Vintage Attraction (19 page)

“Do you have to have every fucking bulb in the house lit up?” She hated when I didn't keep the place dark. She often commented on feeling like a suspect in an interrogation room. Each month, she scoffed about the electric bill.

“I was trying to read.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“Do you really think I'd do something like that?”

The truth was I had no idea. “When I found him here, he said nothing was going on.”

She seemed to hear this as though information she already knew. Pacer Rosengrant must have tipped her off about the encounter. “Well, nothing was going on,” she said carefully, her tone betraying nothing.

I still imagined a lie-detector needle going crazy, spraying its scroll with hostile ink, after absorbing a blatantly false statement. “What's with the texts, then? He obviously is less interested in theory for his Court exam than he is in practicing with you. What's he even doing back in Chicago?”

She sat down beside me. Apparently she was not at all concerned with maintaining confrontation distance. “Hapworth, have you never been with someone who had . . . that kind of hold on you?”

“He's such a loser, Izzy. You're the one who's important. You're the one who's sought after. He's never going to pass the rest of that exam. He's a hack. I read the Yelp reviews of that Vegas place. An assistant wine director who showed some promise once but is so in love with himself and his fantasy of being a master sommelier that he can't even work the floor or put together a decent list.”

“Are you sure you're not describing yourself?”

I was stricken. “Is that how you see me? I'm not in love with myself.”

“You stop caring just when you're supposed to start doing. I've never seen you once prepare for a class or actually read a student's paper you graded.”

“Part of me has never cared about teaching. What's the point in caring when nothing comes of it?”

“Well, when you really care about something, you're not done after three sentences. You can't just throw it away and move on to the next thing. People lock themselves into your brain. Whether or not your experiences with them were good or bad is irrelevant. Once they're there, they're there. So, yes, rationally, logically, I should be able to walk away from him. I should have walked away long before I met you. And I did, in a way.”

“But?”

“But he came back. He showed up. I wasn't planning it.”

“You aren't the same person you were when you dated him.”

I'd been speaking to the Stil de grain yellow rug that underlay the coffee table, and now lifted my head. Ishiguro had come over and sat before me. He stared in my direction. Though the dog just bore the solemn expression he always did, his eyes and pout seemed imbued with deeper melancholy. I imagined this was how Casshole felt when his parents fought. Scott and Sheryl were uncharacteristically quiet tonight, probably with their sensationalistic pierced ears to water glasses.

I turned to Izzy. She was busy with the BlackBerry she'd reclaimed. I asked, “So what about me?”

She spoke to the device's small screen. “Come on, Hapworth.”

“No, seriously, Isabelle. If things were really so good between us, you wouldn't have been so weak to Pacer Rosengrant's surfeit of charm and pleasing aesthetics.”

She looked up at me, like I'd said something terrible. “You never call me Isabelle.”

I tried to laugh. I put an arm around her, which she didn't reject. “I just wish you'd be honest with me.”

“I wish you'd drink with me.”

“Fine. Make me something. I'll have what she's having.”

She excused herself to the bathroom—“To get out of this armor,” she said—and Ishiguro and I watched her advance down the hall until the vantage offered her no longer. I couldn't help imagining her going to fortify her flickering vodka buzz with a couple of lines. The pug climbed onto the couch. Likely he was endeavoring to distract me from my cynicism. He positioned himself in my lap. Then he stood upright, and with a paw on each shoulder to balance himself, set about licking my face. He painted with his tongue rapidly, in sweeping strokes. I kept turning in the direction opposite the dog's focus in order to keep from being suffocated. Barely able to speak, I asked Ishiguro, “Are you happy? Do I give you a good life?” The dog's face was almost completely upstaged by his propeller tongue. He was undeterred by the question, and kept on licking, perhaps by way of response.

Izzy's return signaled the conclusion of Ishiguro's facial. Her opening of bottles and slamming of ice cubes into shakers chased the pug into the kitchen to seek cocktail hour
amuse-bouche
. For some reason, she was still wearing the clothes she'd left to take off.

She presented me shortly with an amply filthy dirty martini. I took an immodest sip. It occurred to me that by drinking it I was forgetting to perform crucial parts of my recently developed and in progress improv sketch.

“I have to go e-mail my attendance list. And grade some papers.”

She was angling for the place between the dog and me on the couch. “It's okay. You don't have to keep me company.” She looked genuinely disappointed.

