Робин Слоун - Sourdough

THE LOIS CLUB (CONCLUDED)

“IT’S INCREDIBLE,” said Hilltop Lois. She held up a newspaper, the struggling local edition, and rattled it for emphasis. On the front page there was an aerial photo of the bloom, and below it, the headline: CLINGSTONE’S MARKET EXPLODES.

Clingstone’s…?

“Can I read that?”

I snatched the paper away without waiting for a reply. The whole story of the Marrow Fair was unfurled. The reporter, after some digging in the Alameda County records office, had worked her way through several shell companies to divine the identity of the market’s owner.

“Charlotte Clingstone,” I read. “This whole time.”

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Hilltop Lois said.

As I made my way through the story, my stomach gradually unclenched. I’d been expecting to see my own name, but there was no mention of local baker (and/or irresponsible microbial steward) Lois Clary. The story said the source of the “nontoxic environmental disruption” was a runaway experiment by Lembas Labs, which, it explained, had been recently acquired by Slurry Systems of Fresno, California. Unfortunately, that put Slurry on the hook, liability-wise; several people had gotten sick gorging themselves on Lembas fritters, and a collision on the Bay Bridge was being blamed on the visual distraction of the bloom.

“Are you okay over there?” Compaq Lois called.

I put the paper down and looked at the Loises. “Can I tell you a story?”

In the kitchen, over glasses of port, I unspooled it. I told them about Clement Street Soup and Sourdough and the food I’d loved so intensely, so briefly.

“They gave me something when they left,” I said. “It was a gift.”

I told them about the starter’s growth, and Agrippa and his goats, and the trip to Fresno with Jaina Mitra.

It took an hour to tell it. The Loises listened, rapt.

At the end, they each had a different opinion.

“Maybe you can get your old job back,” Professor Lois said.

“Open a new bakery, is what I say.” Hilltop Lois thumped her fist on the countertop. “Down in Cole Valley. It’s a great neighborhood!”

“What about stock in that company?” Compaq Lois asked. “What was it called? Sludgy? You could sue for that.”

Old Lois pursed her lips. She was either annoyed or amused; I couldn’t tell. I prodded her. “Well? What do you think?”

“Oh, it’s obvious.” She smiled smugly. “You must go visit this young man. Beoreg? Yes. Beoreg.”

That I did not expect.

“Somebody get a mirror. Lois the Baker, if you could see your own face when you talk about your messages back and forth, you’d know it, too.”

Professor Lois started to speak, but Old Lois held up a hand, exquisitely wrinkled, to silence her.

“She needs to go.”

There was a vibration in her voice that told a whole story, of Most Respected Elder Lois and some other soul, and a risky journey, long ago. And … a reward? A disappointment?

“Go,” she said. “It will be worth it.” A reward, then.

Hilltop Lois sighed limply. “Well. There are Lois Clubs all over the world.”

Old Lois cackled at that. Then another Lois was laughing, and another, and then it was all of us Loises laughing together in a dark-shingled house on the hill behind the hospital with a view of the park and the ocean beyond.

MR. MARROW

I CONFRONTED CHARLOTTE CLINGSTONE in her garden behind Café Candide as she squatted beside a grid of bushy arugula, picking the widest fronds, leaving the others to grow larger.

“It was less a lie,” she said languidly, “and more of a considered omission.”

She didn’t look like the secret impresario of an underground market, dressed now in sturdy jeans and a pink linen shirt with a banded collar, her hair swept back behind a pink headband.

I should have known Mr. Marrow was the kind of person whose headband matched her top.

“Was it just a game?”

Her expression was firm. “I believe everything I ever said as Mr. Marrow. I believe, also, that this restaurant is a precious place. Can’t I believe both? I think I can.”

“What about ‘tending your garden’?”

Clingstone smiled distantly. “Oh, what about that book? I still love it. But I also wonder how it could possibly have resonated so powerfully with a twenty-three-year-old who had seen so little of the world. Now that I’ve actually suffered, I find it somewhat … theoretical.”

“But why do it all in secret?” Surely, a market known to be organized by Charlotte Clingstone would be a huge deal. Overnight, the Ferry Building itself would have a rival.

Clingstone’s gaze turned inward, and more gently she said, “It never occurs to people that maybe I’d like to be the reckless one. The disrupter! As the years have passed, I have discovered in myself this … energy. Is it anger? A touch of spite? I’m not sure.” She looked back toward the restaurant. The beans on their strings were rippling on a breeze so gentle I couldn’t feel it. “I can’t be reckless with the café. We directly support twenty-seven farms and ranches. Almost four hundred people! And there’s my staff, of course.” She looked at me wickedly. “I wanted a place to break things, and that place is my Marrow Fair.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now the market is open. We see what succeeds. Oh, and guess what? Through my investment in Jaina Mitra and her Lembas Labs, I now own three percent of a company called Slurry Systems. Isn’t that interesting? They say it might be worth a billion dollars.” She stood and brushed off her jeans. “You should join us here at the café.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? Learn from Mona. She’ll teach you how to make that sourdough pizza crust we were talking about. You’re beyond the novice’s grace now.”

She wasn’t wrong, but this wasn’t the place I wanted to learn.

“And I paid for that robot, don’t forget. What were the terms again? I think I own twenty percent of your company. If there is a company.”

I walked out through the café’s burnished dining room, the acolytes setting tables, their shadows moving in the dark wood. It really was a beautiful place. There was a bowl of plums sitting alone on a table. I plucked one out and ate it on the way to the train.

THE BEGINNING

ON FOOD BLOGS and in social media posts, the eaters of the Bay Area rendered their first judgments of the Marrow Fair; these ranged from deep appreciation to utter bafflement. Some people said Charlotte Clingstone had betrayed everything she ever stood for; others said she was plotting a commendable course for the future. Everyone agreed the bookstore at the back of the market was a gem.

Horace, spooked by the near loss of his archive, finally pieced together a book proposal and sold it to a publisher in Berkeley. He was to write a wide-ranging literary history of eating. It was to be finished in two years. His face was pale when he told me.

Jaina Mitra and Dr. Klamath retreated to Fresno with a sample of the substance that had bloomed above the Marrow Fair. They would become acquainted with the Clement Street starter now, and record their own catalog of phenomena. They would learn a lot using their sequencers and bioreactors, but would they ever suspect the crucial role that music played? Maybe I’d send them a clue. Maybe not.

In Berlin, Beoreg had opened his restaurant. He sent me a picture of the space he’d leased in Kreuzberg. It was no larger than my apartment, but it faced a busy street, and inside, there were three tiny, glorious tables. The process had not been without intra-Mazg drama, but Beo was undeterred.

Out of necessity, I read the very first chapter of The Soul of Sourdough , the one I’d skipped, about capturing a wild starter. Following Everett Broom’s instructions, I set a dish of flour and water on the windowsill and watched it closely. Within a week, it was bubbling. And that’s all it did, ever. This sourdough starter was a party of two, just yeast and lactobacillus, like every other starter in the world except for one.