“Minnesota.”
“In the fancy vein, I liked mouton, but the Board thought the Rothschild wine people would sue. Classic and Anglo-American is what you need. Like breakfast cereal—the bestselling cereals, still, are almost all the brands from fifty, a hundred years ago. Cornflakes and raisin bran, Rice Krispies, Cheerios, Grape-Nuts. The classics, right?” Zip sits back. “The first choice, my big idea? It’s still a secret, George. Off the record. I’m trusting you. ‘Baby mutton.’ ” Zip grins proudly and evilly.
“Kind of like the young elderly.”
“It’s classic, ‘mutton.’ But ‘baby mutton’ is totally new and just a little sexy, right? Stylish.” He finishes the pink dregs of his champagne. “It’s a shame they don’t give fucking Pulitzers for this work, you know? Or a Nobel.” He pops a bocconcino in his mouth. “Did you know,” he says, chewing and pointing, “that mozzarella consumption in this country has quadrupled since Ronald Reagan was elected president? Quadrupled! A classic cheese for classic times.”
“People are not suddenly going to start calling lamb ‘baby mutton.’ They aren’t.”
“If the Board is clever enough and spends enough, people will, at the end of the day, yes they will. The girl who invited Francesca here, what do you call her?”
“Iris.”
“No, she’s your … what?”
“Assistant? Was—I just fired her.”
“And when you first went to ABC, the gorgeous Armenian girl who worked for you, Sabrina, what was she?”
“My assistant.”
“Your secretary, George. In 1985 you called her your secretary. And by 1990 you were calling her your administrative fucking assistant. The word ‘secretary’ doesn’t exist anymore! It’s been wiped away by marketing. Ninety-nine percent replaced by ‘assistant.’ What do you call black people?”
“Black people.”
“But African-American is halfway there, right? This country went from ‘nig-nog’ to ‘colored’ to ‘Negro’ to ‘black’ to ‘Afro-American’ and back to ‘black’ in, what, ten years?”
“Black people were never called ‘nig-nogs’ in America, Zip. And how is mozzarella classic? What, compared to Velveeta?”
“Fucking quibbler.”
George spots Francesca at the door. She is more blond than she was in Los Angeles, somehow more news, less MTV. He stares at her and cranes his neck an inch or two to get her attention.
“Okay,” Zip says. “A thousand dollars. April third, 2010: if ‘baby mutton’ isn’t on menus within, what, three blocks of this joint, you win.”
“Hi, is this really okay?” Francesca says, taking off her floor-length white down overcoat, even before George and Zip both nod and murmur ‘of course, yes, of course.’ She’s wearing a serious brown-and-green-striped suit. “Hi,” she says, putting out her hand to Zip, who stands. “I’m Francesca.”
“Hello. Zip Ingram.”
“I know you, don’t I?” she says, sitting down next to George on the banquette. “Didn’t you publish an autobiography last year that got all kinds of attention?”
“An autobiography, nicely put, yeah, that’s me.” On publication day the Times reported that Zip had plagiarized passages in Conceit: Memoir of a Postmodern Man from the autobiographies of Winston Churchill, Malcolm X, and Tammy Faye Bakker (“Haven’t you ever heard of sampling?” Zip responded at the time), but Zip meant to cause a ruckus anyway. He revealed, for instance, that his marriage to an Anglophilic socialite PBS producer (“You’ll forgive the triple redundancy”) was purely for green-card purposes; that he has used cocaine with relatives and employees of presidents in the White House during all of the last five administrations; that at one of the magazines where he worked the major celebrity profile subjects “literally got writer, photo, photo-caption, adjective, and adverb approval”; and that his boss at TVTVTV had wanted to tuck subliminal pro-Christian and pro-sugar messages into the channel’s programming. (TVTVTV was Zip’s idea: beamed onto video monitors mounted in locker rooms, Cub Scout den meetings, candy stores, and its own fleet of school buses, it runs nothing but paid promotional clips for TV shows aimed at children and teenagers.) Zip’s memoir was published as a downloadable computer file as well as a hardcover book, which enabled reviewers to scan and savage it with unprecedented effectiveness for its special tics and inconsistencies. One critic reported that Zip used the phrases “As I told Andy that night,” “wildly entertaining as well as a creative breakthrough,” and “at the end of the day” twenty-seven, twenty-nine, and sixty-seven times, respectively, and that six of the twenty-seven “Andy” conversations took place at events during 1988 and 1989, even though Warhol died in 1987. Zip lifts his fresh goblet of champagne and cassis toward Francesca and says, mock gallantly, “A toast to me, the first digital victim in the last year of the twentieth century.”
