Leftovers

I woke up this morning with a taste for pancakes and immediately began to cry. The chef is gone. He left the buttermilk behind to sour in my icebox, along with the crème fraîche, the eggs, the vanilla extract, and the organic French butter. He left me the elements of breakfast, in pieces, scattered across my kitchen. Candied walnuts. Maple syrup. A seasonal assortment of fresh berries. He forgot his whisk, too. Or maybe that was a gift. With him it was hard to tell.

It started out simple, with a salad. We met at the market around the corner, over the avocados. I was holding one in my palm and he put his hand over mine, said, "Ah, non, non, non. It's too ripe. You can't do anything with that one, not even guacamole."  Then he pulled an avocado from his basket, replaced the one in my hand. I didn't tell him I wasn't planning to buy the thing; I'd just wanted to get a better look. We met again at the check stand. He paid for my ice cream and avocado, then walked me home. I invited him up for a bowl of chili—nothing fancy, I told him. From a can.

He went straight to the kitchen, set his knapsack on a chair, his groceries on the table. He took out a head of romaine—a little showy, like a magician doing a trick: watch this. From his pack he pulled out what looked like a case for a flute. Or a pool cue. When he opened it, I saw the glint of stainless steel. Then he wielded a knife, slowly, gracefully, even. Like a dancer or something, making a point. I didn't like the looks of it.

"Whoa, mister!" I said. "It's not that kind of party."

He froze, tilted his head to one side, confused. "I will make you a Caesar salad. You have a cutting board?" He had a slight accent, a way of  saying things that could make some questions sound like statements. And vice versa. I pointed him to the counter, then turned away and reached for a bowl. I heard several clops and when I turned around he was cupping handfuls of lacy green strips, dropping them into the colander. "Eggs?" He said-asked as he dug in his grocery bag for a jar of anchovies.

"This is going to be some salad," I said.

"Yes," he said, fixing his eyes on mine. "Like no salad you have ever had before." Next to the eggs, he found a box of Velveeta.

"Ah, mon dieu. What is this?"

"Ah, mon ami. It's cheese."

"You put this in your body? Your beautiful body?" He slid his hand from my neck, over my shoulder to my waist. Then he tsk-tsked me. "This is not cheese, ah non. This is, this is—polyester."

"Polyester has its merits."

He held his breath and kept his hand on my hip.

"It's versatile—and durable."

His face softened. He spoke slowly, softly. "Food is not durable, ma chère, it is not supposed to last. Even our enjoyment of it is ephemeral. That is why we must eat so many times in one day."

"So why make a fuss every time, if you're just going to do it again anyway?"   

He smiled. Tilted his head, but just slightly. Pulled me closer. "Who knows which meal will be the last? We must savor each dish, relish each time the pleasure of a warm bread or a delicate wine or a simple blueberry." He was so cute. With that accent of his, "blueberry" came out as two words, with the stress on "berry."

"Come here," I said, "Let me taste your blue berries."

~

Those first two weeks he made me pancakes every day, with every fruit there was. Berries inside, berries outside, plum compote, caramelized pears, peaches, and fresh whipped cream. In the middle of the night he would make us a snack, "for the entr'acte" he said. He would cook by the light of the stove and the street lamp outside the kitchen window. As I lay in bed I would stare at the ceiling and wait for the aromas to reach me. Once he made bread pudding—had slipped it in the oven before we went to bed, in anticipation of our intermission.

"Every country has some kind of pancake," he told me. "You find them on every continent."

"Even Antarctica?"

"Surely the Americans have imported them." There it was again, a statement spoken as a question: lilted at the end, said with a pursed mouth, sparkling eyes.

He blamed my lack of cooking skills on my nationality. I didn't protest. "But if we could do our own cooking, what would we need with the French?" He showed me a thing or two, between bites. I've never had pancakes like the ones he made: spongy, but light. They dissolved before you had a chance to chew. Like him.

