Leftovers

Archie always told me good food was about layers of flavor. When he taught me how to season, he explained the necessity of salt and acid. He showed me how to cook and plate a dish so that it hits your tongue in the right areas, filling the space in your mouth with umami, starting with sweet, tingling the sour out, and ending with a slow build of heat, but not pain. Since I’m in charge of all the dishes for the dinner party tonight, I’m grateful for what I’ve learned. I don’t want to be helpless on such a special occasion.

I’ve been working for sixteen hours straight, butchering and grinding—because fresh is best!—all the proteins cooked low and slow.

Archie studied at the Culinary Institute of America.

I learned from Archie, and I believe I’ve learned well.

Vegetables are prepped; my mise en place precise. The onions in particular are a perfect brunoise, which melts into my red gravy. I know exactly how all four courses will run.

The opening appetizer is a series of juicy meatballs with three different sauces. I know using toothpicks to serve is very 1980s but everyone likes a meatball. I spent all day at the grinder to get the perfect combination of red meat and fat. I made certain there was no cartilage. I seasoned it with Italian seasoning, including oregano and fennel. And then I fried the balls in a sauté pan.

With that course ready to go, I turn my attention to the roast. I used the best cut I could find, and I have salt and peppered it liberally. I scored the fat how Archie taught me, using the sharpest knife. In the light of the oven, I see the fat bubbling on top, crisping.

I clean the knife now. Water sluices off the high carbon stainless steel.

Archie taught me about knife care. How to clean it. How to sharpen it on the whetstone.

The first time I used this knife, I cut myself. The edge was so sharp—I am a good student—I didn’t feel it slip through my skin. I sliced right through the tip of my finger, and I didn’t even notice until blood smeared all over the cutting board. I panicked. Thought I would need stitches. But I managed to pull it together, bandage myself up, and get to the hospital. All they did was ice the injury and tell me to do my best because there was no way to reattach the small piece of fingertip I’d taken off.

Now I take great care with my knife. I turn the water off and dry the blade with a towel. No need for it to rust. This chef’s knife has many years of service left in it. I lay it on the counter.

Being a chef, Archie normally does the cooking, but a last-minute inconvenience has detained him. But he’ll be at the dinner in spirit. I’m sure. I’ll just have to soldier on by myself.

I must prep the cheese course. I’ve left the goat cheese in the garage refrigerator to cool. It’s easier to slice colder cheese. I fetch the cheese and some cured spiced meat. Hopefully, Archie doesn’t find it too embarrassing that my cheese course is actually a charcuterie board. I slice and arrange and rearrange the meats and cheeses and fruits on Archie’s giant chopping block. Tiny baguettes and soda crackers fill in the gaps. 

Everything is ready, except the roast, which will take just ten more minutes—and then will need to rest for at least another twenty. Archie is very big on resting meat. All the juices must flow back into the muscle fibers, or you’ll have dry protein. No one wants dry protein.

I organize the meatballs on trays and set the platter on our buffet table.

Originally, I thought the buffet table was a waste of money. But Archie insisted that we should entertain.

You know people on HGTV shows who look at new houses and say how they will entertain? And you know they’re not going to entertain. You know their coffee table is gonna be cluttered with kids’ toys, leftover fast food cartons, and stuff piled in every corner. Archie, however, was very insistent that we use the space to entertain. So here I am, placing each carefully constructed tray on the buffet table. I’m actually using it. And Archie was right. It’s beautiful.

When the doorbell rings, I run a quick hand through my hair and answer it.

At the door is couple number one for our couple’s dinner. Michelle and Bobby.

Michelle: my best friend since high school. She’s a tall, blond, Barbie-doll beauty. Her eyes are startlingly blue, like a husky’s eyes. Her hair is almost as shaggy as a husky’s too, but there’s something charming about it. She has a cut in a cute little page boy, but somehow she’s managed to tame the frizzes.

I’ve often envied her.

Her husband is Bobby. I don’t know Bobby well, even though I was in their wedding. Michelle has kept Bobby to herself.

Whenever she comes over, she comes alone.

She’s always very giving.

For example, just a few weeks ago I’d contracted a terrible case of strep throat, which required an emergency tonsillectomy. Michelle and Archie nurse me back to health. It was very caring of her. It was very caring of Archie. I remember laying there in the hospital room and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to taste Archie’s food the same way again.

Everything sweet tasted metallic. Like blood. It wasn’t pleasant. Michelle brought me applesauce, made me hot chocolate, spooned ice cream into my aching throat. All of which were too sugary, but I swallowed all of her offerings down, hoping I wasn’t too much of a burden. Thanks to Michelle and Archie’s administrations, I returned to work a week earlier than I intended.

