Save Me the Plums

by Ruth Reichl

  “Mustafa.” I inhaled and took a giant step into this new world. “Can you pick me up tomorrow and drive me to work?” I was just a visitor, a temporary passenger on the Condé Nast Express, but I might as well enjoy the ride every once in a while.

  In the mirror, Mustafa grinned, grateful I’d gotten his message. “It will be my pleasure.”

  DOM PÉRIGNON IS NOT THE ideal way to greet a new country when you’ve been flying all night.

  I know that.

  Still, when the driver who picks me up at Charles de Gaulle takes me straight to lunch at Pierre Gagnaire, I do not refuse the crystal flute the waiter hands me. I watch the bubbles drift lazily to the top, inhale that fine aroma—grapes, yeast, and age—and take a sip. Pow! The champagne zooms straight to my head.

  A crimson sorbet arrives cradled in a small glass dish. I dip in a spoon and a tumble of tomatoes, herbs, and horseradish, terrible in its cold tartness, assaults my mouth. The sorbet buzzes against my tongue, shocking me into the moment. One more bite, and I am experiencing the food with psychedelic intensity.

  A tiny onion tart, no bigger than a fingernail, is crowned with a single bright nasturtium; I stare at the blossom, thinking this the most beautiful food I have ever encountered. Airy puffs of pastry enfold bits of fish and slices of caramelized apples that crunch and crackle merrily inside my head. Adorable shrimp dumplings nestle into leaves of lettuce, the sweet pink meat peeking shyly from each jade wrapper. The flavor is delicate, tender, and so seductive I want to keep it in my mouth forever.

  But then I lift my glass and take a sip of cool white burgundy; the Corton-Charlemagne is so pure I imagine water trickling down a mountainside. I take another sip, and then another, of this gorgeous, heady wine.

  Gagnaire’s tribute to surf and turf arrives: delicate black caviar, pressed into a thick, fruity saline jam paired with foie gras that’s been transformed into a trembling, almost liquid substance. I close my eyes and feel the flavors somersaulting through my mouth, a circus of sensations.

  This is not my first major Paris meal. But it is my first as a civilian, the first time in my life I’ve dined in a three-star restaurant without standing back to appraise, consider, the first time I take not a single note. For once it is pure pleasure, and I find the experience intoxicating.

  Lacquered duck skin with shiitake. Lièvre à la royale, the most decadent hare, served in three courses. And finally a cascade of desserts ending with a single prune stuffed with licorice root in a bitter sauce of caramel and quince. The insane flavors linger in my mouth, a tantalizing welcome to Paris.

  Outside in the sweetly scented autumn air, the chauffeur is waiting. I climb into my car, dizzy with the meal, and float into my room.

  But this is no room; the palatial suite at Le Meurice is filled with flowers, and down below the Tuileries spread out, glowing in the dusky late-afternoon light. “My own private garden,” I think, and it is such a Marie Antoinette moment that I laugh out loud when I spy the cake on a little footed dish, the champagne cooling in its silver urn.

  The bathroom is voluptuous, with its marble bath. Water gushes into the tub, and I toss in the perfumed salts and climb into water slick as glycerine. Leaning back, I savor the warmth, the space, the luxury. Then, wrapped in fluffy towels, I glide onto a bed that is like a huge soft cloud and go drifting off.

  I was surprised when Larry signed off on the special Paris issue. “Paris sells,” he’d said, “and I predict that this one will sell extremely well.” (He was, as usual, right: The bestselling issue in Gourmet’s history, Paris sold out so completely that months later people were still calling, begging for copies.) Through some arcane accounting magic, Larry found the money to send most of the editorial staff to Paris. “It will be good for morale,” he said, “and it won’t cost significantly more than paying freelancers.”