After a few minutes of flirty introductions and mutual flattery (“The scratch-and-sniff patch on your book jacket was excellent”; “I loved your covering the New Hampshire primary with Marilyn Manson”), Zip’s pack of bar acquaintances move to their banquette and the one next to them, and after more introductions by Zip—“Clarise, Wendy, Vespa (sorry, Vesto), Trevor; Francesca and George”—the seven of them become a de facto cocktail party. And Francesca, squeezed between George and Clarise on the narrow blue leather bench, gets down to business. She uses her résumé like a libretto, turning it into entertaining light conversation (“During my year at Columbia I got to be pals with Moynihan’s finance committee guy, and Russert used to work for Moynihan too, so …”). She demonstrates her savvy about news unrelated to Lauryn Hill or the Beastie Boys, first by analyzing the presidential nominating process (“I know next Tuesday is supposed to be the final slam dunk, but I think Gore may be sort of a Pennsylvanian, psychographically”), then by comparing today’s Mexican death squads to the Salvadoran death squads of the eighties (which gives her an opportunity to recite a shot-by-shot rundown of Part Three of George’s fifteen-year-old Wars Next Door).
Why do women, at least young and youngish women, always become a little prettier when they’re holding a big glass of red wine? She is talking, gesticulating with her free hand, occasionally touching his sleeve for emphasis. George has explained the show to her in detail, and now he is listening, nodding, catching Clarise and Vesto and other patrons repeatedly stealing looks at Francesca. Her intelligence and shrewdness impress him—for twenty minutes she lobbies for the Real Time job without quite seeming to lobby. “So,” Francesca says finally, “shall I send you tape? What do I need to do to convince you to make me one of the Reality anchors?” She sips her twelve-dollar glass of merlot, her foreplay finished.
“It’s called Real Time now.” Did Iris slip his original treatment for the show to Francesca’s agent too? Christ. “And yes, we’d really like to look at your tape.” The “we” is not entirely bogus, since Emily has been meeting with all the candidates too, but it does give him an out later, if they pass. And since he is interested, he uses like, which is a more serious verb than love. They’d have to make her use her last name. But would that be bad for the brand, her brand, like forcing Madonna to start calling herself Madonna Ciccone? No, he decides, it’s more like John Mellencamp dropping the “Cougar.” “I have a question.”
“Ask.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Mahoney.”
“Francesca Mahoney,” George pronounces, thinking: three-syllable first name, three-syllable last name, no first-syllable emphasis—if they hire her, Saddler will want to change it to Fran Markey. George might have to use Christiane Amanpour as his counterargument.
“Sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Your MTV contract is up soon?”
The bar is crowded now, and noisy, so instead of shouting she leans closer to answer. “June one. Their sixty-day renegotiation period is under way.” She pulls back, grins, and rolls her eyes. “Aren’t I pushy!”
“No, no. Informative.”
; She writes down her agent’s name on the back of her business card and hands it to George.
“William Morris,” he says.
She understands his implication. “I was a starlet my first year in New York, before I went back to J school.”
“You must have been a successful starlet if William Morris took you on.”
“I lucked into a Wrigley’s Spearmint commercial that ran about five million times. Which was my great thespian moment, and all because I could do the ‘Wrigley load’ so well.”
George shakes his head.
“You don’t know about the Wrigley load? They have this very specific, market-tested way that actors in their ads have to stick the gum in their mouths. It’s like a theological principle.” She grabs a bocconcino and strips a mozzarella strand off it. Then, flashing an extreme ad-girl smile, she turns her profile to George, puts her face close to his, tips her chin up, opens her mouth narrowly, and still grinning like a madwoman, quickly tips in the simulated stick of gum. They both laugh. “That,” she says, “is the Wrigley load.”
“Thanks for the demonstration.” It’s late; Rafaela leaves at seven-thirty; George gathers his briefcase and coat. “I’m really glad we had a chance to talk. You should definitely meet with my partner, Emily, in L.A.”
