Vintage (2 page)

Bruno's second book sold much better. It was a collection of essays called
Twenty Recipes for Love
. It wasn't very good, in his opinion, but it caught the collective fancy of foodies. And it wasn't just the epicures who bought it: he was surprised that some of the folks in the working-class neighborhood where he'd grown up had read it. That's because it was clever. It had a gimmick: it would help you mend relationships or seduce your neighbor through food. They'd hired a cartoonist from
Playboy
to create vignettes introducing the chapters. “Hooky” was how his agent, Harley, had described it. It had given Bruno a shtick, and he'd been working it ever since. Bruno knew he was a good writer. No doubts there. But what he didn't know was how long it lasted: this state of good writerliness. He feared that being a good writer wasn't a constant. It wasn't a state or plane of existence. Maybe it was a pinnacle you reached only momentarily. What he feared more than anything in the world was that each writer had a limit. A tab. And when your credit ran out, you were done, the well was dry.

This wasn't a new fear brought on by his age. He'd felt it
early on, as soon as he'd started his second book. It was as if he knew whatever came next would be a sham.

Now here he was, an aging, sodden hack taking a cab to his mother's flat. He was broke. His only valuable possessions were a busted typewriter and the single page in his pocket. An opening to another unfinished book. A bridge to nowhere.

Bruno noticed the cabbie's bloodshot eye studying him in the rearview mirror. The man turned and offered a half smile. He was youngish, but weathered, with a scruff of a beard, bags under his eyes and wispy brown hair spraying out from under a newsboy cap.

“Hey,” the driver said, “you're that guy, aren't you?”

“What guy?”

“The one who used to be on TV?” He smiled again, showing yellow teeth.

“It's been a while.”

“Sure, I remember you. On the news. You did those pieces about the restaurants. Man, you used to tear some of those places to shreds. Close places down. I remember that. I loved it, man. You were ruthless.”

“I also gave favorable reviews.”

“Sure. But everybody does that.”

They rode in silence for a while, the cabbie smiling to himself and glancing on and off in the rearview enough for Bruno to grow nervous about the man's distraction. It was as if the fellow were searching his memory for the vestiges of Bruno's fading career.

“So what are you doing now?” the driver finally asked.

Bruno grasped the typewriter uncomfortably.
I'm separated from my wife,
he thought.
I'm sleeping on my mother's couch.
“I still write a column for the
Sun-Times
.”

“Yeah? But nobody reads papers anymore. At least I don't.
You should get a blog or an app or something. That way I could read it on my phone while I'm queued up at O'Hare.”

“Of course. Brilliant.” Bruno couldn't suppress his sarcasm. He loathed technology. He despised everything that sped up meals, everything that interrupted the slow pleasures of living. He hated televisions in dining rooms and in airport lobbies. He despised mobile phones answered between
il primo
and
il secondo
. And most of all he detested the insipid Internet and its so-called democratization, the fact that every asshole with an opinion could become a critic, that every restaurant could be exalted or decried by any untrained palate, the reviewer's only qualification being his ability to type with his thumbs.

But the cabbie hadn't picked up on Bruno's derision. “Hey, I remember now, you also did that book, right?”

Hope glimmered in Bruno's heart. Had the man read his first novel,
A Season Among the Vines
?

“Yeah, my lady's got that one. It was huge when we were in high school. If you wanted to act classy and get laid, you had to have that book.”

The glimmer flickered and died. The book the man spoke of wasn't
Season
, but Bruno's second effort. The
hooky
one.

“What was that called?”

“
Twenty Recipes for Love.
”

“Yeah, right. That was great.”

Cheeky and gimmicky though it may have been,
Twenty Recipes
had still carried a core of truth. He'd still been a writer then. At least it had made him famous.

“Hey . . .” the driver said after a pause. He was staring at Bruno full-on in the rearview at the same time that he swerved between cars on the Kennedy Expressway. Bruno gripped his typewriter tighter. “You can help me out.”

