Робин Слоун - Sourdough

Mona was fully caught up in the story. “To go after his lady?”

“That was the idea. We threw him a going-away party.” She held up the menu: A FEAST FOR THE UNREQUITED. “Back then, we could get away with names like this.” She smiled and was lost for a moment. “Someone—I can’t remember who; where’s Lawrence? He knows all these things—someone tried to keep the starter alive, but it just…” Clingstone made a limp gesture. “We all said it died of a broken heart.”

An acolyte burst into the kitchen trailing a man, wiry and bald, Clingstone’s age, cradling a bottle of wine under each arm.

“ There you are!” Clingstone cried.

His hair rose up in a frizzy halo around his skull. “What is it, my love?”

“I needed you for a story. But now I’m done with it. Do you remember Jim Bascule?”

“I certainly remember Jim Bascule’s bread , darling.”

Clingstone offered the man the old menu for his inspection. He leaned close, and while his eyes scanned the page, she said to me, “This is my husband, Lawrence. Although he wasn’t my husband when this menu was written.”

Lawrence looked up and said drily, “I was only her lover then.”

“In any case,” Clingstone said, “I haven’t thought about that bread in years. It was wonderful.”

It was clear that Mona, the baker, would have preferred for this story to be recounted to her exclusively. She addressed me. “You’re a professional? Do you work for Broom, or…?”

Here I was at the wellspring, the source, and this baker was checking my credentials—her curious gaze joined by Clingstone’s now, and Lawrence’s—and I wanted to impress them.

“I’m the baker at the Marrow Fair,” I said. “The market on Alameda. Have you—?”

Charlotte Clingstone’s expression closed like a gate crashing down. She started to speak, but only made a clucking sound. Currents of annoyance swirled across her face.

“The Marrow Fair,” Lawrence repeated, trying the name on for size. “Do you know it, darling?”

“I do,” Clingstone said. “I’ve heard about it. From Portacio, and others.”

“Ah, Horace!”

“He’s my friend,” I said. “He found this menu.” For Lawrence’s benefit, I explained: “It’s a new kind of market.”

“Very … forward-thinking,” Clingstone said lightly. Other possible adjectives played across her lips. “Its founder thinks our restaurant here is quite retrograde. Even a bit silly.”

I felt waves of opprobrium from the acolytes. If Clingstone ordered them to beat me to death with rolling pins and stale sourdough, there could be no doubt: they would do it.

I sputtered, “I’m sure he doesn’t. I mean. I don’t really know anything about him. I only make bread. I have a robot.”

Mona looked at me with pity.

One of the phones in Clingstone’s pocket buzzed. She peeked at the screen and said, “I’m sorry. I’m late for a call.” Retreating back into the warren of the restaurant, she paused a moment, then turned. Her gaze was chilly and complex. “Now I wish I hadn’t told you that story.”

Lawrence escorted me out of Café Candide, and, on the way through the dining room, he swiped a bottle from inside a white cardboard box. “Take this to Horace. He’ll like it. Sorry about Charlotte. Well, not really. This Marrow Fair place sounds wretched.” He said it with winning diffidence. “But it’s all changing, isn’t it? No matter. We’ll stay the same. You should come for dinner sometime. We have tables available next spring, I believe.”

IT’S STRANGE TO HEAR the starter might have reached San Francisco once before! Mainly I’m surprised it wasn’t a Mazg who brought it. Actually, I think I might be a little bit scandalized. Who was this Jim Bascule guy?

Chaiman finished his album. It has seven tracks and he calls it The Mazg Tapes . I don’t think he’s ever touched a tape in his life. Shehrieh is super worried about it—she doesn’t want him to use the word “Mazg”—and that is very good news for me. I told her about my restaurant and she barely blinked. Sorry, Chaiman!

I’ll attach the album. I like some of the tracks more than others (it gets oonce -y…), but mostly, I’m proud of my brother for making something that’s truly his.

BOONVILLE

THE EXPEDIENT SEARCH ENGINE revealed that Jim Bascule had, sometime between the mid-1970s and today, become a winemaker in Mendocino County. On the website for a winery called Tradecraft, I found his picture. He looked to be in his sixties, scruffy at the chin, blond hair gone gray curling down to his shoulders. There might be more than one Jim Bascule in the world, but this image reassured me. He looked like the kind of person who might have taken up residence at a turnip restaurant in Berkeley.

The drive was long, three hours. I listened to the radio until the signal faded and then switched to Chaiman’s Mazg remix album, which steadily increased in tempo as it proceeded from track to track. When it got to be too much, the sad Mazg voices all warped into the chipmunk register, I stopped the album short and went back to the beginning, where it was slower, with undistorted crooning buoyed by a spare accompaniment, which seemed to fit the landscape better.

Fog became mist, which accumulated in sheets on my windshield. I drove very, very slowly, occasionally pulling into turnouts to allow pickup trucks to roar past me, sending up high plumes behind them. My car moaned pitifully as I crawled over a steep switchbacking rise, then coasted with palpable relief down a long and lazy slope toward my destination.

Boonville was a short strip of shops and restaurants huddled along California State Route 128 where it dropped into the golden fold of Anderson Valley. There were wineries on both sides of the road, some with ramshackle tasting rooms. The local brewery maintained a hopyard, pale buds clinging to long wires parallel to the road. I passed a broad-faced hotel that seemed to preside over the tiny town. I thought about stopping. Maybe on the way back.

My phone had no signal here, but it had already loaded the map I needed and my GPS showed the way. I turned off the highway onto a hard-packed dirt road, now mottled with puddles, and followed it for a mile until I saw a wooden sign for TRADECRAFT.

The driveway plunged through the scrim of eucalyptus and dipped to cross a wide bridge over a rushing creek. The planks went thump-thump-thump beneath my tires. My car’s engine groaned a little as I pushed it crunching onto a gravel parking lot. There were two other vehicles parked there in the rain.

The winery was a long building with a log-cabin look. A small sign advertised the tasting room. Inside, I found a middle-aged woman sitting on a stool behind a countertop, absorbed in a Thomas Pynchon novel. She set it aside when she saw me.

“Welcome to Tradecraft! Not the nicest day for wine tasting, is it? Anyone else, or just you?”

I told her I was alone, and that I was here to see Jim Bascule.

“He just went to drop a couple cases off at the hotel. He’ll be back soon. Can I offer you a taste while you wait? I’m Barbara.”

I acquiesced, peeled off my jacket, and set it down with my tote bag containing a loaf of bread. (I was always carrying bread these days.) I sipped samples of three red wines and two whites as Barbara probed me gently, learning that I lived in San Francisco (“I love the city”) and worked as a programmer (“Is everyone a computer person now? It seems that way”) but also baked bread (“Have you been to the bakery across from the hotel? They make the best scones. The best ”), and I had, in fact, brought a loaf for Jim Bascule.

“How nice! Well, he should be back any minute. Let’s finish with this, the Tradecraft Gewürz. It’s what we’re known for.”