“I will. And I should leave too.” George gives a nice-meeting-you glance to Zip’s new pals and consents to a goodbye smooch from Zip.
“I’ll see you at your big soiree,” Zip says, “if not before.”
“Zip? What about chicken? People don’t have a problem ordering roast chicken and eating fried chicken, even though it’s the name of the animal.”
“Not a mammal,” Zip says briskly. He has obviously been through this many times. “It’s cute-mammal meat people need to call something else. Although I have a theory that ‘free-range’ was partly an attempt to assuage chicken-eating guilt. Goodbye—Francesca,” he says. “Night-night, George. Very chocolaty.”
“Entertaining guy,” Francesca says to George on the sidewalk.
Little asshole is what she probably means. “He is that,” George says. He knows that Zip, like Ben Gould, takes up a lot of the air in any room he occupies. He doesn’t spend a lot of time making apologies or defenses on their behalf (although with Zip, He saved my life in Nicaragua works well). People either get Ben and Zip, or they don’t, find them entertaining and full of life, or loud and off-putting. George’s loyalty is all the fiercer because they are so easy to dislike, as he realized only when Lizzie explained it to him as soon as she met Zip.
24
Her father sounded a little tired on the phone, but maybe that was really only in comparison to her, because she’s been so wired, full of post-Microsoft fizz. She probably should fly down to L.A. tomorrow night and then go home a day late. George would be cranky, in that passive-aggressive “Fine, Lizzie” way of his. If she ever manages to actually talk to George about it. The increasingly brief and brittle telephone recordings swapped back and forth, back and forth, have been tempered only a little by the faxes from Max and LuLu waiting under her hotel room door. The notes and drawings are so sweet they’re sad, the sadness welling up more when she calls and finds nobody home. Where is George? Where are the kids? He must have taken them all out to dinner.
“Zimbalist, for two,” she says. Alexi, who at every moment professes to know the hottest restaurant in every North American city that recognizes the concept of hot restaurants, has booked her and Buster Grin-spoon for dinner at a place called Captain Bridger’s Pacific Markethouse Lounge and Grill. The maître d’ is wearing a tight-fitting blue-and-black-striped jacket, which at first she reads as velvet. She now sees it’s synthetic fleece. “The reservation is for seven-thirty. I know I’m early.”
“Oh! That’s fine, Ms. Zimbalist!” The fellow seems to crouch in an effort to make himself shorter than Lizzie, and looks at her with a tiny hopeful smile, as if a big welcoming grin might strike her as presumptuous. “Would you like to settle into your table now? Or would you prefer to relax at the bar du vin with a complimentary glass? We have some very surprising Idaho Rieslings.” He is the human incarnation of modern customer service, scorched-earth pleasantness made flesh. Ms. Zimbalist elects to sit at the table. She doesn’t hate this.
Surrounded suddenly by so much copper and so much pretty old brick, Lizzie feels as if she’s stepped back into 1986. The restaurant is like Reagan-era Cambridge, or high-yuppie Columbus Avenue, full of diners in their thirties and forties with gray beards and no ties. Except here, now, they’re probably all multimillionaires—digital multimillionaires, at least on paper—who happen to look like $64,000-a-year Smollett scholars or $43,000 senior architects. It’s not so bad, Lizzie thinks, feeling twenty-one again, with the husband and children stashed a continent away for forty-eight hours. Looking out from her table at Elliott Bay (to which “excellent marine vista” the maître d’ commands she pay attention), she remembers being wowed by the view at dusk across New York Harbor from the River Café on her first serious date with George. No, that wasn’t George, that was her date with Ben Gould; she hadn’t met George yet.
“… using heirloom grains, and we truck in our own batch every week, fresh, from the brewstillery over in Spokane.”
She looks up at the greeter, and realizes that for at least half a minute he’s been reciting the names and provenances of obscure alcoholic beverages.
“May I tell you about our specialty martinis and premium tequilas?” he asks.
“I’ll just have a club soda, thanks.” She turns away to look at the bay. But she doesn’t hate this.
“I’ll bring you the Captain Bridger’s private-label brand. It’s really not half bad. Our special ragouts today—”
“Someone’s joining me.”
