The Corrections

Brian sat up on the bed and made no reply. She stole a glance and confirmed that his endowment was per expectation for the man who had everything. She suspected that she wouldn’t soon forget the sight of this dick. Would be seeing it when she closed her eyes, at inconvenient times, in far-fetched contexts.

She apologized to him.

“No, you’re right,” Brian said, deferring to her judgment. “I feel terrible. I’ve never done anything like this.”

“See, I have,” she said, lest he think her merely timid. “More than once. And I don’t want to anymore.”

“No, of course, you’re right.”

“If you weren’t married— If I weren’t your employee —”

“Listen, I’m dealing with it. I’m going in the bathroom now. I’m dealing with it.”

“Thank you.”

Part of her thought: What is my problem?

Another part of her thought: For once in my life, I’m doing the right thing.

She spent four nights by herself in Alsace and flew home from Frankfurt. She was shocked when she went to see the progress that Brian’s team had made at the Generator in her absence. The building-within-a-building was already framed out, the concrete sub floors poured. She could see what the effect would be: a bright bubble of modernity in a twilight of monumental industry. Although she had faith in her cooking, the grandness of the space made her nervous. She wished that she’d insisted on an ordinary plain space in which her food could shine alone. She felt seduced and suckered somehow—as if, unbeknownst to her, Brian had been competing with her for the world’s attention. As if, all along, in his affable way, he’d been angling to make the restaurant his, not hers.

She was haunted, just as she’d feared, by the afterimage of his dick. She felt gladder and gladder that she hadn’t let him put it in her. Brian had every advantage that she had, plus many of his own. He was male, he was rich, he was a born insider; he wasn’t hampered by Lambert weirdnesses or strong opinions; he was an amateur with nothing to lose but throwaway money, and to succeed all he needed was a good idea and somebody else (namely her) to do the hard work. How lucky she’d been, in that hotel room, to recognize him as her adversary! Two more minutes and she would have disappeared. She would have become another facet of his really fun life, her beauty reflecting on his irresistibility, her talents redounding to his restaurant’s glory. How lucky she’d been, how lucky.

She believed that if, when the Generator opened, reviewers paid more attention to the space than to the food, she would lose and Brian would win. And so she worked her ass off. She convection-roasted country ribs to brownness and cut them thin, along the grain, for presentation, reduced and darkened the kraut gravy to bring out its nutty, earthy, cabbagy, porky flavor, and arted up the plate with twin testicular new potatoes, a cluster of Brussels sprouts, and a spoon of stewed white beans that she lightly spiked with roasted garlic. She invented luxurious new white sausages. She matched a fennel relish, roasted potatoes, and good bitter wholesome rapini with fabulous pork chops that she bought direct from a sixties holdover organic farmer who did his own butchering and made his own deliveries. She took the guy to lunch and visited his farm in Lancaster County and met the hogs in question, examined their eclectic diet (boiled yams and chicken wings, acorns and chestnuts) and toured the soundproofed room where they were slaughtered. She extracted commitments from her old crew at Mare Scuro. She took former colleagues out on Brian’s AmEx and sized up the local competition (most of it reassuringly undistinguished) and sampled desserts to see if anybody’s pastry chef was worth stealing. She staged one-woman late-night forcemeat festivals. She made sauerkraut in five-gallon buckets in her basement. She made it with red cabbage and with shredded kale in cabbage juice, with juniper berries and black peppercorns. She hurried along the fermentation with hundred-watt bulbs.

Brian still called her every day, but he didn’t take her driving in his Volvo anymore, he didn’t play her music. Behind his polite questions she sensed a waning interest. She recommended an old friend of hers, Rob Zito, to manage the Generator, and when Brian took the two of them to lunch, he stayed for half an hour. He had an appointment in New York.

One night Denise called him at home and instead got Robin Passafaro. Robin’s clipped phrases —“OK,” “Whatever,” “Yes,” “I’ll tell him, ” “OK”—so irritated Denise that she deliberately kept her on the line. She asked how the Garden Project was going.

“Fine,” Robin said. “I’ll tell Brian you called.”

“Could I come over sometime and see it?”

Robin replied with naked rudeness: “Why?”

“Well,” Denise said, “it’s something Brian talks about” (this was a lie; he rarely mentioned it), “it’s an interesting project” (in fact, it sounded utopian and crackpot), “ond, you know, I love vegetables.”

“Uh huh.”

“So maybe some Saturday afternoon or something.”

“Whenever.”