Insatiable (13 page)

What seemed to be lost was classic old-fashioned foreplay, a courtship over time. A ritual game of seduction . . . with obstacles that keep two people from jumping into bed at the first little tickle. And that’s what we had, Murray and I, a long-drawn-out, wondrously torturous, and sizzling anticipation.

I didn’t cool down for days after he returned to Chicago, except briefly when a writing deadline or a fact checker interrupted my pornographic reveries of sharing foie gras and beds all over France with this complex and intriguing man.

I’d been banking my lust for weeks. Murray’s plane was due to arrive in Paris early in the morning. He would come directly to L’Hôtel. I’d never stayed there before, but it was the Left Bank inn of the moment, located in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, with rounded walls and turn-of-the-century airs, legacy of denizens like Oscar Wilde and Mistinguett.

I set my alarm clock to wake me an hour ahead so I could bathe, put on makeup, fluff my hair, and slip into an unwrinkled sheer chiffon nightshirt and pretend his tap at the door had awakened me.

His knock kicked up my pulse.

Murray dropped his suitcase and swept me into his arms. He was wearing a double-breasted gray flannel suit, and I could feel the buttons and the scratchy wool through the chiffon. It came to me suddenly that this was a total stranger sliding his hand under my nightie—a man I’d never made love to—and we were committed to ten days of intimacy. What if it didn’t work?

Well, there were a few shocking revelations. Murray didn’t really like fish. And he wouldn’t eat anything with a face on it—like shrimp, crab, or lobster. Needless to say, sweetbreads, tripe, kidneys, and brains were unthinkable. And two of his favorite colors were purple and orange. What can I say? The hippie sixties didn’t really go away till far into the seventies, and psychedelic prints on polyester brightened his wardrobe.

But what might have been insurmountable conflicts were nothing really, small inconveniences in the glow of glorious astonishments. I’d always defined a great meal as one you couldn’t possibly make love after and had advised readers on the truffle trails to make love before dinner. I was wrong. We made love before and after every great meal. Sometimes I would wake before dawn, not sure where I was, and then becoming sure . . . we would make love again.

We so exhausted ourselves making up for lost time that first day in Paris, we almost missed dinner. I’d reserved at Lasserre, not because I had that much faith in its Michelin three stars for great food but because I remembered it as unrelentingly romantic—luxurious and old-fashioned, with a ceiling that opened on balmy nights.

When I tried to stand up to dress, my legs were trembling.

“We don’t have to go,” said Murray. “I’m not that hungry.”

“Of course you’re hungry.”

I staggered to the bathroom, bruising my hip on the jutting Empire dressers and vintage armoires crammed into that tiny room. I remember the dress was black, with a deep V that showed an edge of lace bra, and I was wearing black suede Roger Vivier cutout slingbacks—what Don called my “Joan Crawford fuck-me shoes.” I remember sipping a champagne aperitif in the bar at Lasserre while Murray’s hand caressed the arch of my foot, my insides fluttering. And I think possibly, probably, there was a meringue swan for dessert. We talked about what we had done in bed and how good a lover he was and what we would do in bed later, how perfect we were together, how amazingly suited for each other we were, nothing that would have amused anyone eavesdropping, but, for us, it was as if we were still in bed . . . and soon we were.

Chocolate Wickedness

T
his is a recipe adapted from Paula Peck’s
Art of Fine Baking,
with my own sauce. Kept in a jar in the freezer, it is always available for emergencies. (These instructions are for hand-beating, which I still do sometimes for nostalgia’s sake.)

1 cup heavy cream

1 1/2 lbs. semisweet chocolate

3 egg yolks

1/2 cup brewed espresso coffee or 11/2 tsp. instant espresso dissolved in 1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup crème de cacao

6 egg whites

Pinch of salt

1/4 cup sugar

Using a wire whisk or electric beater, whip cream until thick. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Put chocolate in a large heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Do not let the bottom of the bowl touch the water. Heat until chocolate is melted. Stir in egg yolks, coffee, and crème de cacao. Mix until smooth. Remove from heat, and cool.

Beat egg whites with salt until they stand in soft peaks. Add sugar, a tablespoon at a time, beating after each addition. Beat several more minutes until very stiff. (If beating by hand, it will take at least five minutes.)

Fold whipped cream into egg whites and then fold chocolate mixture into that mix.