What luck, he said, that we met when we did. Perfect timing. He had just quit his job as a chef and I clearly needed a nutritionist. He would rescue me from the evil cult of prepackaged foods, teach me how to feast. Every night for two weeks he served me a new dish with a foreign name: paella, gaspacho, quiche Lorraine. Dinner began with an amuse-gueule. That means "amuse-mouth." It's like an hors d'oeuvre. Something to tease the palate, get you ready for what's coming later. The foreplay of food, he said. Here's a sample: He's facing me nose to nose, so close his face is a blur, so I know him only by his breath, a heat wave on my lips, and his hands, rough with cuts and burns but gentle on my cheeks. As he leans in to kiss me, he whispers, "Tiens, let me amuse your mouth."

    At first he found my stock of canned goods droll. He chided me, tried to convince me to see food as art as well as alimentation. "Good food is not a luxury," he said, "but a necessity. One must eat not only to feed the body but also to nourish the soul. Both need fresh, wholesome, and tasteful nutriments."

    "Fresh, I can handle," I told him. "Wholesome and tasteful—I'm afraid I'm just not that kind of girl." I knew he didn't get my jokes, but I thought he found me saucy, piquant, something his palate would adjust to, like jalepeño peppers or ripened cheese. But he thought he could season me to his taste. He tried to teach me how to use his knives, how to slice and dice and julienne. He left one of his favorite pans at my place. He thought I would use it. I mentioned it once, and he said, "It is a gift, my chou. Use it for your good health. May it serve you as well as it has served me."

"But it doesn't even fit in the microwave."

I couldn't turn him off. He wanted to make me his sous-chef, but I just wanted to get it to go. When I would marvel at the flavors of a steamed green bean, remark on how fast his hands moved when he sliced carrots or whipped egg whites, he would hand me a kitchen implement. "Tiens, chérie. Here, you try."

"Why should I as long as you're here? Why cook the cow when the goose lays for free?" Missed him completely. We spoke different languages, couldn't find a common cliché.  He was all braise and sauté and apéritif, and I was all six-pack, frozen, ready-to-serve.

One night I surprised him, made dessert—my specialty, Oreo cream pie. "A kind of chocolate mousse à l'Américaine," I said. It's a simple dish: Oreos, pudding, and Cool Whip. Takes ten minutes to prepare, four hours to freeze. Instead of one big pie, though, I made us two small ones. Before serving them I drew hearts on top with chocolate syrup. He was touched. He brushed my cheek with his fingers. His eyes looked misty. His mouth looked ready to be pleased.

It wasn't.

He tried to hide it, but I saw the disappointment when he took that first bite. He closed his eyes, as if savoring it, but he wouldn't look at me until he had swallowed. He said nothing. Leaned into me and kissed me. I pulled away. "But don't you want to finish it?" I asked.

"I'd rather have you instead."   

Soon after that he started doing some catering, so the midnight breakfasts ended and dinner was served only on Mondays. I gave him the check when he had me stir a Hollandaise while he was on the phone with another gastronome. He began to describe the dinner he was preparing for me, down to the precise color of the tomatoes and the variety of basil. As the creamy white sauce simmered I began to seethe. I would not watch this affair be reduced to his recipes—every entrée and sauce, every amuse-gueule. I wouldn't watch him distill the dinners to some kind of cookbook he could carry off; I would not be boiled down to a list of ingredients to be reheated at someone else's stove. He had taught me this much: when a stew is too salty, add a potato to balance the flavors, but when you put too much sugar in the batter, pancakes will burn on the surface and stay raw inside. I poured the sauce into the sink, took his knife case from the counter, tossed it at his feet. "Get off the phone," I told him. "I'm ordering out."

~

Even though I wouldn't but touch his knife while he was here, now I see through my own reconstituted, dehydrated, flash-frozen-from-concentrate world. Now I understand that bread needs warmth to rise, soups need to simmer and sit for a day, and a good custard takes a good long time to thicken. A week after he left I made a Caesar dressing. Tossed it with prepackaged greens. I can also make a decent quiche (in a store-bought crust), and last night I finished off the best bouillabaisse I've ever tasted—a  feat, especially when you consider that two months ago I didn't even know the word. I have gone whole days without looking at the microwave. Sometimes I tell myself I made him up—I didn't meet him in that store, he didn't teach me a thing. I like to think that I had amnesia or slept through the first part of my life and suddenly came to, hefting that avocado. Spontaneous enlightenment. Food for thought. It's easier that way. Hard to miss someone you never knew.

But of course I miss him. What do you think? I miss him so bad I can taste it.