Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“When am I supposed to bring it up?”

Then very quietly, with so many people standing all around them, Jonathan said, “Get out of my face.”

“I will when I get a straight answer,” said Orion. “I think when I raise an issue over days and weeks I deserve some kind of response.”

Jonathan shook his head. “No. You don’t deserve anything from me. You made a choice. You stepped out of the critical path a year ago. When you leave the team, you don’t get to be the referee.”

“Who says I left the team? Who says I’m leaving?” Orion demanded. The idea was wonderful when he was alone, but sounded like defeat when he stood facing Jonathan.

“Be very careful,” Jonathan told him.

The end of the century, which was also the end of the millennium, ISIS held a New Year’s Eve blowout with a caterer, a corporate party planner, and an elaborate conceit: 2000 Leagues Under the Sea @ The New England Aquarium. The waiters dressed in antique diving gear with helmets of copper, nickel, and glass. Secretaries wore slinky dresses, while the programmers donned black sweaters with their jeans. Dave wore black from head to toe: a black suit with a black dress shirt, no tie, like an East Coast Larry Ellison. Only the fish came as themselves: the prickly puffer fish and blue-striped wrasse, the lumpy grouper and billowy eel. As the party ascended a spiral ramp around their giant tank, armored sea turtles rose from the depths along with undulating rays. Disdainful sharks circled with mouths agape, all needle teeth and pinprick eyes.

On the mezzanine overlooking the open penguin habitat, Sorel’s girl band, The Chloroforms, were performing, Sorel out front, all legs and boots, wearing what looked like a cardigan sweater for a dress.

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Sorel sang. Do technoids scream ’bout mission creep?

Good night ….

Sleep tight ….

“Is that Jonathan over there?” Molly asked Orion.

It was hard to see anything in the dark cavernous space. The great illuminated fish tanks cast watery shadows on the walls.

Don’t let the bad bugs bite …, sang Sorel, and her Amazonian bandmates rocked behind her.

“Wait for me,” Orion called to Molly. He wasn’t sure what Jonathan would say to her if she approached him all alone. She did not know about Orion’s latest run-in with Jonathan. He didn’t want to worry her, and then again, the situation was complex. Far easier to suggest that there were tensions at ISIS than to describe them.

He caught up with Molly just in time, and saw that Jonathan was smiling. “Hey,” Jonathan said by way of greeting, and he looked past Orion to scan the crowd.

“There you are,” said Jonathan, as Emily approached carrying a plate of sushi.

“Hello!” She kissed Orion and Molly. “It’s been too long.”

She stood at Jonathan’s side, slender, elegant in black tailored trousers and a pale silk shirt. Had Orion really introduced these two? They made no sense, unless Orion imagined the old Jonathan, the rambunctious, fun-loving, lay-down-his-life, wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night, drive-anywhere-for-his-friends Jonathan. Only Emily and the old Jonathan made sense. Orion had loved him too.

Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bad bugs bite . Sorel sang with increasing urgency. But if they do … Drums throbbed underneath Sorel’s husky voice. Take off your shoe! Take off your shoe! Bam, bam, bam the drums pounded as Sorel screamed in crescendo. And beat them! Beat them! Beat them! …

Suddenly the penguins in their arctic habitat began barking to one another. Orion rushed to the concrete barrier and saw that the birds, usually so stoic, had begun diving into the water. Molly came along to look, and while Jonathan didn’t bother, Emily joined them, balancing her plate of sushi on the wall.

’Til they’re black and BLUE! Sorel howled, releasing her inner Dylan.

“The song is actually scaring the penguins off their rocks.” Emily laughed a little, imagining what Jess would say, and how she would worry about the birds’ eardrums.

“Maybe if we walk up the ramp it’ll be quieter,” Molly suggested.

“Okay. Soon,” said Orion.

“Meet me up there. I’ll try to get us some food.” Carefully, Molly began ascending the crowded ramp in her high heels.

“Are you all right?” Emily called out to Orion.

He shook his head.

“What is it?”

Sweet Emily, his dear old friend, first crush, first love—what could he say? The time and place were so absurd, with all those bug-eyed fish swimming past, and the oily penguins swimming below. “Nothing.”

But Emily would not take that for an answer, and led him away from the band, past the sushi bar, and raw bar, and the tables serving tapas, to a quieter cove with dark tanks lit by purple phosphorescent fish. “What’s going on?”

He hesitated. “I think you know.”

“I don’t,” she told him.

“Yes, you do.”

“Not from your perspective.”

So of course she did know. That confirmed it. She was only trawling for information. “Do you think it’s fair to ask?”

“Wait,” she said. “Explain.”

She took off her glasses and looked much younger, almost the girl he had once kissed. “Is it true you’re leaving ISIS?”

“Is that what Jonathan told you?”

“Were you considering it?” she pressed, and he knew she wanted to know why.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Good.” She smiled. “I know Jonathan values your opinion.”

Orion murmured, “You know he doesn’t. He values his own opinion.”

“You got along before.”

“I’m like everybody else,” said Orion. “I get along with Jonathan until I cross him.”

“Why do you say that? He likes debate. He likes discussion.”

“Why are you the one talking to me then?” He was upsetting her, but he didn’t care. “Why are you talking to me instead of him?”

“Because I want to understand….”

“What is there to understand, Emily? Jonathan and I aren’t getting along.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not a fair question, and you know it.”

“You look worried.”

“What are you worried about?” he countered. “Why don’t you talk to him?”

She tilted her head slightly, a pensive move that he remembered, along with a slight narrowing of her eyes, as though the world were slightly askew and needed further study. And at that moment Orion realized that she had talked to Jonathan. She had made her inquiries, and whatever he’d said had not satisfied her. Orion wanted to hug her around her shoulders. He wanted to say: I’m worried that Jonathan is a liar. I think he’s willing to sacrifice people for products, and trade quality for profits. And above all, he wanted to say: What about you, Emily? How is he treating you? But he couldn’t ask her this. Some diffidence or shyness or guilt prevented him, and he only said, “I’m sorry.”

“I know he has a temper,” Emily told him, “but he feels he’s given you a lot.”

“Given me!”

She nodded.

Had Jonathan warped Emily as well? Could she care for an ambitious creature like that to the point of admiration? To the vanishing point?

She said, “I’m speaking as your friend.”

“No, I don’t think so. You’re speaking as his friend. And it’s beneath you, Emily. It really is. It’s wrong of you.”

This was a strange time, a fairy-tale time. Mel and Barbara moved into a dream house on Pleasant Street, a mansion developers had built on spec just as Richard Bach had feared, right behind his old Colonial. The Millsteins lived there in twenty-one rooms, and they had central air and central vacuuming and bay windows and marble baths. Barbara tiptoed through her new country kitchen, and Mel drove a black Lexus to see Bobby Bruce, the Alexander teacher, who showed Mel where his posture was indeed misaligned. In all his years, Mel had never known he was off-center, and now with strange synchronicity, he discovered the problem just when he could afford to treat it. By the same token, Dave’s temperamental Bentley gave out just as the ISIS lockup ended, and he treated himself to a powder-blue Jaguar.