Liquor

  “Very funny. I got a better idea—let’s fuck.”

  G-man blinked. “I’m not sure I remember how.”

  “You’re a real comedian tonight, huh? OK, so we been a little busy lately. You think I could refresh your memory?”

  “Yeah,” said G-man, smiling. “I think you probably could.”

  An hour later, Rickey lay in bed feeling infinitely more relaxed and just a little sheepish. A sex life wasn’t something a person should have to remind himself to have. Though they hadn’t forgotten how, it had been way too long since they had really gotten it on.

  G-man had surprised him with the remark about the Our Fathers. Rickey didn’t approve of the practice—when they were teenagers, a priest had told G-man that it was better to live a celibate life than to act upon his feelings for Rickey, and Rickey had always taken that as a personal affront—but he rather liked the fact that G-man could still surprise him. It made him remember that G-man had a stubborn streak beneath his complacency, which turned him on. If G-man hadn’t made the remark, Rickey supposed they might have gone another week or two without having sex. How screwed up is that? he wondered, but he wasn’t really worried; when they did get around to it, they knew one another’s bodies and hearts as well as ever.

  He guessed the work might have something to do with their periods of sexual drought: not just the long hours and weariness, but the fact that they’d never really felt comfortable showing any kind of public affection. Things were changing—there were even female chefs infiltrating the boys’ club now—but the restaurant kitchen was still an arena of great machismo, and while Rickey and G-man had never gone so far as to deny their relationship, they knew they were more likely to be taken seriously by their fellow cooks if they weren’t obvious about it. Behavior like that could carry over into your private life, Rickey thought ruefully. It could get to the point where you felt more like buddies than lovers, and needed to remind yourself why you were sleeping in the same bed.

  That would be one good thing about having his own restaurant: he wouldn’t have to act according to anyone else’s expectations. He and G-man could make out in the goddamn bar if they wanted to, though he doubted they’d ever stray that far from their longtime habit of discretion. Rickey wondered how his career would have gone if he’d just been open about his sexuality from the start. Indirectly, hiding it had gotten him kicked out of the CIA, and certainly that had made a difference. There was a lot more to it than what he’d told Lenny the first time they met, when Lenny asked him about leaving school.

  It was true that he’d beaten up a guy. What he hadn’t mentioned to Lenny was that the guy, Phil Muller, had been his roommate. They’d gotten along OK at first. Muller talked a lot of trash about New Orleans cuisine, but Rickey hadn’t cared so much once he adjusted to the fact that everybody up north seemed to think New Orleans was just a remote, benighted region of America. Muller mocked Rickey for not being able to take the Hudson Valley weather, but it was semifriendly mockery, the kind that cooks exchanged all the time. And in truth, Rickey had complained a lot about the weather; his wardrobe was wholly inadequate for New York, and he had no money to supplement it.

  They went out drinking with a group of students one night, and that was where the trouble really started. Drunk, lonely, and homesick, Rickey must have appeared obviously miserable. As they walked back to the dorm together, Muller asked what was wrong, and Rickey made the mistake of trying to tell him. He didn’t say anything too obvious, but he told Muller about G-man, how they’d been friends forever, how they always tried to work in the same kitchens, how they were going to get an apartment together when Rickey moved back to New Orleans. “I just miss him really bad,” he’d concluded.

  For whatever reason, Muller wasn’t as friendly with him after that. It might have had to do with the fact that Muller wasn’t really a very good cook and always had to scramble to keep up with the classes; maybe he resented the fact that this kid from the swamps of Louisiana was outshining him. Maybe it was something else. Rickey started to hear from other people that Muller was talking shit about him, not kitchen shit but personal. He didn’t think he really cared until he learned that Muller had read one of G-man’s letters to him; then he wanted to kill the guy.

  The fight happened in their Skill Development class the morning after Rickey found out about the letter—another student had told him; it turned out Muller was going around spreading the news. The morning’s work included cutting up a chicken. As Muller made the first cut, his knife slipped and the chicken went skidding off the counter. Rickey bent down to pick it up. His hand accidentally brushed Muller’s thigh, and Muller snarled, “Save it for your boyfriend, faggot.”

