Migratory Animals

by Mary Helen Specht

  Santiago was still stunned by Harry and Alyce’s separation. (Harry called it “a break,” but Santi could hear the fear in his voice.) Harry had been the first person Santi met during freshman orientation back in college, and over the years he’d come to think of Alyce as a charming extension of his old friend. Santi loved Alyce, but when Harry called that day, it felt more like getting the news that your best friend has become paralyzed from the waist down. He would never admit this to Alyce, of course, that she’d never truly existed for him as a separate entity.

  Santiago had wondered why Harry wanted to stay at the fire station rather than with Brandon who, because of Molly’s defection to the ranch, had a house all to himself that wasn’t in the midst of renovations. But it soon became clear: Brandon was a wreck. He moped and cried and occasionally went on a rage. Santiago wasn’t sure how much of Brandon’s behavior could be attributed to his wife’s diagnosis and how much to her absence. The last time Santi had gone over to keep his friend company, a pleasant evening with a couple of beers on the back porch talking local politics turned into Brandon, veins popping from his neck, pretending the fence was Molly’s father.

  “Can’t believe I listened to him!” Brandon chucked two beer bottles, one after the other, at the wooden pickets, shattering brown glass in an unimpressive blast radius. Santiago stood, mouth open.

  Just as quickly as the anger appeared, though, it subsided, Brandon shaking his head sadly and saying, “Shit, man. I’ll clean this up. Go on home.” Everywhere Santi looked, things were falling apart.

  He would have agreed to take Harry in anyway, of course, but a roommate helping with the monthly mortgage payment didn’t hurt. The firm was technically already paying for half the renovations since the first floor would eventually become the office, but the firm’s account was no longer in the black, unbeknownst to Harry. Santiago had cleaned it out fixing the water-damaged copper in Kit Hobbes’s lake house, and then in secret, he’d applied for a small-business loan to keep things afloat. The fact that money for the Marfa project, which Harry had been working on for months, was not going to materialize meant no foreseeable injections of cash.

  “Steven and Brandon are meeting us here?” Harry asked as they parked outside Austin’s Foodie Farm, a wonder emporium of prosciutto, persimmons, red seedless grapes, knuckled heirloom tomatoes, Brussels sprouts on the stalk, microbrews, ornamental gourds, free-range lamb—a veritable smorgasbord of all things haute and edible.

  “Just Brandon. Steven’s boycotting because they won’t buy his beets.” Santiago zipped up a black hoodie over his tight-fitting Iggy Pop T-shirt.

  He had charged to his credit card the expensive tickets for this afternoon cooking class put on by Sarah Bird, one of his favorite celebrity chefs, because he thought it would be a good bonding experience for his best friends, both suddenly cut loose from their domestic units and looking desperately to him. A role reversal that made him very uncomfortable.

  “I’m trolling for free samples first,” said Harry, hands tucked in the pockets of his khakis as they stepped out from under the misty, slate-gray October sky and into the warm artificial light flooding giant crates of mushrooms with exotic Japanese-sounding names.

  Santiago followed him to a transparent plastic pod holding cubes of cantaloupe. “No time for handouts, gypsy. We need to nab spots up close to Ms. Bird.”

  “Ah, yes,” replied Harry in an exaggerated tone, stroking his chin. “So we can more clearly view the subtleties of her technique.”

  “The subtleties of that ass, playboy.” Santiago took the toothpick stabbed with cantaloupe from Harry’s outstretched hand and put it in his mouth.

  As they made their way up the stairs to the demo kitchens, Santiago stopped two steps above Harry, took a deep breath, and looked back at his friend. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you. About the Marfa house.”

  Harry held out a hand to stop his words. “I know.” Harry stepped up so that they stood on the same level. “I’m sorry I’ve been so slow finishing it. Thanks for understanding.” Harry slid past him and continued up the stairs. Santiago bit his tongue and followed.

