Stanley Park (40 page)

And he was right. Something did come up to inspire him, namely Jules’s three Fenton Sooner sculptures at auction. His guilt at letting Heckle, Jeckle and Hide get out of his hands in the first place was compounded by the fact that he hadn’t thought about them in several months. Then, in the mail, he received his auction list from Charmin’s Auctioneers (whose speciality was used office and restaurant supplies), and lot number 247 turned out to be
Three Art Sculptures by Fenton
Sonar
. He might have missed it entirely had not item 245 caught his eye:
Vulcan-Hart 8-burner, like new
.

“I blew a buffer,” Philip said after making some calls of his own to find out. “I just spaced. Had no idea of the value.”

“How can you just sell stuff without asking me?” Jeremy said, his voice rising. “I mean, the stove, sure. But art?”

“Jeremy, we bought the hardware,” Philip said simply. “You signed a schedule at the time of sale. I’m not saying anything critical here, but you signed.”

Jeremy shook his head silently. He considered calling her but, ashamed to see her, he ended up going to the auction alone.

Charmin’s Auctioneers was in a warehouse on Terminal Avenue underneath the SkyTrain tracks. The warehouse was stacked with product, an incomprehensible hive of mostly worthless petrified junk, but which was nevertheless auctioned steadily according to the master plan of one Nick Charmin.

Normally, Jeremy knew from experience, it was difficult to get good value at one of Charmin’s auctions. Pre-auction viewings were all but useless since Nick only knew for certain where each lot was when it was about to go on the block. The auction list, on the other hand, could only be trusted to give you the most overarching sense of what function an item might once in its history have been able to perform. As a result, you were best advised to wait until a likely sounding item came up for auction, then inspect it hurriedly while making your bids at the same time.

He was glad, in a way.
Three Art Sculptures by Fenton Sonar
was not something anyone would have had the chance to inspect, although collectors would no doubt recognize even the misspelled name.

He scanned down the list of lots, noting that below
Vulcan-Hart 8-burner, like new
came
Prep counters (two metal frame), black aluminum commercial cookware
. A long familiar list. Had he not thought to remove these items himself,
Jeremy was quite sure Charmin would have listed
One black chef’s knife
and
One chef’s jacket, marked Capelli
as well.

He paid his $1.25 cover charge, which gave him a numbered plastic bidding paddle. He confirmed that they accepted all major credit cards and entered the warehouse. It was more crowded than usual and, scanning the room, his confidence flagging slightly, Jeremy saw Jules. She was wearing a long skirt and boots, a loose sweater that hung over her hips. Her head was bowed in front of a side counter, above which hung a crooked piece of plywood with the word
ART
painted in red letters. With one hand she held her hair back from falling in her eyes. Jeremy could see that the art counter was stacked with dusty oil paintings, costume jewellery in glass-topped boxes, and what appeared to be a series of heads carved out of coconuts. The Sooners were also there, Heckle, Jeckle and Hide, but Jules was studiously not looking at them.

“I’m bidding on the coconut heads, myself,” he whispered, standing just behind her.

She spun around, hand on her throat, eyes widened. They stared at each other for a few seconds before she said: “I hope you’re not planning to bid against me.”

“I was planning to bid for you,” he said.

She had recovered by now and turned back to the table. “Not necessary, my dear.”

He stood next to her, resisting the urge to put his hand along her waist, as he could have so easily just a few months before. They sifted costume jewellery through their fingers as the first items came up for bid. Finally Jeremy said: “We have an hour.”

Over coffee, she made him promise. “I want to buy them myself.”

“How much can you spend?” he asked her.

She made a face and looked away. “Fifteen hundred bucks maybe, if I’m nuts.”

“They’re worth much more,” he said gently. “I made some
calls. We’re talking about something like three thousand dollars a piece.”

“As much as ten thousand for the three of them,” Jules said. “Like I didn’t check.”

“So, basically there are collectors here or not.”

“I need a miracle,” Jules said.

And she did all right for the first half-dozen bids. Fifty dollars to the man in the black soccer warm-ups. Seventy-five dollars to Jules. Three hundred dollars to the man in the soccer gear. Five hundred dollars to the woman in the long camel coat (bad sign, thought Jeremy). One thousand dollars to Jules. (“Easy now,” he whispered.) Fifteen hundred dollars to the woman in the camel coat. Twenty-five hundred dollars to the man in the black cashmere topcoat with the paisley scarf.

It took less than a minute. He thought she might cry for the first time in his memory, and he finally put an arm around her. “Sorry,” he said. “I am breaking another promise to you.”

The woman in the camel coat dropped when the man with the paisley scarf took her from six thousand to seven thousand dollars.

“You’re sure they’re not fake,” Jeremy whispered to Jules.

“I won’t help you do it,” she responded.

Sold for eighty-five hundred dollars to Jeremy Papier. The Charmin’s crowd, not used to prices rising above two hundred and fifty dollars, applauded wildly. He made Jules take the bow.

Amex came through again. His feelings for the card were beginning to change. Jules asked: “What will you tell them?”

He had no idea.

They looked good in her place, not far from the auction house in east Vancouver. They carried them from the car together and lined them up on the dining-room table.

She thanked him, held each of his hands in hers. She put her next words together carefully before speaking. “You let him take a lot from both of us. Permanently. Not like these.”

“I’m trying to make things right.”

Her eyes showed a trace of pain. “You’ll have to return to your own vision eventually. The one from the very beginning. You all angsty at the Save On Meats, bursting with that one really good idea.”

He grew serious remembering their many hours together. Their many cups of drinkable diner coffee. “When we first met in the market,” he said, “how did you know that I cooked?”

Jules smiled a half smile. She hadn’t thought of their meeting in a long time. “You looked tired,” she said.

