sickness unto death

"You know what I want to do?" she says.

She's looking at me with her chin thrust forward, munching with her spoon poised midway from a bowl of her cereal. Her hair is down around her ears.

"What?" I ask her, though I don't want to.

"I want strawberries," she tells me.

"What, on your cereal?" I ask.

"No," she says, letting the spoon fall down into the bowl; milk splatters. "I don't mean on my cereal. I want to eat strawberries...I want my own bowl full of strawberries. I want to eat strawberries until I get sick on 'em."

Later the next day, she comes back from the grocery with a bag that holds four five-pound boxes of strawberries, the plastic boxes that snap open and closed and make a hell of a noise either way, so that when she is downstairs taking a shower and I try to open one to snag a berry for myself, she can hear it and comes shunting up the stairs, wrapped in a plush towel and her hair dripping, and says, "What the fuck? Those are for my column!" I've already eaten half of it and I hold out the other half to show her. She pushes me aside and takes the bag in her fist and parades back down the stairs with it. She probably took it in the shower with her just to be safe.

It's going to be hours, so I go out to take a walk. I meet Denny and we stop in at the Sunset and pretty soon it's four o'clock. Sometime in there, Denny asks me, "What's she on today?" I tell him, "Strawberries. She woke up out of a bowl of cereal last night and said it was strawberries. Until she got sick on 'em."

"She got sick on them?"

"No," I correct him, "she wants them until she gets sick on them."

"Hmm," says Denny.

When I go home, she's got maybe eighteen bowls crowded on the counter, and even though it's only her in the kitchen, I can't get in there, not even for a glass of water.

"How's the strawberries?" I ask. "Are you sick on them yet?" I see two empty boxes.

"Almost," she grins at me. "Want to try?" She holds out a spoon full of some kind of lavender pink soup. She dips it into my mouth. "Well?" she asks.

"It's all right," I say.

"Fuck that," she says, crashing the spoon into the kitchen. "It's dynamite. It's for my column."

I shrug. "It's dynamite," I say. "Can I get a glass of water?"

She swings back and forth from the cupboard to the sink and hands me a glass of water, not looking at me but absorbed in a stained notebook that has been waterlogged and crisped and lost and sat upon so many times that it's nearly a pulp. I drink my water and wish I could go out again. Maybe I will, I think, in a few minutes.

That night she grills some meat with cheese on top, for the pair of us, and chews her portion up as if she's working a sausage factory inside of her. While she eats, she's typing on a little computer at her left hand, with glances at a glossy magazine spread open at her right.

"What's that?" I ask her, turning the mag toward me when she's engaged with the computer. "S'that food pornography?"

I've never called it that to her face before; I've only thought it privately. She looks up at me indignantly, then down at the page.

"It's Moira Miller's column in Saveur!" She stabs her index finger at the page. "She's writing about zucchini!"

I swallow. "All right," I say. She goes back to typing and reading, one of each, and spooning her food in her mouth all the while, meat and cheese. One of each, mixing together in her meat-grinder mouth.

She stays up late. I go to bed, watch the television for a while, but I end up reading a book instead, even with the television on. It's just the way I am. When I wake up, she's flat on her back, her chin tilted up and her eyelids resting peacefully on her cheekbones. I get up and get myself ready to go, but as I'm about to leave I stand over her and just look for a moment. It might be a good while, actually. I don't know. I don't know why I do it.

It's quite a shock to find her name in the newspapers the month after. She wrote a column that held some disparaging opinions about the cookbook of some super-chef, and suddenly everyone wants her number. The New York Times speaks with her over the telephone. She is asked to appear on a show where a gang of famous women argue about things. And she comes home after each engagement on a rant, going over who argued with her and how she answered them, sure that the audience--whoever it was--was on her side in their heart of hearts, though her opponents tried to pull them away and sometimes seemed to succeed. She doesn't make much food. We eat a lot of cereal together, as she pencils notes in her appointment book for her engagements and arguments on the day to follow. She chews cereal as if it were gristle, her jaws like pistons in an engine.

"Hammer and tongs," I say to myself.

"What?" she demands.

"Hamburger songs. Like that old Miracle Whip advertisement. You know the one. You should throw a bit of that in your speech. Loosen things up."