Pour into a large glass bowl or 10-cup soufflé dish. Freeze for a minimum of 4 hours. Let sit at room temperature for 15 to 20 minutes before serving.

Serve with mock crème fraîche, made by blending 1/2 cup heavy cream, whipped into gentle peaks, with the 2/3 cup of sour cream and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Refrigerate until ready to use.

17

A G
ASTROMANIACAL
I
NTERLUDE

Y
OU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS ENOUGH UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT IS MORE
than enough.” William Blake had it right.

Murray had thrown himself into the delicious, artery- and liver-challenging excess that defined my assignment. Meals alternated with sex like a preposterously rich mille-feuille pastry—layers of sensuous pleasure. He seemed dedicated to extending the parameters of my orgasmic potential and I celebrated his dedication, exhausted, sometimes aching, and worn to a frazzle, but thrilled and amazed to discover this remarkable new me. I was staggered to be on this sensory roller coaster—great food, evocative wines, high-wire sex, and once in awhile an intellectual thought. It felt like paradise to me. Could one actually live like this in the everyday world? And write and shop and remind the dry cleaner to pay special attention to the food spots?

We had moments of supposed sanity. Skipping an occasional lunch meant dashing through small towns, collecting crusty baguettes, sliced sausages, a hunk or two of duck-liver terrine, and some cheese for a picnic alongside the road. This may not have been a wholesome savings in calories, but picnics did come with exercise, a short walk and lovemaking under a tree, with only a few drowsy cows to see.

Occasionally, the outside world intruded, a few words in a newscast, Governor Wallace paralyzed by gunshot, American planes bombing Hanoi. But that cacophony was noise in a distant room. Essentially, we remained isolated in an erotic cocoon, endlessly focused on sex, trading histories and markers, his first this or that, my first whatever . . . as if we’d both just escaped from a sexual drought.

Farms passed in a blur of green and narrow stone walls. A few shops with crates of fruit outside marked tiny villages as we drove the roads that stretched between meals.

“Oh look . . . poppies,” I cried, catching a blur of red flowers on my right. “The whole field is full of poppies. Like
The Wizard of Oz
.” Murray swerved and slammed on the brakes, pulling me out of the car. He pushed me down on the fender. “Hey, hey, wait.” I was laughing as he ripped off my panties and fucked me, surrounded by poppies on the side of the road.

We were not in Kansas anymore.

In those weeks of fiercely serious eating—research verging upon obsession—from the numbing joys of La Pyramide in Vienne and the creative vitality of Paul Bocuse, with his exquisitely etched pastry-wrapped
loup de mer,
to the blush-fleshed
omble chevalier
in a divinely humble butter bath at Père Bise. Les Frères Troisgros, in a little nowhere town called Roanne, one Alka-Seltzer east of Lyon, proved to be the most ingenuous sorcerers of all.

I insisted we arrive at Troisgros with an edge of hunger, stomachs empty, even though assorted senses might tingle with use and abuse. Let loose in the very heart of gastronomic freak-out country, Murray thought any attempt at moderation unseemly, but he acquiesced.

“Nothing in the solemn dignity and clarion discipline of France’s gastronomic temples quite prepares you for the sweet silliness of the maison Troisgros,” I wrote at the time. Brother Pierre in his tall white toque sat playing gin rummy in the middle of the dining room, where the awed pilgrims left over from lunch still nibbled petits fours, as we checked in. There were Troisgros dogs sniffing and champagne corks popping and old auntie asleep, propped on her elbow.

Well, of course, the important
Playboy
editor was expected. Though dinner was just a few hours away, the Troisgros family would not take no for an answer. “What do you mean, no late lunch? Are you thirsty? No? Well, here is a glass of icy Sancerre. Hungry? No? What a pity. Then you will have only one giant triangle of
clafouti
[sublimely simple pear and custard tart], not two.” And as this was a town where manufacturing shoes was the hot ticket, visitors with time to linger might find themselves shooting baskets with the sociable Troisgros brothers or tagging along on food foraging expeditions between lunch and dinner. And so we did.