I didn't move to exit right away. Instead I continued to sit beside her, drink in hand. She sipped hers and scanned cable channels. She advanced past each offering without even considering it. It was as though her flipping was just an exercise for her thumb. I hated to have to keep pretending to be a teacher. I'd hoped I was leaving academia behind when I walked out of Shelley Schultz's office.

I finished half of the martini. This, I figured, was a fair compromise. I kissed Izzy on the cheek, gathered the MacBook from the breakfast bar, and took it to the guest bedroom. While the computer booted, I withdrew a stack of essays from the desk drawer. These were final papers I'd collected at the close of an earlier semester, without any intention of reading or handing back. I'd forgotten I still had them until recently. Now they served as props to perpetuate the myth that I was employed. I could still taste brininess in my mouth. I longed to finish the glass I'd abandoned. No matter what you wanted to say about Izzy, her power to compose and execute flawless cocktails, almost rivaling her dexterity in wine, could never be shaken. But I needed to remain in control of my inhibitions. I sensed I'd drunk too much on an empty stomach when I contemplated just telling Izzy everything I'd been hiding. I felt like such a hypocrite railing about her deceit. I'd probably trumped her, if not in magnitude, in number of concealments: what had almost transpired with Talia, what had happened on campus to my job. Even what I was doing right now instead of grading papers. I had an unlocked folder of images open on the computer. I'd appropriated the pictures from Facebook. They depicted some of my female student “friends” in salacious poses of alcohol-fomented informality. I hadn't jerked off much over the years. I hadn't done it at all since moving in with Izzy. I couldn't remember the last time I'd even felt the need to before I got fired.

She came in. She found me with my jeans pushed down my legs to the floor. My dick stuck through the hole in my trout boxers. Izzy asked, “This is what you call grading?”

I cracked up. I wasn't actually throttling it when she entered. I was, in fact, appraising one of the Lindsays in the wanton Jamaican spring break bikini semi-nude at the moment my wife broke in. “Sorta.”

The fact that this was the first time she'd found me like this over the course of our relationship betrayed no revulsion in her tone. “I'm not good enough? I can put out.”

I sighed and exited my dick center stage. “I wasn't—”

“Maybe not yet.”

“I don't really feel like doing anything.”

“Nothing?” Now she was flirting.

What kind of a person was I if I let her know she could want Pacer Rosengrant and me, too? Shouldn't she have had to choose one of us or the other? I'd often trolled for a threesome when I was Craigslist dating. Now that I was married to someone who got top billing, I couldn't picture myself in a supporting role.

I let her lead me to bed. She pulled with drunk confidence. She'd probably finished both martinis and then made herself another round. I didn't mind. When she took charge of me like this, it reminded me of the early days. There was something vaguely thrilling in being able to return, if even for a moment, to a less convoluted time. Life was simpler when we knew less about each other, when we'd done less together. When had everything we knew and didn't know and had and hadn't done become so goddamn consequential?

I started to help her out of her costume.

“Rip it off me,” she said.

I laughed uncomfortably. The Chanel was expensive. I had no interest in shredding it for the sole purpose of advancing some sodden half-blinkered impromptu fantasy. “Can't you—I—just take off your dress first?” She resisted. She countered. She evaded. When I tried to still her, she squirmed away. Her elusiveness reminded me of the game Ishiguro played every time someone needed to put on his harness. Finally she capitulated. She lay splayed out on the mattress. The sheets were bunched into an archipelago around her. She panted. Sweat glossed her forehead. It broke up some of the hardened studio makeup in its ascent.

“You used to be romantic,” she whispered.

“Destruction is not romantic.”

“Spontaneity used to be.”

“Izzy.” Now that I had the dress, and she only her dark undergarments, I wanted to start again. But it was too late. The vacant way she panned her head made it seem like she was thinking about everything else except me, which she probably was.

Then we heard the back gate outside clatter up. A heavy vehicle came in. Izzy shivered when the gate rattled its way down again. Given the number of car doors opening and closing, I knew it was the Laheys. They'd been gone all night, not eavesdropping. The sound of their return suggested the outing had not been a happy one for the nuclear family. Sheryl and Scott yelled back and forth to each other in harsh, underbred Midwestern registers. Cassidy issued his shaky-voiced disapproval for his parents' carrying-on in guttural, shrieking caws. I almost felt a little sympathy for him. He must have been exhausted. I didn't remember being awake at this hour until I was ten years old.