She doesn't look up at me. "That's a mad idea."

"It doesn't seem right to me, their making you work so hard just for one thing you said about a baker. Why have they got to keep after you so?"

"I want to work hard!" She looks exasperatedly at me. "I want them to keep after me!" She stares at me for a good while.

I shrug. "It's only food," I say, wondering if I ought to apologize.

She slams the covers of her book together. "That's where you're wrong, Nick," she says, standing up. "It's not 'only food.' It's life. It's sustenance. It's sin, and sensuality. It's comfort in times of loss and an anchor for memories and traditions. It's the centerpiece of celebration for every culture on earth. But never mind all that--it's also my passion!" As she strides back toward the bedroom, she throws up her hands. "I don't want it to loosen up!"

Her speech the next day sets them all on their ears. I read about it the day after, in the Dining section. They quote the same line she gave me at the table that night, right down to the "never mind all that, it's my passion" bit, which apparently brought a number of onlookers to their feet, clapping.

I meet up with Denny at the pub and show it to him. He holds his hands up to me, warding the paper away.

"Don't show me, already saw. She'll be moving from Dining to the front page, soon." He pushed toward me the g-&-t he'd ordered in advance of my arrival, and he signaled the bartender for a lager to follow it. "Quite a tempest in a teapot she's blown up, isn't it?"

"She said all this to me the other night," I said. "This bit, here--this line."

Denny read it over.

"Hm!" He grinned. "Wonder if she writ it up after she said it to you, or before."

I rubbed my chin and thought it over.

"Was she always like this?" Denny asked me.

"Like what?"

Denny held up his hands again. "Sorry. Never mind. Forget it."

"No. Like what?"

He looked at me, his chin propped on his fist.

"Passionate? Oh, yes," I said. "A go-getter, from the first time I knew her. No one like her."

"But, I mean...was she this crazy about food, Nick?"

"About..." I stared at him. "Food?"

"Yes, Nick. Food. This stuff, that's got her so riled up now that you can hardly talk to her." He stabbed his finger at the newspaper. "Was this always on her mind in the same way?"

"Well! I can't say." I thought hard on it.

"Oh, come, Nick. It can't be that hard. Did she or didn't she go a little mental about zucchinis and braising and such like when you first met her? When you were dating?"

I guess I was silent for quite a time.

"I don't remember," I said. He didn't believe me, I could tell. "I never thought about it. It was just... If she was, I suppose I'd have thought it was just a young girl with an appetite. Her mother couldn't cook, that's for damn sure. I don't know where she'd have got so crazy about it, as a girl. I just don't remember."

She's already in bed when I get home, sitting up, writing things in the margins of the day's paper. I don't mention anything about it; I start to take off my shoes.

"Mad, this," she says. "It's clear whose side this reporter's on."

"Were you always this crazy about food?" I ask her. She looks at me. "I mean, was it always your passion? All your life?"

A smile drifts across her face, and she looks at the wall dreamily.

"I don't know," she says. "I haven't thought about it. When it all came about. I think it must have always been there. I don't remember just when it became...what it is." She stared at the wall for a few more moments, then went back to working at her notes.

I leave off changing my clothes and went back downstairs, half in my pajamas. There was a plate of cookies on the table but I know better than to touch them. I pour a glass of milk, set it down there, and I sit at the kitchen table and I stare at the two of them for a bit. Then I drink down the milk, slowly, so that it won't bother my stomach. When I go back upstairs, the light is on but she has fallen asleep, half-propped against the headboard of the bed.

The next morning the cookies are gone, and so is she, since before I got up. There is a note on the table where the plate had been, reminding me that she is going to Westchester for a convention and will probably be back around eleven at night, and telling me not to take the cold chicken out of the refrigerator for my lunch. I pick up the note and hold it there, under the light that swings over the centre of the table, wondering that I didn't hear her as she got up and made ready to leave--I'm a light sleeper.

I lose track of time and arrive late for work. One of the fellows shouts, as I come in, "Rebecca's making quite the stir, isn't she, Nick?"

"She is that," I answer, taking off my coat.

"Ought to watch out for her. Those cooking persons can be brutal when crossed."