The two of us, with our very long legs, were stuffed into the backseat of a smallish car because the front was reserved for brother Pierre and a giant wheel of almond custard tart. First stop, the house of Bonnin, Roanne’s most elegant delicatessen, just to schmooze with good friends. The Troisgros brothers, Pierre and the squarer, more reserved Jean, with his country gentleman beard, and hangers-on from the minicar in tow behind, headed directly for the cellar, where brother Jean tried to get his red-eyed hunting dog to climb into an empty vat by climbing in himself. There was champagne, a bottle of Burgundy—“Yes, just a small glass, just a taste, yes, you must”—and Pierre divided the almond tart with scissors. So much for our grim Spartan denial. Perhaps an hour of sleep would produce the hallucination of a reasonable number of hours passed without food.

Nine o’clock. A fine sharp air of expectation—not the electric voltage of formal dining, but something related to it—awaited. Pierre and Jean roamed the dining salon, serious now, but relaxed, champion athletes running a cinch race. The room was ringed by transient pilgrims of the palate, atingle with awe, like an alchemist’s aphrodisiac, stirring them and us, too, into a frenzy of expectation and desire.

Instead of the signature $13.50 dinner, the pilgrims came to worship—the Troisgros brothers had choreographed a numbing parade of seasonal dishes for us. “Just a little of each, just to taste.”

I felt uneasy out of my usual brown sparrow anonymity. I did not think they recognized me as a critic, but as the appendage of this
Playboy
editor, I was definitely sharing a regal fuss.

First came the snails, supersize mutants and amazingly tender, nourished by crunching on the leaves of the Burgundy grape, Jean pointed out. They had been snatched in adolescence, sautéed, braised, and somewhat blandly sauced in a swirl of herb-scented butter—a last-minute liaison requiring consummate timing, Jean observed:
“Très difficil.”
Murray ignored the animals and blissed out on the sauce.

Pierre was about to disclose the sex life of a snail, when the next plate interrupted: a billowing pastry
feuilletée
filled with fresh foie gras and tiny batons of poached turnip. A mellow Meurseult was poured with the copper
cassolettes
of crayfish: tender little beasts curled in a tarragon-spiked broth. Burgundy labels flashed before our eyes; glasses filled—“just a soupçon”—emptied, and disappeared. New glasses appeared.

The barely cooked salmon on its gleaming sorrel-flecked pool was supernal, surpassing even rose-prismed memory from my earlier visit. Just in time to revive hyperindulged senses came a goblet of bracingly tart lemon ice flecked with citrus zest. What sorcery. Just enough. Not sweet at all. I found myself contemplating raging-rare slices of Charolais beef as if it were a new day, with fresh reserves of appetite.

I did not hesitate to consider cheese, “for research sake,” I whispered into Murray’s ear. I found myself able to nibble a few crumbles of Fourme d’Ambert, salty, soft, uncharacteristically gentle, a prepubescent
bleu
. And from the dessert cart, strawberries in a raspberry puree, an Everest pouf of floating island, satantic chocolate truffles, macaroons, the flat butter cookie called “cat’s tongue” for its shape. By that time, champagne corks were popping again—a blanc de blanc with the Troisgros label. Seriously smashed, Murray and I smiled helplessly. “Rude to resist,” he whispered to me, slipping a few inches lower in his chair.

The two of us descended, still rocky, the next day at noon, Murray very pale and unusually silent, our bags packed and ready to move on.
Absolument non. Impossible.
The family would not hear of it. Papa Troisgros had just returned from his very first cruise ever and wanted to meet us. Papa, at eighty, dapper and ruddy, flirtatious behind his lightly tinted shades, waxed ecstatic about the cruise-line food as if at home he existed on saltines and gruel. Pierre insisted we must join Papa at the family lunch before the regular service. You might have thought Papa had returned from a year in the Crusades, the way the clan fussed over him. He was a natural, the patriarch holding court.

“We shall taste the first of the 1970 Burgundies just arrived yesterday. Are they cool?” he asked the captain as the Chambolle-Musigny was decorked, and then a Bonnes-Mares. Coming from a rigid tradition of white wines chilled, red wines cellar temperature, I was surprised to learn that the Troisgros drank their young Burgundies slightly chilled.

Papa nodded and sipped. “This wine rains kisses in your mouth,” he cried, throwing his arms in the air with the delirious pleasure of first love.

“You wouldn’t want to wait to let it age a few years?” I ventured, ambassador from a country that had just moved from lemonade and Ovaltine to Cold Duck, Hearty Burgundy, and the hushed worship of great French reds.

