If I were a fruit, I would want to be a ripe avocado, with a hard stone hidden in the middle of soft, silken flesh. Any fruit would be fine, really, except an orange, a hardy-looking but sensitive fruit that turns even if it’s jostled a little. Then again, I do need bright sunshine, wind, and adequate moisture, just like an orange. What about a cherry? It’s not overly juicy but it has a beautiful red color, like a miniature sun. A banana would be fine too. A banana tree has no branches but is made of large leaves. A smaller banana is sweeter. It’s a unique fruit; nobody knows how it came into being. The tree produces only one bunch of bananas at a time, but that bunch is made of hundreds of clusters of fruit. I think I can fall deeper into slumber.
In my dream I’m surrounded by fragrant fruit and I’m conjuring up various foods but I can’t taste any of them. In dreams, taste and smell affect your soul in a minimal way. But the other senses are as acute as when your eyes are open, so if you weep in your dreams you’ll wake up to a wet pillow. In the dream I am not a turbot or a scallop or a cherry or a banana. I’m an oyster gone sour, my juices dried up. I’m placed on a hot fire. A bad oyster should be grilled with butter and sprinkled with nutmeg. I feel pain, as if a sharp knife is being shoved into my closed shell. I wipe my eyes and push back the covers with a jolt. The phone. I think the phone is ringing. I grab the receiver.
“…It’s me.”
I nod.
“Were you still up?”
“I was having a bad dream.”
“I’m sorry it’s so late.”
“That’s okay.”
“I was debating whether to call. And it kept getting later.”
“It’s okay.”
A phone call you wait for never comes. Except now. My heart pounds. Tell me that you called because you were wondering how I was doing. That you missed me. And say one more thing. That you want to come back. Tell me you called to see if you could come back. Then all of this can end. Quietly. I grip the phone tighter. I want to remember this moment forever. What is this love? Is it gold or a diamond, or maybe a truffle? This love is what everyone wants but can’t make, just like gold and diamonds and truffles. I gleam in a sprightly green, a spring asparagus.
“I have to tell you something.”
“…Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to say it.”
“Yes. Come back.”
“…What?”
“Come back.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“It’s okay. Just say it. Say whatever it is.”
“Paulie, he… he died.”
I hear metal grating against metal. “Wh-what?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but he died.”
I hunch my shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
“Today—no, it’s already yesterday.”
“Is Paulie—is he very sick?”
“…No, he’s dead.”
“Are you joking?”
“No.”
“Tell me you’re joking!” I growl.
“It’s the truth.”
“Say it again.”
“Paulie’s dead.”
I’m silent.
“Are you listening to me?”
“What did you two do to him?”
“It was an accident.”
“…Did he die? Or did you kill him? Tell me.”
“I told you, it was an accident.”
I can’t speak.
He says one more time that Paulie is dead, his voice hoarse.
CHAPTER 22
RESTAURANT—the word originates from the French verb restaurer, “to restore to a former state,” and until the eighteenth century it referred to a nutritious and invigorating soup. It was only after that that the word changed to signify a place that provided meals. The man who opened the world’s first restaurant was a Frenchman named Boulanger. But the gourmets of the world remember not Boulanger but Beauvilliers, a restaurateur and chef. When a customer entered his restaurant, Beauvilliers would take one glance at him and tell him what he should avoid and what he should eat, then personally prepare dishes that couldn’t be found anywhere else. He became famous not only for his cooking skills and the special attention he paid everyone but also for his extensive memory, which allowed him to recognize an occasional customer twenty years later. French newspapers mourned him when he died in 1820, writing about his life at length.
When I was in cooking school, Chef preferred to teach common sense or the history of ingredients or the behavior of cooks rather than how to cook. And even now he remembers what customers ate and drank on their first visits, which impresses them. Even the way he conveys his knowledge is natural and subtle. This isn’t so much a sales gimmick as his conviction as a chef, as the owner of Nove. Whenever he does it, Manager Park shakes his head, jaw dropping, and says, I still have a long way to go! Chef would have been Beauvilliers had he lived in the nineteenth century. Customers keep returning to the restaurant—to regain strength or for a special dinner or because they don’t have time to cook or don’t want to.
The restaurant is fully booked for every meal in May because of its numerous holidays—Coming-of-Age Day, Parents’ Day, Children’s Day, Teachers’ Day. The kitchen becomes chaotic. In May, Chef reminds us during the morning staff meeting that we shouldn’t use perfume, scented lotions, or shampoo. This reminder kicks off the busiest month and the start of summer. When seven cooks, sometimes including Chef, are stuck together like wooden chopsticks in the small kitchen, you can smell cigarettes and each other’s sweat and even bodily fluids discharged during the previous night. Smell, especially that of food, has weighty particles, and when it’s hot they can’t rise and end up hovering near the bottom. It’s also around this time that we raise our voices when even small accidents happen. In May you can’t take off work except for your regular days off. But even if it was my day off I would have headed into work after receiving that phone call yesterday. I don’t want to rest, not for even a day. I come to work earlier than anyone else and do chores that aren’t mine, prepping ingredients and going to the market and bustling about as if I’ll become frozen if I stop for five minutes. Every time I move, I hear my disjointed bones rattling in my body.
Before, I used to look at the world as if a piece of glass separated me from it. If the glass was cracked or broken, the other side of the glass would look like barely fitting puzzle pieces even if everything was perfect. The glass I look through now has thousands of irreparable spidery cracks in it. If you don’t give up and you wish with all your strength that things go back to the way they were, maybe it could happen despite the cracks. But that’s not common. I know when it’s time to give up.
When I was seven years old, I was always home alone while Grandmother was at work and Uncle at school. I went into the kitchen and brought out a spoon and started to dig in the corner of the yard. When the spoon became bent and unusable, I burrowed with a ladle. I went to the well across the yard and drew water and poured it into the hole. The water disappeared silently into the dirt but I dug wider and deeper and poured in more water. I went back and forth between the well and the hole until the sun went down. I thought I would be able to make a pond. But water didn’t remain in the hole even though I poured and poured—it just vanished into the dirt. I continued to trot between the well and the hole for the satisfaction I got in that short moment—the instant before the water completely melted into the ground. But then I stopped. I realized I wouldn’t be able to make a pond no matter how hard I tried. It’s now time to stop pouring water into the ground. I make this decision and discover I’m changed. A subtle but powerful feeling.