One
Nearly midnight. Nearly November.
Thomas wanted her to take the column in a more lively, sophisticated direction.
“Find some interesting people around town who like to cook,” he told her.
“Or like to eat. I don’t care which.” He wanted to rename the column “The Gracious Gourmet” or “The Gallant Gourmet” or something equally anodyne, a nod to the Galloping Gourmet’s popularity.
Nina lobbied for “The Wolfish Gourmet” or “Cravings” or just “Famished!”
“Why are these all so hungry?” Thomas complained.
“Because hunger is the root of all cooking.”
“No, hunger is at the root of appetite. Ego is at the root of the kind of cooking we want to write about. And ‘Cravings’ sounds like a dirty movie.”
She finally capitulated to “The Ravenous Gourmet,” after extracting a promise that she could pick her own subjects and not only feature suburban women and their unappetizing canapés.
Eventually, “The Ravenous Gourmet” morphed into Nina interviewing chefs around town and featuring one of their popular entrées adapted for the home cook.
And then she started to offer cooking classes based on the column in her kitchen.
She loved doing both, but not the pressure it applied to every meal she presented.
For so many years, the revolving dinner parties on the block were a lifesaver, a gentle valve release, a chance to forget the gray landscape of winter in Rochester or celebrate its beautiful summers.
The women would dress up and drink too much and the men would talk about work and drink too much and everyone would stay up too late.
They’d wearily wave at each other the next morning at church, miming head pain and lack of sleep while corralling their children down the aisle, all of them quietly thrilled by the previous night’s misbehavior.
Maybe the modest size of tonight’s group wearied Nina.
They’d all known each other forever and had had the same conversations dozens of times.
They knew each other’s cocktail orders and food quirks and who was a mean drunk and who was a weepy drunk and which of their teenagers were “testing boundaries” and which were barreling toward delinquent.
And now Bess had started her favorite worn rant about how Nixon shouldn’t have been pardoned.
She blinked back angry, drunken tears while claiming she’d landed on Nixon’s enemy list due to her activism around Roe v.
Wade. They’d heard it all before. “Nothing in my life,” she said, pointing a bony finger at a slightly amused Finn, “has made me prouder.” Like everyone else, Nina’d had too much to drink and was trying to follow Bess’s diatribe while looking for a place to break in and divert.
“Free speech!” Bess finally blurted out, gesticulating and knocking over her glass of wine just as Sam opened a new bottle.
Shit. How much of that beautiful red had they gone through?
Judging from the way Sam slopped wine into the glasses, at least five or six bottles.
She tried to catch his eye. “Whoops!” he said, after spattering Honey Finnegan’s untouched dessert.
Her wedge of baked Alaska slouched on the plate like a children’s book illustration meant to convey sadness.
“Slide that over here,” Finn said to his wife. “I’m not afraid of a little booze on my meringue.”
Honey pushed the plate across the table with the tip of one finger. “A lot of sugar.”
“I think that’s the point of dessert,” Finn said to the plate.
“Sam,” Bess said, raising her empty glass. “I’ll have another splash.”
Nina saw her chance. She stood and picked up a few dirty dishes. “Can I get anyone anything else? Coffee? Tea?”
“I’d kill for a Sanka,” Honey said. Of course Honey would kill for a Sanka.