"Brutal?" I ask, not quite listening.

"Yeah! Haven't you ever watched 'Hell's Kitchen?' That fellow looks ready to pound anybody's head in with his fry pan, if they cross him. He says some godawful things to the cooks on that show."

"It's notorious," says another fellow standing nearby. "I worked as a waiter for years, and so did my brother. They'd tell stories I never believed as a kid, and then I saw for myself."

"Stories about what?" I ask him. "Manslaughter? With a fry pan?"

He shakes his head. "Kitchen knives. Threatening each other, you know. And sex! They did it in the bathrooms, in the pantry, in the freezer, on top of the bar when the place was closed for the night--but they'd do it in full view of the staff. Rails of cocaine off the counters..."

I walk up close to him. "How'd they get to have sex inside a freezer?"

He looks at me pityingly.

"It's a walk-in freezer, Nick. Like a closet, but cold."

All day I think about her up in Westchester, being threatened and pawed by avaricious men and women in their white double-breasted jackets and little ascot scarfs. It made me almost frantic. I desperately want to call but I don't know where she is likely to be, a hotel or a restaurant or a club. Who knew? I think of her going into this vicious, predatory world on the steam of her single-minded passion, and I think of them all trying to corrupt her and wonder how long she would last against them. I think of coming home to her suddenly preoccupied with something else, besides food. Perhaps she'd be nursing a wound from a meat cleaver or a potato masher. I think of her sitting there at the table, pressing a bandage to her shoulder. I would take it from her and help her with it, and I would say, "Who did this?" and she would say, "Gordon Ramsay." I would say, "He's a bloody maniac," and she would answer, "No, Nick. He's right enough. You just have to know how to handle his rages. He's taught me more in a month than most people learn in a year." And I would say, "I worry about you." And she would say, "I'm all right. It's a terrific chance to work with him. I don't mind the little scratches and things." I would say, "I mind."

I rather hope she will call me from the convention, but she doesn't. I go home and look around for something to eat, but all I can find is milk and cereal and a few potatoes. She likes to do the shopping as well, and only buys what she needs. I toy with the idea of making something from scratch--there is certainly no shortage of flour, sugar and baking powder. But I don't want at all to make myself a batch of cookies or anything of the sort. I want hers. I search again, now a bit desperate, for something she may have left behind; breadcrumbs she has frozen for future tempura, burned cookies she might use for crumbling into a cheesecake crust or on top of puddings, morsels that she might have saved for later analysis of what went wrong with the recipe. I rifle through the cupboards; I know how silly it is. But I can find nothing. She has grown too skilled. She no longer has accidents.

I sit at the table and drink one glass of milk after another. The swinging light reflects a lemon-hued ball on the surface of the liquid. I watch it quiver there, looking for minute after minute as if it is on the verge of melting. Something suddenly splashes into it and destroys the placid surface. I reach up to my face and find a wet, sticky trace reaching down the side of my cheek. I have wept; I am weeping.

Quickly, I stand up, seize the glass, and throw back the rest of the milk in one gulp. I charge out of the kitchen and into my car, forgetting to bring along my coat, as I realize when I am halfway into town. I only think of going back for a moment. I have to get to Westchester, and can't afford to lose a moment.

I'm not a cautious driver at the best of times. Now I am squealing in and out of lanes, dodging as best I can past the sluggish dregs of rush-hour traffic. Did everyone leave work late today?, I wonder. But I feel the fire in my belly, and I know I won't be stopped, that I will get to her, that I will keep her safe, even if she does not understand what I'm there for. Even if she doesn't want me there in spite of understanding. My only prayer is that the police are busy with things other than traffic monitoring, this evening. In a mood such as this, with such a mission in front of me, I might strike a cop.

People wail their car horns protestingly at me as I swerve into their lanes. I curse the day I chose an economical town car over something with a four-wheel drive. Traffic is locking up; I have no choice but to slow down, more than once. There must be an accident of some kind nearby. I wonder if that means policemen. I narrow my eyes to spot them before they spot me. God, what time is it? I glance toward the car's clock, but it is stuck at 2.28--it has been for months. I look for my watch but my sleeve is covering it. I flick my wrist impatiently to swing the watch's face toward me.