“Lots of people look tired,” Jeremy answered.

“No, no. You looked tired like beat-to-hell tired. Cook-tired. Also, you had a little piece of Elastoplast on your finger right there.” She picked up his hand and examined the first knuckle of his left index finger. She remembered exactly where it had been and found the tracing of a tiny scar.

“That’s it?” Jeremy asked.

Not quite. “Plus, you were staring at me,” Jules said. “I look up and catch this nice-looking young man staring at me. He looks away. Then I realize he was looking at my celery root.”

It was nice to hold each other again, even if it was a goodbye hug. And neither of them knew if it was really reassuring, if it really made anything right that Jeremy had made wrong, but they held on to each other for a few extra seconds anyway.

He had the kitchen right by the middle of January. All the hardware had been assembled and installed, the wiring, fibre optics and water lines were in. The RapidAir control system had been tested and retested. The dish pit worked. The prep counters had been levelled and the pass-throughs installed. The eight burners arrived from Germany and were lowered into the bridge. The grill module and the deep fryer came in the following week from Belgium and were slotted into place.

When it was complete and everything had been minutely scoured, the kitchen had a combat-ready gleam. Jeremy was down to a couple hours’ sleep a night but still, standing in the middle of it all and listening to the hum of central processors in the dish pit and the RapidAir, he felt pretty much invincible.

He had only a draft menu to worry about, to which Philip had been delegated. They met in the kitchen, sat in Jeremy’s office, near the alley doors, and talked about a range of issues: front staff, hosts, servers, bussers.

“And for the back?” Philip asked.

“Six or seven of us for the opening,” Jeremy said. “I think we can run thereafter on five.”

He didn’t have names yet, but he told Philip they would be apprentices. Trained and ready by the day in question. “Be assured.”

“Why apprentices?”

“I want kids,” Jeremy answered. “Fresh talent, trainable.”

“No aging veterans,” Philip said with a smirk. “Fine with me.”

Jeremy pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it flat on the desk between them and turned it around to face Philip.

“Kebab of Loch Lommand-farmed salmon on a kimchi bed, with seaweed and smoked oysters.” Philip read aloud the first of the appetizers. “Very nice.”

Then, the first main. “Beet-marinated, grilled Alaskan goose breast with spiced Turkish couscous.” And here he closed his eyes, trying to visualize this plate.

“It’s purple and gold, Philly,” Jeremy stage-whispered.

“Clever,” Philip said, eyes on the menu again. “What’s boutifar?”

“A North African boudin. Served split and grilled on a thin crostini with caramelized peppered apple.”

“Boudin.” Philip thought how to phrase the question. “Is that hip?”

“It’s bruschetta. A Dante must-have.”

“I see,” Philip said, grimacing. “But boudin, that’s black pudding, isn’t it?”

Jeremy nodded.

“Black pudding as in
blood?”

“Pigs’ blood, normally,” Jeremy said, adding in his most reassuring tone: “Blood is perfect for us.”

Philip was prepared to be convinced, but dubious.

Jeremy had his speech ready. “Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas …,” he began. There were versions of boudin, literally, around the world. And yet, strangely, pork blood was as close to the pan-cultural forbidden food as you could get, short of cannibalism. Islam, Judaism and Hinduism forbid the use of pork products, of course, but even the Christian Bible outlaws blood.

Philip’s expression suggested this was news to him.

“Oh yeah,” Jeremy said. “The only food ban in the entire New Testament. And here we show it to reference all of these cultures. Named and seasoned for North Africa, garnished for France, presented for Spain. Our tribute to the polyglot, post-national, transgressive dish.”

Philip finally smiled a little, liking the semiotics. “Provocative,” he said.

“Millennial,” Jeremy answered.
“Teotwawki.”

After Philip left, Jeremy went to wait in the completed front room. Benny and Albertini had managed to create something that inspired in him thoughts of what gazillionaire rock stars might build, people whose long exposure to the very largest amounts of money had made them acutely aware of how quality might be procured.

Gerriamo’s wasn’t even a room, really; it had moved beyond that to become what designers called a
space
. Golden hardwood floors were covered with thick ivory runners and area carpets. The walls were pale gold, the ceiling the creamy blue of summer sky. The drapes that framed the two
vaulting front windows were heavy royal purple velvet, tied back with thick gold rope. The tables were square and blond with thick surfaces and thin, sturdy legs. Heavy white linen covered each. In the raised rear section and against the right wall, the bar glowed with mahogany warmth. Bottles had not yet been put onto the mirrored shelving, but the central decoration had been installed, a deco nude trolling one hand downward as if in the coolness of a stream. Her hair streamed around her breasts. On the lower, round bar tables, there were tiny shaded lamps. Jeremy turned each of them on, then returned to the main dining room and sat in one of the $750 yellow mohair chairs, admiring the effect. Admiring the view of his own kitchen doors, the quilted aluminum and the classic round porthole window.

He felt rich. More than that. He thought he knew, for a moment, what wealth would have felt like in the nineteenth century. Aristocratic wealth. Wealth beyond dreams of wealth. Wealth that liberated you from all human constraints but the final one, and possibly even that if you made the right deal.

Today was Art Day. Spaced evenly around the room were paintings waiting to be hung, face to the wall. And as he sat there, he watched Dante and Benny cross the street together, Inferno Hastings coffees in hand. Dante in crisp black, as he often was these days. Benny in a grey flannel suit, with many small buttons running up to a closed collar, and narrow-legged pants with large cuffs.

“Well, well, well,” Dante said after they had entered and seen him sitting still in the middle of the room. “Everybody loves Art Day.”

Benny looked apprehensive.

“What’s this?” Jeremy asked her, indicating her suit.

“Front staff uniform,” she said. “I’m road-testing it. There’s a miniskirt version too.”