“Evelyn!” Michelle cries my name as if she’d just spotted me across a crowded room. She wraps her thin, muscular arms around me. “Hi sweetie.” She kisses me on both cheeks like we’re European.

Michelle would never miss a dinner party where Archie is responsible for cooking. 

Bobby offers a hardy nod of greeting. Bobby is a man of few words.

“I brought garlic bread,” she says, lifting an aluminum wrapped loaf. I don’t know if garlic bread will go with my roast with my roast, but I shrug. It will go with the meatballs.

“Let’s put it on the buffet table,” I say with a cheer that I don’t really feel. It’s probably the exhaustion from doing all the prep work today.

The garlic bread looks delicious, and I wonder if Archie also taught Michelle how to cook.

“Where’s Archie?” Michelle asks.

“Oh, he got hung up at work,” I say. “But he’s with us. I’ve used his recipes.”

The disappointment in Michelle’s face isn’t hidden by the meatball she pops into her mouth. Her lips are like a Cupid bow. Somehow, she manages to put that little ball in her mouth without marring a bit of her lip liner.

I admit, I’m a little jealous of her. I’m wearing an apron to protect my a-line skirt and my button-down blouse. But some of the red gravy has splashed onto my shoulder, beyond the apron strings. My hair, unlike the blond pixie in front of me, is chocolate brown and fuzzy in the humidity. I feel very frazzled.

It’s probably because I’m on my own. I invite Bobby and Michelle to sit down. Then the doorbell rings and my other guests arrive. Reilly and Justine.

Justine is the co-owner of the restaurant. She’s very particular about food and I hope that my wine pairing doesn’t offend her. But she takes the Merlot, a rich red, and swallows it down in one gulp. So I think I’m okay.

We gather around the buffet table and snack on meatballs and the trio of sauces. Michelle’s had three or four meatballs by now and that’s a lot for Michelle. She looks like a beautiful stick insect. I don’t know where she puts all the food that she eats. She rolls a meatball in red gravy and pops it in her mouth.

Bobby watches her with fascination. I think it’s miraculous for him to pay attention to his wife like that. Archie, for all his care and gentleness, doesn’t look at me with the same level of admiration. 

 We all sit at the table. Everyone seems satisfied. The conversation flows. Reilly asks where Archie is, as if I haven’t answered his wife a million times already. I tell everyone he got stuck dealing with an emotional coworker. Last I heard, poor Archie was trying to resolve the interpersonal conflict in the walk-in freezer.

Justine laughs—only restaurant people understand the therapeutic benefits of a walk-in freezer.

I carve the roast. The wicked sharp blade cuts through muscle and fat without any problem. Juice dribbles onto the cutting board. I stack mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, and a serving of meat on everyone’s plates.

Presentation is everything, according to Archie. People will eat anything—wax, dirt, cardboard—if a plate is well arranged. I watch my guests sample my work. I take a bite. It’s really delicious.

Justine tosses back her third glass of wine and I am no longer concerned about my wine pairing.

Michelle cuts her portion of meat delicately, loading her fork with deliberate concentration. I watch her stab the flesh with the tines and slide the fork into her mouth. Her pink tongue takes the food, as if she were a judge on a cooking show, afraid to leave any bits in her teeth. The fork and meat slip past her teeth, which bite down, holding the meat in her mouth, and then she pulls the fork out.

The whole movement reminds me of how I caught her licking my husband the same way. She opened her pink lips, slid her tongue along his lips, past his teeth, pulled out and returned again.

I’d returned to work a week early after my tonsillectomy. On that Wednesday, I was tired and had “overdone it.” Archie’s car was in the driveway, which is strange for four o’clock in the afternoon. Normally, he’s at the restaurant doing prep work. He has orders he must process, product to prepare, and family dinner to cook and serve his staff.

But no, he was home.

At first, I thought he must’ve come home to care for me.

When I walk in, my throat too sore to call out a greeting, I heard a groan. Not a groan of despair. Not a groan of pain. It was a groan I’ve been very familiar with since our Paris honeymoon fifteen years ago.

I stepped to the bedroom door. There on my bed is my blond-haired friend. Her hair was definitely frizzy that day. Her perfect pink Cupid-bow mouth on my husband’s mouth. Then Michelle took her pretty pink tongue, which now licks her forks in front of me, and dragged it along his collarbone, down his chest, and down to parts only I should touch.

“This is delicious.” Michelle smiles at me from across the table. I stare at her. Then I smile and I realize my reactions are perhaps a little delayed. I am still tired from all the work earlier today.

I’m struggling to keep a serene face in front of my husband’s mistress.

“Thank you.” I say. “Archie taught me this recipe.”