Izzy and I listened to the full theater-in-the-parking-lot production. She waited for the Laheys to pass our deck on the stairs before commenting. “
Après
them,
le d
éluge,
” she said.

We didn't have long before the encroaching footstep and impolite voice clatter would make its way to their oversubscribed apartment and accordingly, by the architectural mandates of shitty cheap construction, down into ours. Once the Laheys were upstairs, our chances of getting further for the evening, if not longer, would be completely tyrannized.

“Nothing like a circus to get you in the mood,” I muttered.

Izzy took hold of my sweaty, throbbing hand. I had the feeling she was about to say something tender. But when the toddler detonated upstairs, Izzy turned away from me and drew deep into herself. She went to a place where I once might have been able to find her. Now I had no idea where to even begin looking. The ricocheting vehemence reached Ishiguro in the living room. It caused him to come seeking his mama and papa. Izzy was oblivious to the dog's urgently unrelenting effusion. So I got up to answer the scratch pleas on the other side of the door.

There was the Bistro Dominique of the evening, with its dim
lights, delicate sounds of silver tinkling, din of reserved, measured fine dining conversation, and precise choreography of waiters and bussers and captains and managers at “service.” This was the Bistro Dominique that had won its awards. This was the Bistro Dominique that the regulars touted. The Bistro Dominique at which they spent a thousand dollars on a single dinner. I didn't know this Bistro Dominique very well. I was more familiar with the Bistro Dominique of the morning and the sloppy, sloshing dissonance that marked it. The days she wasn't filming, the world in which Izzy had to inventory Chef Dominique's wine program and meet with prospective speaking-event clients and show sponsors and audition future
Vintage Attraction
guests was a world anything but placid. It sat in stark contrast to the night's refinement. The bistro when customers weren't there to be horrified abounded in curse words over bollixed produce orders, impatient creditors, reservation line tangles, bags of Doritos, and oily Potbelly sandwich wrappers. Being here when people entered and exited carrying clutch purses instead of clipboards felt like an elaborate deception. An outsider who knew a time at Bistro Dominique had existed when the dress code was Land's End boots and hooded sweatshirts instead of suits and ties didn't belong here. The valet staging Bentleys at the curb where liquor delivery and linen-laundry trucks had idled only ten hours prior seemed an act that worked to convince me I'd somehow imagined all of the diurnal disarray.

I waited outside the restaurant to pick up Izzy. It was a new Dr. Phil–inspired plan for intervention of mine. If she couldn't make it home in a timely fashion on her own, I had no problem guiding. She was supposed to have finished fifteen minutes ago. Finally, out of patience and needing to piss, I had to go inside. Izzy's old roommate, Chris, in his manager's charcoal suit, looked disapprovingly at my jeans when he saw me. He touched his shiny scalp, seeming to weigh his options. Then he snuck me past the host stand. I knew my way to the wood-paneled water closet from there.

I washed my hands with a fresh bar of French-milled soap and dried off with a thick towel, which I dropped into a minimalist hamper. For once, I wasn't completely disappointed with the image the mirror presented. I took a deep breath, corrected my posture, cracked my knuckles, and let myself out.

