felt as if it weighed a billion unstable pounds, but there was no wind to speak of, so that was her own fear speaking.

  No fear. She chanted it to herself: No fear, no fear, no fear. Her shoulders began to ache, then burn with tension, and her neck hurt, and her eyes.

  When a rest stop appeared out of the gloom, Ginny aimed for it with tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t spare a hand to wipe them away, so she just let them flow, relief and terror mixing in some crazy combination as she pulled the car and Airstream into the big lot, along with a half dozen semitrucks and a couple dozen cars. The unceasing rain soaked her as she yanked her camera bag and purse from the seat, let Willow out, and they both dashed for the Airstream. She unlocked it, hustled them both inside, and sat down on the bed, shaking in reaction.