  “You’re going to cut your fingers off chopping like that,” said Brandon, as Harry fumbled awkwardly with the fennel bulb they were instructed to dice and caramelize as a crust for the pork tenderloin.

  “Leave me alone,” said Harry, frustrated, “or I’m going to chop your fingers off.”

  The cooking studio was arranged like a high school chemistry lab, each oblong station accommodating four students. Brandon, Santi, and Harry had been assigned a station with Ben, a chubby man of about fifty wearing a sweater embroidered with an outlandish winter scene featuring a reindeer sticking out its tongue to catch falling snowflakes and a clumsy snowman fumbling with a corncob pipe that looked more like an amorphous turd.

  “Look here, Harry,” whispered Santiago, “if you just chop the whole thing in half and put it cut side down, it won’t slide all over the place. And maybe tuck your fingertips under so the knuckles face the knife.”

  Harry stared at Santiago blankly.

  “What I like about cooking,” said Ben, insinuating himself into the conversation, “is that it’s an art. Gotta find your own way of doing things, man.”

  Across the station, Brandon rolled his eyes.

  “Always start with whole spices,” said Sarah Bird at the front of the room. Looking at the tilted ceiling mirror, they could see the inside of Bird’s frying pan filled with whole coriander, cumin, peppercorns, and star anise. “When you toast them, you’re not looking for a color change but for the aroma to open up. If you overcook, they become bitter.”

  As they worked, Brandon leaned into Harry and Santiago. “The irises are gone. Molly dug them up and took them away.” Molly had become a ghost about whom they spoke in whispers.

  “Why’d she do that?” asked Santiago, her name like a tender spot on his body.

  But instead of answering, Brandon turned to Harry. “Have you talked to Alyce? What are they doing out at the ranch?”

  Harry didn’t say anything right away, still mutilating his fennel. “I honestly don’t know.”

  Santiago tried to tune out their pain as he julienned a Belgian endive into strips for what the chef was calling “salad nests.” Working with food was one of Santiago’s few respites. The beautiful alchemy of collecting items that were nothing special on their own, then combining them in a measured and intricate dance to create something magical, or at least edible, was similar to what he did as a designer, except that the result of cooking was immediate. Food didn’t take years to come to fruition. Food wasn’t expected to last. Santiago recalled the summer when Flannery convinced him to give her cooking lessons, and they made pans of enchiladas or whole baked fish every weekend, inviting friends over like a normal couple who hosted dinner parties for other normal couples. Food was a great domesticator.

  Brandon’s cell phone vibrated its way across the metal counter toward Santiago, who couldn’t help but see the caller: Flannery. As though she knew his thoughts. It took all his willpower not to snatch it up and answer himself. He turned toward his cutting board so that Brandon wouldn’t realize he was eavesdropping.

  After a long silence, Brandon whispered, “Flan, forget about that. . . . Even if you could make it work, it’s just stealing moisture from one region and giving to another. I’m not sure it’s even ethical.” After a moment he continued, saying, “I don’t have time right now. Come to my office on Thursday.”

  After Brandon hung up, Santiago forced himself to wait a whole thirty seconds before he began probing. It was a delicate skill: investigating and gathering evidence without seeming to do so. Like taking photos with the antique Yashica Mat-124 G that he used to check out from the photography lab at Marsh. He shot Flannery unaware, which was easy with the Yashica because one looked down into the top of the rectangular camera and out of several lenses that opened on the sides. It was impossible for anyone other than the photograph
er to know at what, or whom, the camera was aimed. Flannery eating cereal. Flannery washing dishes. Flannery walking by a parking garage. Flannery’s freckles, emerging like blurs, like raindrops on the lens.

  “How are things at the lab?”

  “Well. I have an article on ionic snowflakes that’s almost ready to submit.”

  “Ionic snowflakes. That’s right. Why again?”

  “You don’t care.”

  “I care!”

  “If you look at snow under lab controls, you can understand the conditions that make different types of snow and ice in the wild.”