I hear a horn protesting me again, then several horns chorus in with it. I look up--perhaps we're approaching the accident. But there is only the deathly fast approach of a minivan bumper toward my windshield. I can see a child's face staring out at me with numb terror. I carve the steering wheel to the left and I feel my jaw lock into place, my face closing itself down in preparation for assault. The back end of my car fishtails against the minivan; the impact sends me thrashing like a fish as I careen through the road's flimsy guardrail and nosedive into whatever lies on the other side.

My eyes open on an expanse of dark blue poly-blend fabric, encompassing my whole field of vision, which seems to have narrowed alarmingly. A great pressure is against my head. It feels as though my jaw is gripped in a vise. There is a sound, only one sound, that comes and goes at regular intervals. It is like the ticking of a clock--has it begun working again?, I wonder. Something suddenly slides across my field of vision, narrowing it further. It spreads out underneath my cheek. After a moment, I can feel it slide down into my pants. I try to move my eyes to find my bearings; the movement hurts abominably. I hear a noise, an inchoate, muffled roar, but nothing happens. I leave my eyes where they are, but somehow they have found a point of contact, a source of light. There is a long, shiny slick extending from my face, and as my eyes adjust, I see that it is deep and assertive in color, like strawberries macerated in wine.

...et puis, je fume

most of you know that i once went to france.
there was this one day, toward the end of my sojourn in the country, that makes me laugh when i think about it. i still wonder how it managed to happen, and what it means about who i really am.

the last ten days of that summer i spent in paris. the first half of it was in the home of a woman not much older than me who taught my friend at his summer language immersion school and was taking a vacay in morocco. she rented me her apartment in montparnasse, within walking distance of the bastille circle and the huge FNAC store. that neighborhood seemed to be the carroll gardens of its time and place, lots of mediterranean and middle eastern foot traffic, turbans and caftans abounding, a bakery where i went to buy one piece of baklava and was given it instead, a shop that i don't know what i went in for, but turned out to be a cave of colors that sent me back into the sunlight blinking and disoriented.

the second five i intended to stay in a hostel. but the owner was a shrewd man who, having told me one hour that he had vacancy, turned me away the next hour when i came back dragging my suitcase. "well, i rented the room since then!" he told me. "there's another hostel down the street." it wasn't a hostel at all, but a comfort inn franchise. i was distraught at the thought of spending so much more money. that night, i called home for some comfort in my loneliness. i can't remember what anyone said.

i began to walk.

i had made plans about the things i would search for, the objectives that would give me a reason to get out into the city, even if they were never achieved. it was a good idea--i don't know how i managed to have it--i'd recommend it to anybody traveling. i decided i was going to find and attend all the regular open markets in paris during the week, especially the organic one on saturdays on boulevard raspail, as i'd learned long ago from adam gopnik in paris to the moon, and i was also going to visit all the public gardens--the jardin de luxembourg, the jardin des plantes, i think there was another on the list. and also i was going to pay a visit to all the english language bookstores in paris. i think there were five--shakespeare and co., the san francisco book company, the red something or other, the princess bookstore (i think it was called) in st. germain, the abbey or abbott or something (owned by a canadian)--this one turned out to be my favorite, because it was the pokiest and also because the owner mistook me at first for a frenchwoman. for my part, i mistook him for sebastian cabot--he had that dry, mildly prepossessing lecherous air about him. i asked him, "can you usually tell when someone walks in whether you should speak to them in french or in english?" he said, "usually. but you were ambiguous." sometimes i still wonder after him.

i think it was the same day--anyway, i was wearing the same clothes, i'm almost sure. they were a skirt i had bought in biarritz, and a thin white shirt with a tuxedo front and tiny sleeves that i had bleached from yellow to white while i was in the north country on a sheep farm. i began the day, i remember, walking down the hill from the pantheon, my unkempt hair tied up with a flower in it. two men working with a white van on the side of the road watched me as i passed and saluted me with the most brilliant gallantry, calling me "lovely miss" and gesturing as if they were doffing their hats, as i passed them. oh! in that moment, something fell off and something came over me, simultaneously. the heartbreak i had suffered earlier, in the spring, evaporated completely. and i realized, "i am pretty. just by virtue of being a woman, i am lovely and powerful and a benison on the earth...at least as far as men are concerned." i had never felt pretty in my life. not like that. never convinced.