“Thank you, but that’s all right, I’ll be happy to repeat them. We have our ragout of baby Vietnamese eggplant, our ragout of hacked rabbit saddle (and that’s encircled by braised strips of the rabbit’s flank—excellent); our Olympic Peninsula Sierra Club—certified wild mushroom ragout; and I think we may have one more of the Pacific Markethouse ragouts of free-range north Oregon weasel, which is prepared tartare style, with white and cayenne peppers moistened by Burmese mustard; and the ragout of Dungeness crab.”
She’s starting to hate this. Doesn’t he need to get back to his post? The eighties time-warp experience is now total. Lizzie recalls her own intense and stupid excitement about trying exciting new dishes at exciting new restaurants, when going for the first time to Hubert’s or Arcadia or Chanterelle was like a combination of Broadway in the thirties (Let’s go see the new Kaufman and Hart …) and sex in the seventies ( … at Plato’s Retreat).
“Our Northwest shellfish species of the day are ceviche of Alaska weathervane scallops, and Dungeness crabs. The special vegetarian platter this evening is a salad of sesame-dewed daikon, sprouts of rapini and Walla Walla sweet onions garnished with cilantro aioli and flecks of rock salt accompanied by either a blend of squash, sweet potatoes, bean curd, tapioca, and cloud-ear mushrooms; or our parsnip and Granny Smith hash with peanuts, basil, lime, and tamarind served in lettuce wraps.”
He is not out of breath, probably because he runs and hikes long, kilometer-denominated distances every day. Or maybe because he spent a Seattle boyhood in training, reciting PC specs to his parents until they put him in foster care. He’s looking at her, eyes open wide, head tucked down a little, looking as if he wants a pat. “That’s quite a choice,” Lizzie says. “Thanks.”
“Oh! And today’s seafood entrée special, marinated in a local ale and grilled over applewood, is Dungeness crab. Served with a semi-vinaigrettized double-baked potato-prune gratin. And,” he says, evidently saving the best news for last, “I’m afraid we are out of the chicken sashimi.”
He goes, but thirty seconds later he’s back, leading a bearded man in a jumpsuit wearing a fanny pack. He is not fat but his belly is huge, like he’s got a Snugli with a two-year-old strapped on and zipper
ed up in there.
“Hi,” Buster Grinspoon says.
“Hello,” Lizzie says, offering her hand, which he shakes limply.
“You got Corona?” he asks the hovering maître d’.
“No,” the man says, almost as if Grinspoon were joking. “The Terminator is very nice.”
“You got Budweiser?”
“Hmmm … maybe I can get you an icy cold Hammerhead?”
“Water’s fine,” Grinspoon says, sitting.
“You like all this Pike—Pine Corridor shit?” he asks Lizzie. “I guess you’re staying around here.”
“Not far. Where do you live?” A single-occupancy room filled with junked Kaypros and Oui magazines? On a rusty cot in the lab, arms wrapped around a sawed-off shotgun?
“Over in Issaquah. It’s only twenty-eight minutes, door to door.”
“From Issaquah to U-Dub?”
“Sieg heil.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sieg Hall? The Comp Sci building at U-Dub. My former employers. Issaquah’s real nice. My place is too big for me, four thousand square feet, but it’s quiet. It’s right at the base of the mountains, which trap the weather moving in from over here, so it doesn’t get sunny much, which keeps too many assholes from moving in. Used to, anyway.”
Lizzie’s only friends in Seattle, two women she knew in college, are no doubt exactly the kinds of assholes Grinspoon means: one is a lawyer living in Kirkland, a suburb she understands to be Pelham crossed with Santa Monica, the other a graphic designer in Redmond, which is White Plains crossed with Encino. Unlike New York or Los Angeles, however, little stigma attaches to living in the suburbs. The contempt of the sophisticated takes other forms.
“I used to live in Kirkland,” Grinspoon continues, “but they were killing me.”
“Who?”
“First I got ticketed by the town for not weatherproofing my house enough. Not energy-saving. Okay. Then it was so tight, they made me pay to install fans that totally vented the place six times a day. Okay. Then when I fixed up my lawn and they nailed me for violating the indigenous-shrub protection ordinance, I couldn’t take it anymore. That’s actually what made my last relationship crash and burn.”
Turn of the Century Page 39