  We travel in true Condé Nast style, staying at the city’s finest hotels (although in the name of research we change hotels every night), testing the beds, the bathrooms, the service. Sertl forces us all to be guests from hell, dreaming up wicked tasks for the concierges. How quickly can they get a blouse cleaned, arrange a car, send flowers to an ailing friend? The cooks rent a giant apartment on the Île Saint-Louis with a kitchen overlooking the Seine and spend their days in markets, their nights replicating our favorite restaurant dishes. We work hard, but the sheer luxury makes us all slightly giddy.

  This is a face of Paris I have never seen. Limousines chauffeur us from one three-star restaurant to another, and at night we meet for drinks at the Ritz. Money is no object; anything is possible. We start the day at L’Huîtrier, where we down oysters by the dozen, and then head to Barthélémy to munch our way through mountains of exquisite cheese.

  On a manic shopping spree at the great kitchenware emporium E.Dehillerin, we load up on copper pots, Silpat molds (still unknown in the States), and jacquard kitchen towels by the dozens. I interview young chefs, get drunk with winemakers, and spend an entire afternoon at the Louvre, genuflecting before the paintings of Chardin. No artist ever had a more romantic relationship with food—or with his native city. The artist loved Paris so intensely he refused to set foot outside its gates, and on my last day I stand alone before his paintings, knowing exactly how he felt.

  Afterward, I wander through crooked streets until I find myself in front of an elegant vintage clothing shop called La Petite Robe Noire. The place looks so forbiddingly chic that I hesitate to enter. Inside, a woman, her black hair cut into a Louise Brooks bob, caresses a small white dog. She looks up, catches my eye, and waves me imperiously in.

  “I have the perfect dress for you.” She lifts a cloud of black lace from a hanger. “It is a wonder. It is from Saint Laurent’s second collection for Dior in 1959.”

  Cradling the armful of froth, she leads me to a corner of the shop roped off in black velvet and waits as I remove my clothes. As she slowly lowers the dress over my head, I notice a label sewn inside: “Severine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She produces a very Gallic shrug. “Who can say? Perhaps it is the name of the woman who owned the dress.” She tugs the bodice, patting it gently like a beloved pet. “Don’t look!” she commands.

  As she meticulously closes each tiny hook, the dress enfolds me, until it is hugging my body like a lover. On her knees now, she finishes closing the dozens of hooks; this odd ritual seems to go on and on. At last she stands, tugging at the skirt, fluffing it a bit.

  “This dress was meant for you. It is perfect.” She leads me into the light and turns me, very slowly, to face the mirror.

  I have been transformed. The woman in the glass is voluptuous, with curves in places I have never had them. A dress can do this? This person is glamorous. Elegant. She is Maria Callas. Paloma Picasso. Severine.

  “You’ll take it, of course.” It is not a question.

  I have never wanted anything so much as to be the woman in the mirror. Of course I’ll take it. “How much does it cost?”

  She waves a hand as if this is of no moment. “Let me negotiate with the proprietor of the shop.” She goes to the desk, picks up the phone. “I assure you,” she says in French, “this dress was meant for her!”

  There is a silence. At last she gives an ecstatic cry. “Merci, Didier, merci, merci.” Turning to me, she says, “He has agreed to take two thousand francs off the price! Your dress is only fifty thousand francs.”

  I nod, too dazed to do the calculation. And then I comprehend what she has said. “Sixty-five hundred dollars?”

  For one wild moment I actually consider how I might pull off such an acquisition. But it is, of course, absurd. The woman is so disappointed that she takes her time releasing me, clearly hoping I will glance into the mirror and change my mind. The minutes crawl silently by. Finally her fingers separate the last hook from its eye, and I can step out of this amazing and imposs
ible dress. I attempt an apology: “This dress belongs in a museum.”

  “Oh, no!” She gathers the dress to her bosom as if trying to console it. “Clothes were meant to be worn. And this dress was meant to be worn by you! You must reconsider.” She presses her card into my hand. “You will”—she looks deeply in my eyes—“forever regret it if you leave Paris without this dress. Think about it.”

  I can’t stop thinking about the dress. And then I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I am thinking about it. If I don’t buy the dress, I give up the woman I was in the mirror. If I do buy it, I become a woman who spends thousands of dollars on a dress. There is no middle ground.