Instead of turning back into the dining room, I went in the opposite direction, to the kitchen. I'd been in here before, but never during service. It was suddenly rather abundantly clear why I hadn't. This was no place for me. The air was heavy with intensity and unwavering faith in the operation and commitment to relentless precision. Every face was sweaty and bore a cemented expression of seriousness. Every sleeve was tightly rolled up. Every waist was apron-cinched. And it was anything but quiet. It was actually loud as hell. Maybe it was hell. I found an otherworldly tornado of movement and noise behind those swinging doors: sous chefs on the front line, snatching tickets, firing this and that course, slamming down iron pans, clanging whisks, scratching spoons, and pounding mallets. They wielded knives, doled out baby spoonfuls of caviar, reduced sauces in pans, poached speckled eggs in water at a rolling boil. They plunged thermometers' probing ends into meat, sliced portions, sauced, and arrayed the components. They wiped napkins around the perimeter of finished plates one last time before shouting them ready. For the handoff, waiters queued at attention in a chorus line frozen by cognizance. They knew better than to speak or to breathe. An inconsequential interruption, anything that had even the remotest potential to distract, risked breaking anyone's concentration, which in turn could dismantle everyone's. So stolidly they came forward when their orders were up and took the plates. Immediately they turned and endeavored to leave without bumping into the jammed pastry chefs, who'd ended up losing the battle for a fair share of counter space. More tickets came down, more proteins were Frisbeed from one white-coat to another out of the refrigerator and onto the iron to sear. Every burner on the stove raged blue and white, whether or not a pot or pan sat on top. The whole place at all times was at least two hundred degrees because of the internal and external fires ceaselessly erupting. This was the kind of environment from which the weak and strong alike came and went cursing and screaming and crying, as happy and as sad as they'd ever been in their lives. Plate after plate, night after night. If they survived, they'd get to go home at the conclusion thoroughly spent, as though having given birth or fucked like crazy. They'd leave simultaneously exhausted, starving and through with it all, and coursing enough adrenaline to fuel another turn. They'd leave wanting nothing more and nothing less than to reenter the civilian world that revered them but, on the other side of the doors, had no idea what any of it was really like. Marathon runners. War heroes. Then my eyes fell upon the stool at the end of the line. It was the seat from which the director of this made-for-TV epic—Chef Dominique—was supposed to expedite, to lead his cast and crew, to guide them, to encourage them, to be the last to make sure that every course that came out was perfect. The stool was empty.

Seeing all that was going on back here, all of this labor, all of this passion, the sweat, the fear, the self-flagellation, and to know
he
was the sole beneficiary of every reward that could possibly come of it, drove me mad. I hated Chef Dominique for the ridiculousness he subjected Izzy to, under the pretense of advancing her career. I hated him for the grueling
Vintage Attraction
episodes he made her film without paying her. I hated him for booking her appearances at events and taking a hefty cut. I hated him for claiming he did all of this because he was looking out for her interests. I hated him for providing himself at her expense a means to avoid having to concern himself with his restaurant. But at that moment the thing that got to me barely had anything to do with Izzy. At least when she was on the floor, she was the sommelier. She was famous in her profession and on TV. Bistro Dominique's Gordon Gekko–era cuisine owed the vogue it was experiencing to Izzy's celebrity. But what of those whose white chef jackets were unembroidered? What of those nameless kept faceless in the back of the house? The guests were oblivious. Beyond what popular nonfiction and stylized and purchasable food television were capable of revealing, they had no frame of reference. When they had Chef Dominique's scallops and eel terrines and poached prawns and tenderloins of beef and duck breasts and foie gras, they proclaimed their lives forever changed from the experience. But it was these cooks who'd actually executed their superlative courses. Not Chef Dominique, the symbol, the figure, the metonym, the caricature, who was getting all the credit. That was infuriating above anything else. The least he could have done in return was to have
been
here
with them, with her. I was even more determined now not to let the proprietor's conduct with Izzy continue to go unchallenged.

“Where is Chef Dominique?” I asked a black-suited waiter. He didn't seem to find my presence in the kitchen troubling.

“He was here?” the waiter said. “But then he go?”

“I wanted to speak to him.”

“He will maybe come back?”

“Have you seen Sommelier?”

“She, I do not think?”

“It's okay. Thank you.”

I scanned the kitchen one last time before leaving. I couldn't get over how these people worked. It was overwhelming: the way they prepared, every ingredient perfect, the way they served, every piece of china respected, the way they didn't let a single detail go unattended. I didn't think anyone on the line had broken from his or her trance long enough to notice I was even there. The level of concentration, the degree of commitment, the faith it took to pull this off, it was pretty hard not to find it inspiring.

I returned to Chris at the podium. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Before I could answer, Izzy appeared. I expected her to admonish me for entering the restaurant uninvited, for wearing sneakers and jeans. Instead, her face was lit with excitement. She turned over a business card that had a scrawled inscription on its previously blank reverse. “I'm so glad you're here,” she said to either Chris or to me. Her eyes darted from one of us to the other. “I have some news.”

I steeled myself. I sensed, illogically, that she was going to tell us something unpleasant. My throat went dry. I pointed at her hand. “What's that?”

“Oh, just a note from one of the guests.”

“What's it say?”

She read from the card. “‘
Brava
, Miss Conway,
brava
. The pairings tonight are outstanding. You're unusually knowledgeable about wine.'” She continued to stare at the words after she finished reciting them. She was silent, moored to the truisms therein, as though the message was a revelation.