  Rickey didn’t even remember deciding to hit him. He certainly didn’t recall getting Muller by the throat and backing him up against the reach-in, as others in the class told him he’d done. Muller must have gotten in some blows too, because Rickey had a few bruises, but he didn’t remember that either. He had a few disjointed memories of standing with Muller in the dean’s office, the atmosphere of mutual loathing thick and noxious. But he didn’t clearly remember anything until he got back to the dorm, called G-man, and said, “I’m coming home.”

  It was probably best that he’d returned to New Orleans without finishing school. He wasn’t sure their relationship could have survived two years apart. But he still sometimes wished he hadn’t been kicked out over an asshole like Phil Muller. There must have been other gay students. Certainly there had been students who weren’t complete homophobes. If he’d been open from the start, maybe he could have roomed with one of them and avoided the ignominy.

  Well, that didn’t matter now. What mattered was the chance to make a fresh start—with cooking and with their romance. Dry spells notwithstanding, Rickey thought, it was still a romance. They just needed to remind themselves of that a little more often. Refresh their memories, as he’d put it earlier.

  He rolled over and put his lips against G-man’s ear. “Is your memory refreshed yet?” he said.

  “Ummm,” said G-man sleepily. “You know, I’m a pretty slow learner sometimes. Maybe we better go over that again.”

  chapter 12

  At 10 a.m., any resident of the second block of Marengo Street could have observed the red Lexus with the license plate GUMBO-1 pulling up in front of Rickey and G-man’s little shotgun house. Fortunately, most of their neighbors were either early workers or late sleepers, so Lenny parked his flashy car without attracting undue notice.

  Rickey answered the door in a pair of boxer shorts. His hair was shockingly disheveled, and he clutched a steaming mug of coffee in one hand.

  “You guys up?” Lenny asked.

  “Kinda. C’mon in.”

  Entering the living room, Lenny looked around at the Salvation Army sofa, the books in milk crates, the well-used bong on the coffee table, and the bare walls as if they were pieces in some museum installation on the Lives of Kitchen Schlubs. “Wow, this place brings back a lot of memories.”

  “Of what—how you lived when you were poor?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Take a good look, then. You want some coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “We got clean mugs and everything.”

  “That’s OK, I already had some.”

  “Well, come on in the kitchen anyway. It’s comfortable in there.”

  The kitchen, in fact, was the nicest room in the house. Thinking of Lenny’s own spectacular kitchen, Rickey was a little embarrassed for Lenny to see it, but he need not have been. The old red-and-white linoleum was clean, the tile countertops scrubbed to a near-translucence, the jars of spices and dry goods attractively arranged on the shelves. They didn’t have a great deal of kitchenware, but what they did have was carefully stored and well-kept. Lenny’s eye was drawn to a blue plate on the table. On the plate beneath an inverted glass mixing bowl was a brown ring of pastry with a sugar crumb topping. “What’s that?” he asked.

&nb
sp; “Coffee cake. G made it yesterday. You want a piece?”

  “What’s in it? Sun-dried cherries? Cornmeal batter?”

  “No,” said Rickey, annoyed. “It’s a coffee cake. Pecans. Cinnamon swirl. You want a piece or not?”

  “I’d love one,” said Lenny. “And I believe I will have a cup of coffee if you don’t mind.”

  Slightly placated, Rickey served him these items. Lenny took a big bite of the pastry. “That’s fantastic. Tastes like a coffee cake should. See, a lot of people try to make a simple, classic recipe like that, they gussy it up until you can’t even recognize the thing.”

  “How can you gussy up a coffee cake?”

  “You’d be surprised. I dated this girl who always wanted to impress me. You know—can’t cook nice, normal food for a Professional Chef. She never made me a coffee cake, thank God. But one day she asked me what I wanted for dinner, and I couldn’t face any of her fancy shit, so I said, well, I’d really like a cheeseburger. I figured, what can you do to a cheeseburger?