“How so?”

“My girlfriend. She just got a promotion. She now runs the perfume counter at Marshall Field's.”

Bruno smiled. The man was humble, maybe a little crass, but he still respected tradition. He refused to use the landmark Chicago department store's new name: Macy's. The fellow had a sense of history. Bruno appreciated this.

“And?”

“Well, I want to fix her a little something to . . . touch off a little spark, maybe heat things up in the sack . . . if you know what I'm saying.”

“I do.”

“So, can you help me out?”

Bruno searched the recesses of his brain, struggling to remember his prescriptions from
Twenty Recipes.
He'd divided the meals into function: first dates, rekindling the dying flame, celebrating the lasting commitment. It was silly pop psychology, but it had given Bruno a reputation as a sort of physician for relationships.
Oh, the irony.

“How old is she?” Bruno asked.

“Thirty-five.”

“Her favorite book?”

“She ain't really the book type. She reads magazines. You know.
People
. That kind of stuff.”

“That's unfortunate. Movies?”

“She likes chick flicks. But the old ones. Ever see
Roman Holiday
?”

“Ah . . .” Bruno said, brightening and leaning forward, his mind whirring as the alcohol receded and instinct took over. “Have you been to Natasha's on Diversey?”

“Nah, but I know where it is.”

“Good. Go there on a Thursday; that's when they get deliveries. First thing in the morning. You're looking for a fresh capon. Go large, eight pounds. You'll want to pick up some truffles and fresh sage. Get some good olive oil from Nick's down in Greektown. Taste it first. It should smell green and leave a tang in the back of your throat. You're going to want to make a paste of the oil and sage and rub down the whole bird. Roast it with new potatoes. Pick up a decent white, but nothing too showy. You don't want to upstage the fowl. Maybe a Vouvray, or a Grüner Veltliner. Better yet, get one of each. You getting this?”

“Getting it,” the cabbie said. He was looking down into the passenger seat and scribbling, somehow managing to thread through the speeding highway traffic without looking at the road. Bruno didn't notice. His pulse surged. He closed his eyes and imagined the meal coming together.

“Now, you're going to want to go classy. Clear out a room and move the table to the middle. Use a white tablecloth. Don't skimp on the flowers.”

“Gotcha, gotcha. White tablecloth. This is good stuff. Really good. Thanks.”

Bruno leaned back, satisfied, at last, to be of some use. The cabbie nodded as he drove. Undoubtedly he was thinking of his girlfriend, the expression on her face when she returned home from her perfume counter to see the carefully arranged table, her breath on his cheek as he takes her into his arms, and then later . . . their bodies lying beside one another, glazed with a sheen of sweat . . .

Bruno leaned back and smiled, trying to remember what it was like to wake up next to a woman.

While tenderloin is sensual by name and nature, the emotional application of this cut can vary greatly. Pork expresses comfort and confidence. Beef, unabashed extravagance. Prepare bison for your lover and you are taking a bold risk that could overwhelm and frighten. The tenderloin of a domesticated American elk, however, is perhaps the most versatile choice. The hint of wild game can remind the diner of forgotten desire, the buttery softness in the heart of a filet can connote the affection that lies just beneath a surface seared by years and difficult times.

—
B
RUNO
T
ANNENBAUM,
T
WENTY
R
ECIPES FOR
L
OVE

B
runo choked on a snore, jolting awake. He cracked his eyes, the light angling through the slats in the window shades arousing his headache. A family of porcelain ducks watched him from the lace doily on an end table. He was stretched on the couch, still wearing his rumpled sport coat, though his mother had tucked a warm fleece blanket under his chin.