Michelle says, “That Archie. He’s just amazing, isn’t he?”

“Oh, I love him,” I say. “He’s taught me so much. And you too. Both of you. So supportive.”

My throat aches with all the secrets I’m keeping quiet. I swallow and imagine I feel scars pulsing behind my uvula.

But I manage to contain the anger I feel burrowing up from my gut.

“I wish Archie could be here,” Michelle laments for the thousandth time tonight.    

Part of me wants to tell Michelle the truth about the meat that she’s put in her mouth tonight.

That it’s the same meat she put in her mouth mere weeks ago.

I want to reassure her that Archie is already at dinner. But I don’t. Because I am a nice person. I don’t want to cause unnecessary trauma, and I’m getting all the satisfaction right now anyway.

Michelle pops another meatball in her mouth, and I think about how I had to cut away the skin of his arm, leaving a smooth stretch of muscle to feed through the grinder. I seasoned the grind with oregano, fennel, and coriander. I don’t really like coriander, but because Archie taught me to use coriander in my sausage mixtures, I added coriander. I hope he’s happy.

“I don’t think I could eat another bite.” Michelle leans back in her chair, still chewing a small part of Archie. She pats her non-existent belly and turns to Bobby. “You’re going to have to roll me out of here.”

Before anyone can respond, Reilly says that he and a now-sloshed Justine will be leaving. Justine has finished the bottle of Merlot. I can’t tell if she’s eaten much, but I hope their car wrecks sometime on the drive home. If Justine had done her job instead of relying on Archie to cover her ass, perhaps he would’ve been able to spend more time with me. His eyes might not have wandered.

Perhaps that’s petty of me. Maybe I should’ve just invited Michelle and Bobby. Bobby, who couldn’t keep his wife satisfied. So his unsatisfied wife slept with my unsatisfying husband.

I show Justine and Reilly out.  

After waving them away, I return to the table and begin clearing. It seems everyone is too full for dessert. I lift the roast, holding the sharp, sharp chef’s knife in place as I bring everything into the kitchen.

Early this morning, I’d prepped the knife. I took my whetstone, and I sharpened that knife within an inch of its life. It was hypnotic—the motion, the repetitive motion, the motion of it sliding, sliding across the surface. The schk, schk, schk of it. And I’d kept thinking of how the knife had sliced my finger. How it had taken off the tip of my middle finger. If I raise my hand right now, I see the middle fingertip is flatter than the rest of my other fingertips. Sure, my fingernail grows over it, but that injured silhouette is still visible.

This morning I went to the work shed out back. Archie’s work shed, filled with cooking equipment, butchering equipment, storage equipment. He’d just finished cleaning the grinder, which was very convenient.

And I said, “Archie.”

He turned to me and he said, “What?”

I said, “Michelle.” I held the knife down along my thigh. Straight down. The point aimed at the floor. For safety. Like Archie taught me.

He didn’t see the knife. He didn’t see whatever desperation might’ve been in my eyes. He smiled and said, “What about Michelle?”

I said, “We’re hosting a party tonight to thank her. For taking care of my tonsils.”

Archie nodded and said, “Great. I think she’s a special girl.”

And I said, “Do you think she was special when she was kissing you? Here?” I use the tip of the knife to point at his clavicle and he freezes. The tip is very, very sharp. He taught me well.

“I watched her,” I said. “She kissed you from here…” I held the tip of the knife to the corner of his mouth. Then I slipped the knife down along his jawline, down along his throat, sliding the tip into his skin, the tip going deeper and deeper until a vein pops. Both of us were frozen. He looked me in the eye, and refused to move, even as blood poured from his wound. Over my knife. And onto the floor.

I used the tools, Archie’s very own tools, in the shed. He breaks down his game here after hunting. If anyone were to investigate, they would find blood everywhere. Most of it is animal blood. There’s still a stain near the door that came from an elk Archie hunted, butchered, and took to the restaurant.

Justine may have paired that with another Merlot.

I used everything Archie taught me and prepared for Michelle’s thank you dinner.

Archie loves feeding people; he says feeding people is his love language. So I let him feed. I let him feed me. And I let him feed Michelle. I let him feed her until she was full and Bobby would have to “roll her out of here.”

“Let me get you a take home container!” I call to the table.

“That’s not necessary,” Michelle says. But I note she pops another meatball.

I put what’s left of Archie in a Tupperware container. Carefully carved roast slices. A handful of the meatballs she so enjoys. Some rolls of cured meat.

Handing the container to Michelle, I smile and apologize once again that Archie wasn’t able to join us.

She says, “This will feed me for a week.”

“Good,” I say. And I let her have my leftovers.