  “Famous last words. She spent two hours at the store, then came back and started making cheeseburgers. Only somehow they turned into ground lamb patties seasoned with chipotle peppers, and Roquefort instead of Cheddar, and for-Chrissake whole grain buns. I tried to act appreciative, but I really just wanted a cheeseburger. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. People got no idea how much you’d love a plain old plate of meatloaf and macaroni.”

  “Who’s having meatloaf and macaroni?” asked G-man, drying his hair with a towel as he came in.

  “Maybe we can today,” said Lenny. “I know a little place in Kenner where nobody cares who the hell I am, and isn’t that a blessing. But first we need to look at some properties.”

  Everyone had another cup of coffee, Rickey and G-man finished getting dressed, and they went out into the New Orleans morning. The yard was ringed with sweet olives, drab-looking trees nobody noticed except in the spring, when their small white flowers filled the air with a fresh, luscious scent. For Rickey and G-man, the smell of sweet olives and mimosa flowers brought back childhood recollections of springtime. Many of the mimosas had died off in a mysterious blight some years ago, but the sweet olives remained to stir their memories.

  The first property—a former laundromat on Maple Street between the Tulane campus and the Carrollton neighborhood—was large and full of light, but had no room for a kitchen. “They told me this place was twice as big as it really is,” said Lenny, disgusted. “Next.”

  The next place was in the Warehouse District, and the owner stood outside waving at them as Lenny pulled up in the freight zone. He was an old man with a vacuous smile and brown Sansabelt pants pulled too high over a burgeoning gut. “I’m Friedrich,” he said, giving no clue as to whether it was a first name or a last. “You boys gonna open a restaurant?”

  “We’re thinking about it,” said Lenny.

  “That ain’t no easy bidness. You think you just gonna be making food, but there’s all kinda headaches you gotta deal with. My brother, he had a restaurant in Gentilly in nineteen-fitty-three, before the blacks ruint the area.”

  “What kind of restaurant was it?” asked G-man.

  “Seafood. All kinda fresh seafood and plenty a’gravy. Not no little piece of fish on a plate with a handful of grass like you see today. Plenty a’gravy. I tell you, though, running a restaurant’s harder than you know.”

  “I think we might be able to make a go of it,” said Lenny.

  “Yeah, all you young kids think you can do it, but it ain’t no easy bidness.”

  “Is this a good way to lease property?” said G-man, honestly curious. “I mean, if you know what the people want the property for, is it really a good idea to tell them what a lousy time they’re gonna have?”

  The old man squinted up at him. “I tell you what I don’t need. I don’t need no young smartass telling me how to lease no property. I been leasing property since nineteen-fitty-three!”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “C’mon,” said Rickey, brushing past them. “It’s a shit-hole. Let’s go.”

  “Don’tcha wanna look in the back?” Friedrich called after them as they got into Lenny’s car. “Don’tcha wanna see my nice alley? This place would make a terrific restaurant!”

  “God,” said Rickey. He leaned back against the leather headrest and closed his eyes. “I’m tired already.”

  “Let’s look at one more place,” Lenny said. “Then we’ll get some lunch before we see the rest.”

  They drove up the Claiborne Avenue overpass and headed for Mid-City. The next property was on Broad Street (its proper name was Broad Avenue, but nobody ever called it that) in a bleak-looking commercial neighborhood near the city government complex that housed the police headquarters, the courthouse, the Orleans Parish Prison, and the morgue. Auto shops, bail bondsmen, and convenience stores dominated the area. There were some residential streets nearby, but the houses were very small and very poor. “This used to be a paint factory,” Lenny said as they pulled up in front of the property, “but it was a restaurant before that. Apparently the factory people never bothered to tear out the kitchen—they had more room than they needed, so they just sealed it off.”

  The building was large, square, and unlovely, standing alone in the middle of a big blacktop parking lot. It had few windows and looked as if it would be very hot inside. Rickey felt like crying. “Let’s check it out,” he said.

  There was a weatherbeaten awning above the double glass doors of the front entrance. As they let themselves in, Rickey tried to imagine well-dressed hungry people coming through these doors, looking forward to a good meal. He could not do it, not at first.