i pattered through st. germain and i heard the strains of jazz being played as i approached the church. there were three skinny white guys set up near a bus stop--a drummer with only a snare, an upright bass, and a guy with an electric keyboard. the bassist was singing. i sat down on the bench and stared at them with open-mouthed delight. i felt as if they'd been waiting there for me.

there was a guy sitting on the bench beside me, but i didn't notice that he was there until he said to me, "are you waiting for the bus?" i said, "no, i'm just listening to the music." he was the musicians' friend. when he learned my name, he shouted, "doc!" and the bassist looked up. he told them to play a song that has my name in it. i felt as if they really had been waiting for me, there. they told me about themselves a little, and that they'd be playing under one of the bridges that night.

i sailed across one of the bridges late that afternoon and was stopped by a group of american students who motioned and gesticulated at me to take their picture. again delighted, i made indistinct noises and nodded my head and took the picture. they all said, "merci, thank you, merci." i wished someone was around to laugh with.

and then i heard jazz, again. this time it was a saxophone, all by itself. i stopped in the middle of the bridge--i wish i could remember which one, it wasn't pont neuf, at least--and leaned my elbows on the edge and looked down. a young black man in a white t-shirt and dark jeans, with a clean-shaven head, was playing alone on the river-side walk. when he finished his tune i began to clap for him. he looked up, saw me, and he broke into a smile and motioned for me to come down. i did go down to him, because his smile looked just the same as how i felt--as if he'd been waiting there for me to show up.

i went down and learned his name was jean, and he was recently returned from a stint in new york, and he couldn't wait to go back. i don't remember what all we talked about, but we arranged to meet later that night, for he was playing with a group at one of the caveaus off boulevard st. michele.

i met him there, quite late. the little square was busy, full of noisy bars and dark shady entrances to the caveaus. i remember a very big greek restaurant as brightly lit as a denny's. i went down into the caveau where i was supposed to meet him. fortunately he was right at the bottom of the stairs. he introduced me to his friends--one of them wore a leather jacket and no shirt underneath. we all gave kisses. the room was bathed in red light, the couches uphosltered in velvet, full of young dark-skinned men and bored-looking, cheap-looking white girls who sat as only american girls ever do. i met their eyes and decided i wasn't one of them. i sat near the front with jean and we watched his friends begin their set. it was dynamite. it was beautiful. i told jean how i liked it. he was scowling at how derivative, how uninnovative it was. then he got up and played. it was sublime. it was transcendent. he was better than all of them. he made their already fluid music tipsy and god-like.

then he said he was going to meet a friend at another caveau, maybe play another set. i said i'd go with him for a minute, but had to leave soon. we found his friend at the other caveau but the music wasn't happening, apparently. as we walked through a wide alleyway, we passed two of the skinny white guys i'd met earlier, doc and the guy who had been sitting on the bench. doc was carrying his bass. they both passed me and looked worried when i said hello.

it was at that point that i realized jean was no longer smiling as he had been under the bridge. i asked him what was wrong. he began to rail about the jazz scene in paris, how it meant nothing, how he needed to go back to new york, many specifics about people i didn't know and music i hadn't heard. i told him i liked what i had heard thus far, it reminded me of john coltrane. he said it was nothing like john coltrane--coltrane was an innovator, there was nothing like that in paris, jazz was dying or dead there. we proceeded toward the metro stop that i needed to get back to my hotel. i stopped at the stairway and said, "well, thank you for..." he looked at me but seemed not to see me at all, and said, savagely, "have a nice night." i booked it down the stairs.

i was the only one on the platform. i waited for a long time. it occurred to me that jean could have said, or done, quite a lot of things as we walked around the wet streets, those crowded and those empty, in those last two hours after midnight. i saw three young people come down onto the platform opposite me, two guys and a girl, all dressed as only americans do, loud and laughing but mercifully sober. i couldn't wait to go to bed.