  “Right. Excellent,” Santiago said, nodding, feigning interest. “And why is that useful?”

  “There’s no clear practical application yet.” Brandon leaned over the blue fire of his pan. They were supposed to flambé the last of the sherry liquid because “it wasn’t the flavor profile they wanted to emphasize.”

  “I see.”

  “Santi, as has become painfully clear to me, science is fucking slow. Progress is never linear, and there are more setbacks than breakthroughs.”

  Santiago ignored this comment for now—certainly they’d all been disappointed with how their ambitions had played out—and, instead, went in for the kill: “See Flannery much in the lab?”

  “Yes.” Brandon was not making this easy.

  “Think she’s serious about the Nigerian? About going back there?”

  “I’m not going to encourage this line of inquiry.”

  Santiago cocked his head. “It’s great to get unsolicited advice from someone who spends all day growing snowflakes with no clear practical application.”

  Brandon shrugged.

  “We use kosher salt,” said the chef, dumping some into a pot for the braised red cabbage while simultaneously using her other hand to lay out seared pork medallions onto a tray, “because the crystals dissolve more rapidly. If you raise your hand high as you do it, you make a bigger mess but you also get a more uniform seasoning.”

  Their station partner Ben, waving his hand like an imbecile, interrupted the chef to ask if at home one could substitute sour cream for the crème fraîche. The chef said it would be like substituting Cheez Whiz for Gruyère. A minute later, he piped up again, asking where they were supposed to find duck fat. “Well, expensive places,” said the chef patiently.

  Santiago could see Brandon’s growing impatience, so he motioned for the assistant, a very thin Asian man, who was pouring red wine into glasses off to the side.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, please don’t,” said Harry, already embarrassed over an episode yet to occur. Santiago ignored him.

  “I know this is unorthodox,” Santiago said to the man, stone-faced and wearing a long black apron, “but could I go ahead and get my complimentary glass now? I need the waft of wine while I cook. And so do my friends here.”

  “I like the way you think,” said Ben, assuming Santiago had meant to include him in this illicit happy hour. “My ex’s father was a big alcoholic, so she didn’t want us to have anything in the house, you know. She thought it was genetic. But I always kept a bottle hidden in my toolbox—you can bet she never looked in there. Now I can stock a whole bar if I want to. . . .”

  “You know what, sir.” Brandon carefully put down his chef’s knife. “That winter sweater you’re rocking, that looks like it was knit by a blind person—well, those snowflakes have eight points, which is impossible. Ice crystals are hexagonal prisms. That means six sides. Your sweater is a fraud.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “You’re probably right.” Ben brushed the shaggy gray hair out of his eyes with the inside of his elbow. “My ex-wife always said I had no taste. I bought this at the secondhand store because I thought it looked sharp.”

  “Just ignore the sweater Gestapo, Ben,” said Santiago. “My friend here has no sense of style, but me, I’m an architect. And I think it’s charming and recherché.”

  “It’s perpetrating a lie,” said Brandon.

  Harry looked up for the first time. “You act like you’re the only person getting fucked around here, terrorizing old Ben about his sweater.” Harry snatched a bottle of wine from the steward and poured himself an absurdly large glass of red. “Well, you’re not. I get kicked out of the ranch so that your wife—who should be with you, am I right?—could live there in my place. I fucking love that, B. I fucking love that, you spoiled shit.”

  “I’m the spoiled shit?” Brandon reached for the wine bottle and snatched it using too much force, pinot splashing wildly, covering himself and his fellows in piebald purple. He tilted the bottle to his mouth and drank, and he didn’t stop until the wine was exhausted and a steady dribble ran down his chin.

  Harry looked stunned for a moment, and then, to Santiago’s surprise, picked up Brandon’s bowl of discards—eggshells, peels, the detritus of cooking for a crowd—and dumped them into the pot of braised cabbage. Brandon smiled, as if that were the easiest move in the world to counter, before he swept the resting pork medallions onto the floor, knocking Harry’s wineglass off the counter in the process, shards of glass spraying their ankles and feet.