He turned his head and spied his father's battered typewriter facing him from the coffee table; its keys formed a mocking grin. He could vaguely remember playing on the floor as a child while his father sat straight-backed on a creaking chair, carefully using the contraption to peck out a bank loan application. His dad had worked long hours for a kosher butcher on the far north of the city, and he'd held out hopes of one day buying the shop from its aging owner. He had been cautious and pragmatic like other North Side immigrants, and his sole daily luxury was a glass of reasonable Chablis that stood beside the typewriter, filled to a line on the side demarking four ounces, and not a drop more. Bruno had hoped that the ancient machine could somehow rekindle his literary fire, but it hadn't been the typewriter working its magic last night at La Marsellaise. It had been the Vacqueyras.

He smelled coffee and fresh bread in the kitchen. His mother had already left for work, but she'd left him well provisioned. A small carafe of coffee stood next to poppy-seed-studded
mohnberches
on a plate beside a pat of Beurre d'Isigny.

He was late for work but refused to rush. The health risk of fretting over your day job was a lesson learned from his father's demise—the old man died of massive heart failure at work when Bruno was only seven. Bruno learned from that experience that life should be lived in the moment, filling the glass well past the four-ounce line, right up to the rim, because you never know when you'll wind up lifeless on the shop floor clutching a broom.

It was a warmish spring day and he took the El downtown, strolling through Millennium Park, his well-trained sniffer detecting a trace of pear tree blossoms above the exhaust and sewage, and then a hint of sweet lake air behind it. He was still feeling the joy of spring as he danced out of the elevator onto the ninth floor of the
Sun-Times
building.

Iris Hernandez at the reception desk smiled up at him through a mane of glossy black hair.

“Good morning,” Bruno chimed, removing his sunglasses and winking. He'd always loved this compact fireplug of a woman who guarded the lobby.

“Good morning?”

“Heavens, I haven't missed lunch, have I?”

“Almost, but not quite.”

“Speaking of lunch, any plans?”

Iris patted a neatly tied plastic sack on her desk. She smiled. She liked him. Or so he thought. She was an adorable twentysomething who lived with her mother and her six-year-old daughter in Garfield Park. She was single. Never been married. How some lout could impregnate her and then flee was beyond him. But then, could Bruno really judge?

This little lunch routine was something of a game. It wasn't quite flirting. Iris was nearly half Bruno's age, and Bruno was usually broke.

“My mother would kill me if I brought this home. She says wasting food is a sin.”

“Sounds like something my mother would say. Wise women.”

He offered a wink as he moved on, but Iris poked her head around the corner.

“Oh, hey, Grovnick is looking for you.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

Ernie Grovnick was Bruno's boss. He was the editor of the lifestyle page, a newspaper lifer. He was budget-conscious and excelled at appeasing upper management. He could write a mean headline. But he was also unimaginative and one of the larger pains in Bruno's ass.

Bruno wove through cubicles to his cubby in the corner.
The sterility of the newsroom was relieved by the floor-to-ceiling glass that afforded a generous view of the Chicago River, the springish breeze adding a lively ripple to the surface of the gray water. Unlike the others on the floor, Bruno's desk contained no computer. He worked with yellow legal pads and little black notebooks. It was the only civilized way to write now that Bruno's brief romance with his father's manual typewriter was fading. Bruno also felt that he was doing a service to the interns who input his words into their computers. Sort of like fine art students who make precise copies of a Rembrandt or Modigliani.

The rest of Bruno's cube was taken up by culinary magazines, his telephone, notes and files and a collection of essential resources, including
Le Guide Culinaire, The Professional Chef, Consider the Oyster
and
Beard on Food,
as well as the classic text on Russian cookery,
A Gift to Young Housewives,
which Bruno kept on hand largely for the effect of the title.

He licked the tip of his pencil and began to scribble on a notepad. He was formulating a concept for an article: all great restaurants began to fade as they approached the decade mark. La Marsellaise, turning ten this year, would be his first case study.
Ah, the might of the pen!

He leaned back and drummed his fingers on his stack of books, staring down at the river, his dark and watery muse. His reverie was interrupted by the squeak of Grovnick's loafers.

He ignored the man until Grovnick cleared his throat.