they talked and talked among themselves, mentioning frequently how annoying it was to wait so long for the train. then an attendant materialized and walked up to them and said they had no more trains coming that way. "what?" they begged him, stricken. i strained to hear him. he said, "no, no more trains tonight coming this way. only that one..." he pointed toward my side of the tunnel. and in the same moment i saw the light and heard the approach of the train bound for montparnasse. the last thing i heard was the three on the other side bandying about the word "taxi."

on board the last train home, i couldn't wait to go to bed. i couldn't wait to wake up the next morning. all the cliches are true. paris, je t'aime. i love paris in the springtime, i love paris in the fall. something wonderful happens in summer. april in paris... il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux champs elysees...

i look back and i think, "what? me? how?" was it summer madness? was it drunkenness on self-discovery?...or something? i came back changed. truly God was looking out for me, and i thank him very kindly for it. but was it foolishness, or was it qi, that secret something of which deepak chopra's book is only the first to advocate? i wish i knew.

i think it was sparks to a tinder that was already there. it has become a fire that still burns, sustained by the breath of certain mad moments, impetuous imperatives, exultant craziness that somehow avoid embarrassment even if they deserve it.

...makes me wonder if i want that little fire to grow. i think that i do, most of the time, but who knows? it might lead to worse places than a deserted metro stop in the wet midnight.

we used to discuss at school whether fire was alive (sorry, we were reading the greeks). it gives the appearance of other living things, in that it breathes, in a way, and it has forward motion, in a way, and it certainly consumes. yet it is immaterial--it can occupy the same space as a material body without being lessened itself.

after these observations, it seems possible that fire is sort of the natural world's parallel to the human soul. everything alive must follow the pattern of fire by "burning" its particular form of energy for its own sustenance--oxygen in, carbon out.

this conclusion doesn't really resolve my personal question, though. soul is essential to the human as fire is to nature, but it can overcome and destroy its originators. you think you'd do well with more, until you have suddenly have more than you can handle.

soul is not something to be played with; it wants supervision and a skilled hand to control its growth.

fainting--a detailed anatomy

i was running today, had been for about fifteen minutes, when i had to stop on a street median to wait for a horde of cars to clear.

suddenly i felt a cool, fleeing sensation in my temples, behind my eyes, like sand falling through an hourglass. i grasped the signpole beside me and bent over, and tried not to think about throwing up. the sand continued to fall down my neck, through my shoulders and back, and as it fell everything seemed to weigh far too much for me to support. i closed my eyes, i think--or maybe everything went black without my permission. either way, it seemed right to me; i thought, "i'll just kneel on the ground...that sounds like a good idea." i held onto the pole to steady myself, because i was obeying the impulse rather faster than seemed prudent. but it didn't matter. i've been very tired all day and had taken a couple of naps earlier; both times it felt so good to succumb, to bend my head into the swallow of sleep. that's what i thought of as my back caved toward the pavement and my knees flopped over. i also thought of how silly it must look to anyone watching--just laying myself down to take a nap in the median of the street. but they didn't know how much i needed it. the music from my iPod was clamoring in my ears but it didn't bother me; everything was so relaxed.

suddenly i woke up and thought, "before i take a nap, i should turn off my iPod so i don't waste all the batteries." that thought was shortly followed by another--"this is absurd. i can't take a nap here. lord, i hope no one sees me." still, i didn't want to get up, but i knew i ought to or somebody would worry. so i jacknifed myself upright and immediately felt again like i might throw up. the sand began again to fall from the back of my head.

i propped my back against the signpole and ducked my head toward my knees, feeling very surly that i had to wake up. i turned off the iPod. i sat there for several moments and looked up unwillingly toward the gas station that faced me on one side, and the little row of shops on the other side. people were moving about in both parking lots; no one was looking toward me. no one. i was a little bit outraged and a little bit relieved. relieved that no one had seen me taking a nap in the midsection of the street, outraged that no one was rushing to my aid--no one handsome and capable, not even anyone ugly or ineffectual. disappointing.

"and now," i thought grimly, once i got myself up off the ground and headed toward home, "i can't run today."
my body was shortly flushed with sweat. no one mentions that as being part of the fainting package, either.

since it happened, regrettable though it was, i felt it was my civic duty to report that fainting, as an experience, is killingly unromantic. if you're in the market for a handsome stranger, there are more reliable ways to meet one.