“Wait?” Papa cried. “Wait for what? Do you wait to eat an old radish? Wine, like radishes and women, is best young.”

Last week’s radish wilted.

Murray leaped to the rescue. “But isn’t it true that a great woman, like a great wine, improves with age?” he ventured. Papa wasn’t listening. He was ooohing and smacking his lips over an oblong of tissue-thin pastry billowing high, spikes of asparagus emerging. The sauce was ever so faintly tart, liquid silk, elusive—just butter, cream, a dash of lemon, and bits of foie gras, Jean was explaining. He looked like a schoolboy bringing home a lamp from shop class to please his father.

“It is a
nouveau plat,
” Papa Troisgros announced. “With a
nouveau plat,
you must cross yourself and make a wish.”

Jean’s wife, Maria, was summoned to taste. Pierre tasted, too. Papa wanted more. But the celebration was interrupted by a giant aluminum cauldron with two young bass in a steaming clove and coriander-scented bath, perfumed with olive oil and flecked with parsley.

“Serve all those vegetables. All of them,” Papa commanded the captain. “All, the carrots, the onions . . . all.” Everyone gathered to taste as Papa looked on, sipping his chilled red Burgundy. He seemed to sense our unspoken question. “I never drink white wine with fish,” he said, “I save white wine for cheese. Little white wines for goat cheese. Montrachet [that rarest of rare Burgundies] goes with the cheese of the cow,” he explained. “People will say old Troisgros is crazy. But it is not the reds that are too strong for fish. It is the whites. Try it blindfolded. You will see.”

Now the two chefs and both wives settled down for a small joint of the chicken in a tomato-scented vinegar sauce, served with the Troisgros hashed browns dosed with a clove of garlic still in its
“chemise,”
as Papa observed, adding, “Just a touch of garlic, a hint.”

He scowled at the cheeses. “When it is the time of the red fruit, it’s not the good time for cheese,” he lectured, signaling the waiter to bring on the Pont Neuf, a giant puff pastry pizza filled with almond-fortified frangipane cream. And his favorite, giant prunes—“de Californie.” He bowed his head in our direction, as if bestowing on us the Légion d’Honneur for the prunes. There were chocolate truffles again and more champagne.

And then somehow we had been shoveled into the car and were backing out of the courtyard, Jean and Pierre waving good-bye, Pierre’s wife, Olympe, standing out on the street, halting traffic. Then just as we shifted gears to pull away, the two brothers came running, waving something in a white paper wrap.

“It’s fresh Marcigny cheese. It just arrived. It will not last. You must eat it tonight.” Jean handed me a moist, dripping bundle of creamy soft goat cheese. Olympe signaled. All traffic snarled, roses twirled, red-eyed pups nibbled almond tarts, snails were munching through the vineyards, and Papa was savoring the last of the new Bonnes-Mares.

All was balmy in Troisgros country.

I’d plotted a zigzag circuit for us dictated by the mouth . . . touching down at heart-stopping tables, longtime favorites, and an inn or two that might be a discovery I could write about in
New York.
So much of what we did was a rerun of earlier debauchery with Don. I felt odd about that. I had enough of a hangover of love for Don and an almost superstitious need to believe in the perfect marriage, even if I had to squint to shut out the fissures that seemed to be dividing us. Perhaps that’s why I felt a twinge of guilt now and then, sharing the very same delights we’d discovered together with another man now. Sex was a lark, but the Troisgros thrush terrine was sacred.

It would have desecrated the memory of my nights here with Don to sleep with Murray in the same Auberge de Père Bise suite in Talloires. So Murray and I looked out at the crystal clear Lake Annecy from a room in the nearby Hôtel de l’Abbeys while he made love to me from behind. Faithless wife dances with the angels, balancing on the head of a pin.

I was wooing this man now, hoping to seduce him to my way of life, even while I was hoping Don and I could somehow heal the breach between us. Murray might be a less neurotic choice, I thought. He did not strike me as likely to be intimidated by a strong woman. He was grown-up, confident, opinionated, bossy (annoyingly bossy even), hmmm . . . maybe even too much like me. Could I live with a man like that? Did I really have an innate need to always be in charge? Wouldn’t it be wonderful just to relax and let someone else make the decisions? Did I have to decide now? Was there anything to decide?