Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“You’re too selfish to marry anyone,” Margaret told George when she left. And, of course, as soon as she said these words, she was exactly right.

He had tried to prove her wrong. He had always imagined sharing this kitchen and this view out over the Bay and through the Golden Gate. The lights below like tiny jewels, the sky past sunset, more silver than gray, clouds like a pearl silk dress in a ter Borch painting. Endlessly he had searched for his love, and when he couldn’t find her, he looked for signs, traces of her beauty in books and maps. He surrounded himself with talismans and reliquaries, but he never stopped desiring the one he couldn’t find. Superstitious heart: He began to see her reflected in impossibilities—the Rackham illustration of Miranda dancing, Jess’s delighted laughter. The one he couldn’t find became the one he couldn’t have.

“Close your eyes,” he told Jess in his dream, and he would lead her to these windows and stand behind her, hands on her shoulders. Unconsciously, he closed his own eyes as he stood there at the stove.

The doorbell. A surprise and a relief. “It’s unlocked!” he called, and Nick appeared in fresh pressed clothes, a plum-colored shirt, Italian shoes.

“You look good.” George poured him a glass.

“What do you mean?”

He meant that Nick looked entirely different away from Julia, free from the kid. “You look yourself,” George said.

Nick sat at the kitchen table, and George set before him dishes of olives and pickled eggplants the size of grapes, a platter of French bread, a saucer of sea salt. “How is everybody? How go the renovations?”

“Behind schedule.”

“Your kitchen couldn’t take as long as mine,” George said, by way of encouragement.

“Yes, well, you weren’t trying to live in the house with a small child.”

“True,” George said. “I planned that well.” He liked to flaunt his freedom once in a while, even as Nick flaunted his domestic bliss. They were each a little jealous, and like brothers they provoked each other.

“I noticed someone stole your hood ornament again,” Nick said.

This was a sore point. “It’s happening while I’m at Yorick’s. I pay to park in a garage, and they’re supposed to have security cameras.”

“Must be an inside job,” said Nick. “You should buy a screw top you can take with you.”

“Either that or I should start biking again and give up driving altogether.” By biking, George meant motorcycles, and he knew full well that when it came to motorbikes, Nick was not allowed.

“You’re too old,” Nick said. “But how about—” he disappeared into the front hallway where he had left his backpack and returned with a bottle wrapped in white rice paper—“this.” It was a 1970 Chateau Latour.

“Nick!”

“You’re welcome.”

“We’ll drink your Latour along with my Heitz.”

“Oh, good,” said Raj as soon as he walked in and saw Nick’s bottle. Perfect, George thought. Raj was carrying a 1975 Chateau Petrus, peer and rival to the Latour.

Small, dark, and handsome, Raj wore shades of black and gray. His glasses were gold-rimmed, his hair parted on the side. His body was slight, and his eyes unusually large and beautiful. He had been an academic once, and then a lawyer, but at the moment he spent most of his time wrangling with an unreliable Bentley, two Westies, and a rich ex-boyfriend. He lived in a cottage in Palo Alto, the pocket-sized guesthouse of a larger estate where, as he put it, he worked at home, buying, trading, and selling rare books.

“We’re going to have a competition,” George explained from the stove where he was searing tournedos of beef. “Nick’s Latour versus your Petrus. And both against my Heitz.”

When George decanted the Latour, the friends watched with some solemnity, each anticipating the taste to come. The two French wines which promised greatness. The luscious Californian, from a year they knew to be exceptional.

“A toast,” Raj insisted.

“Well,” George began, “the markets are down….”

“For the moment,” Nick said.

“Bush and Gore are neck and neck.”

“Not an attractive image,” said Raj.

“I don’t think we can toast necks.” George fingered his glass. He knew what he would be toasting secretly. His great new find.

“What, then? Or whom?” Raj asked pointedly.

“I don’t have a whom,” George said.

“I’m relieved to hear that.”

“Why?”

“Because you get so boring, darling,” Raj confided. “Love does not become you.”

“To old friends, then.” Nick raised his glass.

The wines were great, and better by the minute, even as the drinkers softened. Just as wines opened at the table, so the friends’ thirst changed. Their tongues were not so keen, but curled, delighted, as the wines deepened. Nick’s Latour was a classic Bordeaux, perfumed with black currant and cedar, perfectly balanced, never overpowering, too genteel to call attention to itself, but too splendid to ignore. Raj’s Petrus, like Raj himself, more flamboyant, flashier, riper, ravishing the tongue. And then the Californian, which was in some ways richest, and in others most ethereal. George was sure the scent was eucalyptus in this Heitz, the flavor creamy with just a touch of mint, so that he could imagine the groves of silvery trees. The Heitz was smooth and silky, meltingly soft, perhaps best suited to George’s tournedos, seared outside, succulent and pink within, juices running, mixing with the young potatoes and tangy green beans crisp enough to snap.

They finished dinner with lemon sorbet garnished with fresh mint, and carried their glasses and their bottles into the enormous living room where they sat on George’s monumental chairs, built like heartwood thrones. George lit a fire, and as the three friends watched the flames in the great fireplace, Nick became dreamier, Raj more argumentative, and as for George, he found himself discoursing on every subject—from books to cars to the economy to the school shootings in Columbine.

“Kids are numb,” George said. “They live in a simulated world, a gaming cyber world, and they lose the distinction between the virtual and the real. They want to feel. This is a fin de siècle problem.”

“I disagree,” said Raj. “It’s a First World problem. Americans, Japanese, Koreans live a virtual life because they can afford a violent simulated world. In other countries the real is quite real. All too real. If you walk through Calcutta, the real will find you, and chase you down the street and try to kill you or steal from you or both.”

“Granted,” George said, a little miffed. Generally an unrepentant aesthete, Raj turned political and brought up India when you least expected it. “But I’m making a different point. Violence isn’t just a matter of impaired judgment. It comes from sensory deprivation.”

“This is First World deprivation that you’re talking about,” said Raj. “Boredom, anomie, et cetera. Other people can only aspire to that sort of spiritual bankruptcy.” He smiled rakishly. “I know I do.”

“Even now?” asked Nick.

“Of course. Having achieved a certain level of comfort, I look for more, whenever possible.” Raj took a long sip of the Latour.

“Then you’re never content,” said Nick.

“If I have the luxury to choose, then I prefer the chase; I like pursuit better than so-called fulfillment. Everybody does.”

Nick shook his head. “Not true.”

“You’re no exception,” Raj insisted. “You love risk. It’s an erotic pleasure.”

“It is not.”

“Look at your positions in Veritech and Inktomi. Look at you playing with Angelfire. It’s just gambling, and gambling is just like risky sex.”