  Suddenly I know exactly what I need to do.

  * * *

  —

  THE NIGHT IS damp, the streets misty and dreamlike. Rain has dappled the sidewalk with puddles that capture the lights of Paris in beautiful blurs of color. Nobody else is out, and I walk among the ancient buildings in a profound and satisfying silence until I reach the entrance of a small emporium.

  I was seventeen the first time I came to Paris by myself. I rented a room in an austere pension near the Gare de Lyon run by the world’s most suspicious landlady. Cabbage boiled endlessly in her small kitchen, and the sour smell pervaded the halls. I spent my days wandering the fancy food shops of Paris, gazing wistfully into Fauchon, Maison de la Truffe, Ladurée, and Androuet. But it was Caviar Kaspia that captured my imagination, and I began to save my francs.

  At lunch I limited myself to bread and cheese. Nights I dined at a student cafeteria. When I had enough for a meal at Caviar Kaspia, I put on my one good dress and climbed the stairs to the small restaurant above the shop. Standing nervously on the threshold, I dared myself to enter. Then Yves Saint Laurent strolled past me, surrounded by an entourage of impossibly chic and beautiful people, and my confidence evaporated. I turned and fled.

  Now I climb the stairs again, peering into the ageless restaurant with its wooden paneling, its fussy furniture, its tables swathed in cloth the color of sea foam. But when the maître d’ greets me, I smile and follow him to a banquette near the window, where I watch the moon rise over the Madeleine across the way. I order lobster bisque, and as the aroma swirls around me I can almost feel myself leaping into turquoise waters, imagine diaphanous anemones waving their translucent arms…

  “Vous êtes seul?”

  How long has the old gentleman at the next table been trying to attract my attention? His skin is porcelain white, his hair silver and just a little too long, his eyes pale blue. He has a long, disdainful nose contradicted by full, sensual lips. A good face. And, I notice, elegant, slightly threadbare clothes whose patina of age makes them distinguished rather than shabby.

  “Yes.”

  “You eat with such intensity! It has given me much pleasure to watch. You come to remember, yes?”

  His speech is the stiff formal French of the past, when well-born people did not employ the casual tu, even within the family.

  “Remember?”

  He edges toward me on the banquette and inclines his head, a courtly gesture. “I have been coming here since before the war. That was a time when sturgeon filled the Caspian Sea, caviar was cheap, and Russian émigrés came to lament their lost dachas.”

  “I wish I had seen it then!”

  “The room has not changed; only the clientele. Merci, François.” The waiter is removing a warm flute from the table; the new one he sets before my neighbor is silvered with cool mist. “Un autre verre pour Madame.”

  The champagne is deep with the scent of honeyed almonds, the bubbles so lazy they barely make it to the surface.

  He smiles. “An excellent vintage, this Krug ’66. My father put down many cases; he said it was the perfect wine for caviar. But wait…” He scoops a great mound of glistening black roe from the bowl before him and hands me the plate.

  “Il faut respecter le beluga. Eat it slowly. Hold it in your mouth for a moment before swallowing. The taste will change with the temperature.”

  The shock of freshness. The tang of the sea. And then the primal richness of the roe. A phrase of Lawrence Durrell’s floats into my mind: “A taste as old as cold water.”

  He is watching me. “My wife ate caviar as you do. Slowly. Avidly. You put me in mind of her.” He takes my plate, scoops on more caviar.

  “What was she like?”

  He sits back on the banquette and steeples his hands. “She was a mysterious creature. We were married more than fifty years, but I was never sure I knew what she was thinking. Never.”

  “Did you mind?”

  He looks at me gravely, speaking slowly. “Not at all; it gave life flavor. Sometimes I look at this new generation, their casual ways, their easy familiarity, and I think how much they are missing. When I saw you sitting here, alone, I thought you were like a guest to yourself. And then I thought of my wife.”

  I try picturing his wife, but no image comes. “What was she called?”

  “Severine.”