  Santiago looked down to see his Iggy Pop T-shirt now stained a timeless plum. Bastards. So much for his thoughtful—and expensive—gift of a bro-down cooking class. As he reached to grab each of his friends by their shirt collars, he thought: What was in store for them if he, Santiago, the perennial wreck, was the one coping best? If he was the one acting most maturely and responsibly? The world must be divinely fucked.

  The rest of the room was silent, fedora-wearing hipsters and blue-haired old ladies all staring at them as Santiago led his friends to the back stairwell, his familiarity with Foodie Farm’s labyrinthine layout finally coming in handy. “Wait for me out there,” he told them, swinging open the door.

  Santiago helped a begrudging Foodie Farm employee clean up the glass shards and spilled wine before returning to his place at the station. Alongside Ben, Santiago cracked egg after egg into a silver bowl, trying to imagine the rosemary custard it would become.

  Whipping the heavy cream reminded him of the shaving cream with which they covered their naked bodies in college, running through the academic quad, high as kites, making ass prints on the first-story windows of the university library—back when Santiago was the one who had to be reined in, Harry and Brandon always ensuring that things only went so far, never allowing Santiago to get into all the trouble he was revving for. Now, he supposed, it was his turn to protect his friends from themselves.

  Eventually, Santiago carried the plates along his arm, as he’d learned waiting tables, out to the back stairwell, where Brandon and Harry sat on different steps.

  “Where did you get the pork medallions?” asked Brandon.

  “Sarah Bird gave me hers and a man in a golf cart told us to leave.”

  “We don’t want to eat all your food . . .” said Harry, contritely.

  Santi shrugged. “There’s enough. We’ll survive,” he said.

  When they got to the caramelized custard, he told them what the Dutch say about something delicious: it was like an angel pissing on your tongue.

  “An angel?” said Harry. “I like that.”

  They all nodded thoughtfully. They licked their lips and were momentarily satisfied.

  FLANNERY

  Snow wasn’t white; the ice crystals that made up what was called snow were actually clear as cut glass. When light traveled through a snowbank, for instance, some of it reflected back, which made snow only appear white and fluffy as a cloud (not technically white, either, but the result of more scattered light from millions of droplets of water suspended in the air).

  On the day two weeks before, when she had helped photograph snowflakes in Brandon’s laboratory chamber, Flannery knew that this colorless, transparent nature of ice crystals made good lighting particularly important. She incorporated colored filters into the microscope in order for the hundreds of intricate shapes and struct
ures to show up on the film in all their three-dimensional glory.

  Flannery manned the custom-built machine, essentially a special microscope attached to a camera encased in a temperature-regulated box, while Brandon tweaked the chamber’s settings to grow a series of his designer snowflakes. He started with minuscule frost crystals on the end of a wire. Then, he ran two thousand volts through the wire, the electric field attracting water molecules from the air to produce ice needles. Once the electrical current was removed, snowflakes began to grow on the tips of the ice needles, variously shaped depending on exact temperature and level of humidity in the chamber. Flannery and Brandon went through the process more than fifty times using different variations. As they worked, Flannery had no idea that what they were doing would change her entire project. That realization came later.

  “Just call me the Iceman,” Brandon boasted during hour six of the process, rolling up his sleeves.

  “Just call you the obsessive-compulsive.”

  Flannery’s job was to use a small feather brush to move the best-looking specimens under the microscope-camera and capture them before their patterns smudged or evaporated. She’d done something similar in graduate school, but only with real snow coming down in real snowfalls. These electric snowflakes were a little different. They grew like perfect crystal flowers on the tips of ramrod-straight stalks. A bouquet of diamonds. In the microscope each one was a civilization of hexagonal plates and branching dendrites. So much useless beauty.