“So, what's the news?” Chris said. His measured and unemotional dining room voice escalated with exasperation.

“We got invited to Greece,” Izzy proclaimed.

“What?” Chris and I said in unison.

“There's a trade trip at the end of the month. For ten days. It's sponsored by the Greek Wine Council.” She said this looking at Chris, as though he were the one who'd accompany her. “They send a group of sommeliers and buyers and distributors and reporters to tour the vineyards and meet the winemakers and taste through the portfolios. You want to know the best part?”

“Um, real Greek food?”

“Even better. Hapworth and I'd only have to pay for airfare. They cover everything else. The meals, the lodging, everything.”

“That's some trip,” Chris said stiffly. He turned to me. “Are you sure you're ready for something like this? Do you have a passport?”

His remark annoyed me. “Yes, Mom.”

“I wanted to surprise you,” Izzy said sweetly, this time to me.

“It sounds . . . I mean, it sounds—”

“Perfect, right?”

“Actually . . . Yeah, it does sound perfect.”

Then her face got sad. “There's just one problem,” she said.

“What could possibly be wrong?”

“Dominique. He's never going to let me get away for that long.”

“Izzy, are you kidding?” I asked. “He owes you some time off.”

“Hapworth, it's complicated.”

“It doesn't have to be that complicated. We get on a plane. They take care of the rest.”

“Let's talk about this at home.”

“Fine.” I couldn't believe she was really going to let him get in the way of this.

A waiter then came over and whispered something in her ear. “I have to go,” she told me. “I'll meet you outside.”

She was off before I had a chance to ask her how much longer she thought she'd be.

“Is everything okay?” Chris asked again. He'd apparently been following my trailing Izzy until she disappeared.

“Sure.” I patted the pockets of my jeans. “I think I left my keys in the bathroom. I'll be just a moment.”

I climbed the stairs beside the kitchen that led to Chef Dominique's office. I'd seen the space before, on my inaugural visit to the restaurant. I learned on the unofficial late-night tour that the glass top of the chef's narrow rectangular desk was a favorite after-hours spot for coke snorting. It made sense, if you thought about it, the need to unwind and become anonymous after a harrowing service, privacy, the darkness, the vast expanse of shiny surface, not a stray invoice or Micros report or pastry chef resume anywhere in sight. But now, midway through the second turn, the door was open and the lights were on. The formidable executive chef sat behind the desk. Izzy had once told me the only thing he did up here was to monitor the dining room's activity on the OpenTable Internet client. It provided in real-time-feed reports on which reservations showed up, which cancelled, how many tables were booked for subsequent nights, how statistically analogous the evening's turnout was compared to the same evening of the week seven days ago, a month ago, two years ago. He now typed on a BlackBerry Pearl that looked even smaller than it was below the single sausage finger that poked it.

He seemed to sense my presence. “May I help you?” a hunched Chef Dominique said automatically, crossly. When I failed to answer, he pressed his shoulders against the ergonomic adjustable back of his Aeron chair. “Oh, Peter Hapworth,” he said then. “It's you.” He squinted at his miniature screen. “What are you doing here?” he asked the BlackBerry. “Sommelier is busy with a private party.”

I took a step inside the chef's office. “I don't think you should have made her work tonight. Or any of these nights.”

“What can I tell you? She is popular. She is what they want.”

“You have her for fifty, sixty hours a week making your television show and doing speaking engagements. Don't you think this takes a toll?”

“On you, perhaps.”

“Yeah, on me.”

“You believe you have some sort of claim on her.”

“Yes. I do. We're married, Chef. Remember that?”

“You saw a judge. You said ‘I do, I do.' And because of this you believe that you know what she wants and needs?”

“I like to think so. I know that it would be too much for anyone to be with you all day and then here all night. Izzy may be a celebrity, and she may not let you know when she's tired, but trust me, she gets tired. She needs to be away from all these people who demand thing after thing.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop making her do all of this shit. You have three perfectly qualified sommeliers. Don't make her work the floor.”

“Why is it that if she is so . . . overwhelmed she doesn't tell me?”

“Are you kidding? She thinks she
owes
you. She still hasn't gotten over the fact that you hired her in the first place. And the TV stuff. Whatever you say, she's going to do. I've tried to convince her that you're really just exploiting her, but she refuses to believe me.”