Tracy Kelleher - A Rare Find

None too gently, Georgie hoisted Nick to a sitting position. The towel, which was wrapped around Nick’s waist, slipped to his hip bones, and his once-taut stomach muscles—once, as in a good ten years ago—sagged around the cotton terry cloth that had a thread count of about negative twenty.

Nick might have been thirty-seven in chronological years, and genetically blessed with a fast metabolism, but those had been hard-lived years. After turning thirty-five, even his long and lanky body could no longer bounce back from the harsh treatment due to overimbibing of fine food and not-so-fine drink.

Not that he regretted his lifestyle, mind you. Nick smiled at the memory of some of the more infamous escapades, at least those he could still remember.

His so-called adult life had taken a meandering path. After dropping out of college, he’d bummed around the world by scrounging low-paying jobs and harboring absolutely no ambition other than occasionally finding food, alcohol and the eye of a good-looking female. One winter in Paris, where he’d squatted in a tenement that lacked a shower—not to mention a toilet—he’d landed a job as a dishwasher in a traditional bistro in Montmartre. And voila! Nick had found his calling. Eventually he’d risen up the restaurant food chain to become a well-regarded though not quite top-tier chef.

Achieving greater fame would have required greater talent, a little more luck and, if he was going to be totally honest, a lot more dedication. Even the sudden acclaim he’d garnered for his book, a bare-knuckle look at the restaurant world, had been more of an accident than a well-planned career move. After all, he’d written the damn thing in fits and spurts after shifts at various restaurants, fueled by cigarettes and booze—more than a little, actually—and bouts of righteous indignation.

So it was hardly surprising that as Nick looked down at his body he felt a certain measure of disgust. And that was before he glimpsed his upper arm. The tattoo circling his right bicep was undulating with involuntary muscle spasms. An enormous Maori had given him that tattoo on a warm spring day on the north island of New Zealand. Now, that had been a good shoot, he recollected.

He raised an eyelid and saw Georgie silently chuckling. “What?” he asked with a snarl.

“Is that a promise?” Georgie asked, not bothering to hide his amusement, so secure was he in his worth as a producer. “That you’ll go anywhere provided it’s within sniffing distance of a New York hot dog?”

Nick contemplated the wisdom of getting up. “As long as it doesn’t involve rubdowns.”

“Last I heard, New Jersey specialized more in rubbing out than rubbing down.”

“New Jersey, you say?” Nick opened his jaw slowly and experimented with trying to shut it again. He got halfway. “You know, I was born and raised in Jersey.”

“Excuse me. Like I wouldn’t know? I was responsible for hiring that underpaid intern to write your bio for Wikipedia.”

Nick grumbled. “You know there’s a reason unions were invented—to regulate the outrageous behavior of unscrupulous employers like you.”

“Too bad, that’s all I can say,” Georgie said without any remorse. “Which is why I have decided to accept a request that came to the office last week.”

“I suppose this is my cue to say, ‘Could you be more specific?’”

“My pleasure. By the unfettered powers vested in me as producer, I plan to accept the offer for you to be the Class Day speaker at your old alma mater, Grantham University, this coming June,” Georgie announced proudly. “Naturally we’ll use it as an episode for the show—I’m not that generous.”

“Come again?” Maybe his brain was also starting to fail.

“You know, the Commencement ceremonies for the graduating class? The day before they do the whole diploma-giving-out bit, you will speak with wit and with a soupçon of encouragement to the seniors.”

“Soupçon of encouragement? Are you kidding me?”

“Well, their families will be there, as well. I think it’s only right and proper,” Georgie explained.

Nick stumbled to the dressing area and eased on his clothing. He didn’t bother with the button or the zipper on his jeans. If his pants fell down, so be it. He couldn’t be any more humiliated than he already had been.

He joined the others at the entrance to the dank, tiled bathhouse, nodding appreciatively to the manager, who had a severe lazy eye, which made eye contact difficult. The man would no doubt be dining off tales of the crazy Americans for years to come.

Georgie pushed open the heavy wooden door, and their little group instinctively huddled together. A horse-drawn cart, loaded with hay, clopped down the dirt road in front of them. Its driver paused and yelled to two men standing cross-armed in the narrow doorway of a coffee shop across the way. His loud monologue was seemingly cheerful sounding, but who could be sure?

Where is our friendly translator when we need him? Nick thought.

Then the squat and hairy horse turned its head at the sound of his master’s gravelly voice, and proceeded to do his business in the middle of the street.

Nick looked over at the steaming deposit. “I think that just about sums it up.” Then he creaked his neck in Georgie’s direction. “You realize of course that I never graduated from Grantham, don’t you? A little thing called the Junior Paper that I could never quite wrap my head around?”

“I don’t think they’re gonna rescind the offer, and frankly, I think they probably already know that.”

“True, failure has been one of my favorite biographical topics. Still, what would be the point? I mean, I do thirty minutes of hopefully semihumorous anecdotes about the world of food and travel—minus my usual four-letter words since, as you say, kiddies are likely to be present. And then what have you got? An hour’s TV show? I think not.”

With that, the horse, the cart and its owner moved on. The two men with grizzled beards and in severe need of good dental work, peered suspiciously at Nick and the rest of the crew before turning to enter the gloom of the coffee shop.

“Think of the bigger picture, Nick.” Georgie waved his hand across the gray and unforgiving sky. “The whole idea of graduation as the culmination of those happy college days, which, being happy, had to have included the customary drinking and eating of large quantities of food.”

“You want to check out dining-hall fare?” Nick asked, unconvinced.

Georgie nodded. “You’re missing the potential. Think bigger, like how the whole eating experience is the same or different from your day. What does that say about the peculiarities, if there are any, of the Ivy League experience?” Georgie suddenly got more animated. “Wait a minute. Doesn’t Grantham have those Social Whatevers—their own kind of snobby fraternities? Surely food and beer are plentiful at those places for the select few.”

“Social Clubs. And only a few of them were snobby. Certainly not mine—otherwise I couldn’t have been a member,” Nick clarified. Despite his carefully honed jaded personality, he found himself becoming intrigued. “There used to be a couple of places in town that I regularly went to, too. I wonder if they’re still there, especially this one greasy spoon famous for its hoagies.”

“Hoagie Palace,” Larry, the cameraman, piped up.

Nick slanted him a startled expression.

“Hey, I might have only gone to the University of New Hampshire, but even I know about Hoagie Palace.” Larry wore a down coat over a down vest and a stocking cap on his head. For a supposedly rugged New Englander, he had a very low tolerance for the cold.

Georgie punched the air. “There, what did I tell you? And by way of contrast to the usual street-food shtick, we could sample some new high-end joints. You know—what the wealthier denizens of the quaint college town go for when they want a night on the town.”