  The name reverberates through my whole body. Suddenly I am back in the shop and the dress is embracing me, turning me into someone I have never been.

  My new friend motions for more champagne. The waiter arrives bearing two frosted glasses and we watch, wordlessly, as he fills them. Then my neighbor lifts his. “Thank you, my dear. For me this was a fortunate encounter. I did not know what brought me here tonight, but now I see that I wanted to try, just for a moment, to become the person I used to be.”

  “Fortunate for me too, Monsieur. For you have made me, just for the moment, into the person I might have been.”

  I reach into my purse, remove the woman’s card, and tear it into pieces. I do not need her little black dress; it has already given me everything it can.

  THE OFFICES I PASSED WERE empty. Strange, I thought, glancing at my watch. Then I heard the babble of voices emerging from the conference room and entered to find the entire staff staring, rapt, at the television. I looked at the screen: The second plane was flying into New York’s tallest building.

  “Ooooh,” we said together, as if we had physically felt the impact. After a moment of shocked silence someone said, “What do we do now?” and every eye turned toward the door.

  I turned too, wondering who was behind me. There was only empty air. I froze. On the television, flames were leaping from the burning building, which now had a hole in the middle. As the implication sank in, panic surged through the room. We were being attacked.

  Think! I told myself, unsure what to do. I took two steps into the hall, about to call upstairs and ask for instruction. The phones! My head cleared; I went back into the conference room. “The phone lines are going to be jammed, if they aren’t already, so try to reach your kids and your families right now.” They stared at me, not moving.

  “Go!” I said. “Now! Make a meeting place. Public transportation may not be working, so factor that in. If this is really an attack, the police will close the bridges and tunnels, so those of you who live outside of Manhattan may not be able to get home. Come to my office; we need to be sure everyone has a safe place to go.”

  Nick! His school was in the Bronx. I turned to Robin. “Call Michael. Tell him he has to go get Nick before they close the bridges. Tell him to go quickly.”

  “I’d bet anything”—her voice held terrible assurance—“that he’s already gone.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE WAS RIGHT, of course. While most people were still thinking this a freak accident, Michael’s newsman’s instinct propelled him out of the city. On the road before the second plane hit, he was the first parent to reach Nick’s school.

  “It’s pandemonium.” He was on the phone, begging me to leave the office. Behind him I could hear a small boy wailing that his father worked in the Twin Towers. “Why doesn’t he call me?” he asked, hyst
erical, over and over. I heard Michael pick the boy up, trying to comfort him. “You’ll come up to the country with us—” he was saying when the line went dead.

  Of course: There would be no way to get back into the city. Michael would have to take Nick to our little cottage in upstate New York.

  In the conference room, the television was still on and I watched, horrified, as the first tower crumbled. We’d had regular fire drills but were unprepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude, and Human Resources, usually so capable, could not be reached.

  “You okay?” Gina came by to say that she was leaving. Downtown was being evacuated. We hugged each other, unsure when—if—we’d see each other again.

  Phone lines were down, communication impossible, and people were desperate to find their families. As they wandered the halls in shock and I made sure everyone had a plan and a place, time slowed to a crawl. It seemed as if hours passed before I picked up my purse and made one last circuit through the now-empty office. Then, at last, I headed home.

  Outside, frightened people stumbled through Times Square. Above us the neon lights blinked, eerily incongruous. The air had turned a vicious yellow and was filled with an acrid, unfamiliar stench. Subways weren’t running, bank machines were empty, and as I raced uptown, moving as fast as I could, I found streets blocked by abandoned cars that seemed to have simply run out of gas. I remembered, gratefully, that my own tank was full.

  “They say they’ve closed the bridges.” The super, who was running the elevator, was always a source of grim news.

  “Something must be open,” I said. “There must be some way to get out.” I ran into the apartment and scooped up two terrified cats. The dirty dishes were still sitting in the sink and I inhaled the familiar scent—bacon and orange juice—wondering if we’d ever be back. At the last minute, I snatched up our passports. You never knew.