  But as he entered the building, something clicked.

  He wasn’t sure what it was. He certainly didn’t fall in love with the place or anything like that. It was just a cavernous space not so different from the old warehouse they’d just looked at—maybe even dirtier. Somehow, though, Rickey could imagine tables in here. He could imagine thick green carpet, polished wood, leaded glass partitions separating the dining room from the bar. He closed his eyes, and though the place smelled of nothing but dust and age, he could almost smell perfume and clean linen, fresh bread, caramelizing meat juices, all overlaid with the astringent tang of liquor. He could almost hear tipsy conversations and the clink of silverware on china.

  “You like this one, don’t you?” said Lenny.

  Rickey opened his eyes. Lenny and G-man were watching him, and Lenny was smiling.

  “You got a feeling about this place. I know how that goes. I felt that way when I walked into the place that ended up being my first restaurant, even though the ceiling was practically falling in.”

  “It’s kinda scary,” said Rickey. He was a little breathless. “It’s like that scene in The Shining where the guy thinks it’s New Year’s Eve in the ballroom. He can hear the people, he can smell them, but there’s nobody there.”

  “Damn,” said G-man. “You can hear people? You can smell food in here?”

  “Not exactly. But all of a sudden I could imagine them really, really vividly.”

  “That’s not something you want to ignore,” said Lenny. “Let’s take a look around.”

  They found a row of light switches near the doors. Illumination did not improve the space a great deal. The paint-making machinery had been cleared out, but empty cans were still stacked here and there in tall silver pyramids. Swaths of cobweb hung overhead like dirty netting. Beneath the grimy webs, though, Rickey was just able to make out the design of an old-fashioned pressed tin ceiling. It was hard to find those at any price nowadays, and even the reproductions cost a fortune.

  “How much they want for this place?” he asked.

  Lenny glanced at a piece of paper he was holding. “Dollar a square foot for a minimum three-year lease.”

  “But it’s in such bad shape.”

  “I’ve seen worse. We’d want to get it inspected, of course, but it
looks pretty sound—no floors caving in, nothing collapsing. We wouldn’t have to do a lot of structural stuff.”

  “Where’s the kitchen?” asked G-man.

  “All the way to the back, the agent said. But it’s supposed to be sealed off.”

  “We’ll get in,” said Rickey.

  Their footsteps echoed on the cement floor as they crossed the big room. They passed through a doorway into a smaller anteroom full of broken-down metal shelves. This could be the bar, Rickey thought. Beyond it was another doorway covered with plywood. Rickey wedged his fingers under the edge of the plywood and yanked at it. Lenny and G-man winced at the shriek of rusty nails parting from plaster. “You had a tetanus shot lately?” Lenny asked.

  “Course I have. We couldn’t start work at Tequilatown without our vaccination certificates. I tell you, that Jesse Honeycombe has his ass covered.” Rickey wrenched at the plywood again, and it came away from the doorframe. Beyond it was blackness and the dank smell of mildew. Rickey reached around the frame, felt for a light switch, found a brace of them and flipped them on.

  Every surface in the kitchen was covered not just with dust, but with a thick layer of that gray fluff that seems to be born of well-aged dust. Gobbets of it dangled from the range hood and the light fixtures. A thick frosting hid the countertops entirely. An ancient, powerless reach-in stood against one wall, yawning emptily.

  But as they looked, it began to dawn on Rickey that beneath the corpses of a million giant dust bunnies, this was not a badly designed kitchen. It was laid out in the shape of a large, squat H, with the hot line forming the middle bar. To one side of the H was an open area that would make a good pantry. Someone had even left a very nice copperbottomed sauté pan hanging from one of the overhead pot racks. It was badly tarnished now, but still appeared serviceable. Looking at that pan, Rickey got a strange feeling, as if the previous chef had stepped out of the kitchen and forgotten to come back for a decade or two.

  He felt a light touch on his neck. If it had been cold, he would have jumped a mile, but it was warm. G-man had reached out and palmed the back of his neck, just once, and Rickey knew exactly what he meant to communicate: We could be looking at our very own kitchen right here.