Matthew samples Belinda’s pork, the sauce, the aïoli (it is aïoli), the vegetables, the rice. While they’re having coffee, he consolidates his mental notes as he sometimes does, by reciting to Belinda important judgments he hopes to include in BW’s review. This postprandial draft is a risky business. Since he looks to Belinda’s response not so much as a test of his observations but as an affirmation of them, he only tries it when he’s feeling confident. Belinda finds it a trial. Matthew tries to speak softly, but he has to speak loudly enough for Belinda to hear him. He imagines that diners nearby sometimes think he’s mad, and he is not displeased to think that thus he distinguishes himself from the crowd. He’s saying, “Both the diners and the flowers tend toward the exotic and showy — and there’s a kind of lush, tropical sensuality to the place — fecundity — a warm fecundity — dew-damp pistils and stamens — bizarre varieties of vegetable sexuality — and animal, too.”
The redhead gives Belinda a look, a raised eyebrow, a twisted smile. She might be asking Belinda whether Matthew is crazy. The delicate blonde is spoon-feeding to the Chinese girl a dessert listed on the menu as “chocolate decadence.” The Chinese girl is pretending to resist this cosseting. She keeps her lips closed when each spoonful arrives, like a child fighting puréed lima beans, but at the first touch of the tip of the spoon she parts them ever so slightly, yielding, and the spoonful of chocolate slips into the tiny oval orifice she creates. She parts her lips farther as the delicate girl slips the spoon into her mouth, just the slight bit needed to accommodate the bowl, and then closes them until only the handle protrudes from her pursed lips. Then, slowly, the delicate girl begins withdrawing the spoon, and with it, slipping out between her lips, comes the Chinese girl’s tongue, streaked with chocolate, pursuing the bowl of the spoon to lick the last of its residual decadence.
“Want some?” the delicate girl asks the redhead.
“Fuck you,” says the redhead, very softly, very sweetly. She gets up and goes off in the direction of the ladies’ room again. Discreetly, Belinda and Matthew watch her go, noticing, individually, what an alluring body she has. Belinda leans across the table and says to Matthew, “I’ve got to start going to aerobics every morning.”
Matthew realizes that he hasn’t checked the men’s room yet. On the way he takes careful note, without seeming to do so, of the other diners — their apparent satisfaction or dissatisfaction, the contents of their plates, their leavings. The men’s room has peacock-feather wallpaper.
When Matthew comes out of the men’s room, the redhead is standing at the phone, with her back to him, saying this: “You’d better come right away — it’s — oh — it’s terrible. She’s dead — she’s dead. She killed herself, Mrs. Chu. Mrs. Chu? Hello? Is this Mr. Chu?”
Beyond the redhead Matthew can see that everyone in the dining room is behaving as if nothing remarkable has occurred. Is he witnessing a grisly demonstration of contemporary indifference? A woman has killed herself and people go on munching their radicchio? As he makes his way across the leopard-spot carpet back to the table, he can see that in fact nothing has happened, and then he understands what’s going on, and he decides that it would be best to get out of the restaurant before the Chus arrive. He finds the waiter chatting with some other waiters, giving a lively account of something. “Just unbelievable,” he’s saying, “just unbelievable!” What? Matthew wonders. A concert, a movie, a love affair? He catches the waiter’s eye, and the waiter frowns.
“Excuse me,” Matthew says. “Would you bring us our check? We’re in kind of a hurry.”
“Certainly, sir. I’ll be right over, just as soon as I’ve finished with these people.”
In a few minutes the waiter does come by with the check, sets it in the no-person’s zone exactly midway between Belinda and Matthew, and says, “I’ll take that whenever you’re ready.”
Matthew has learned that, in the lingo of waiters, “whenever you’re ready” means “whenever I’m ready,” so he says at once, “I’m ready,” and hands over his American Express card.
[to be continued on Tuesday, February 7, 2023]
In Topical Guide 424, Mark Dorset considers Food: Aïoli, Chocolate Decadencefrom this episode.
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