Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [46]
Tommy pulled back. Cheryl squirmed into the sheets for a few seconds and was soon fast asleep again.
Tommy picked up the chef's worn copy of Down and Out in London and Paris from the night table and read a few pages. He was too drunk to concentrate on the words. He wanted to lose himself in the underground passageways of the gargantuan Hotel X . . . haul ice through the cellars with Orwell, scrape fat, barehanded, off dinner plates with the plongeurs in the book . . .
He wanted to be in Paris, drunk in Paris. He wanted to be in Paris with Cheryl, rolling around in clean hotel sheets. He wanted to drown himself in Cheryl, live on room service, climb the Eiffel Tower . . . Do they let you go all the way to the top? He didn't know . . . He wanted to eat oysters in a little French cafe. He wanted to watch Cheryl eat a Belon oyster, watch her tip back her head and slurp one down, a real one, too, not one of those sorry-ass fakes they raise up in Maine. He wanted to drink absinthe, whatever that was, and smoke stinky French cigarettes . . .
He wanted the chef to be there, too . . . He could show them around. Maybe the chef could get work at some fancy bistro, open all hours. He and Cheryl could drop by to see him. The chef would feed them late supper, a platter of those little birds, the ones you ate with the bones still in them, and truffles as big as your fist. . .
Far, far away from Sally. Far away from trash bags full of dead men.
He wanted to stand in front of a house with wood shutters and a red-tiled roof, squinting into the sun, waiting for Cheryl to take the picture.
Twenty-One
THEY SAT at one of the better tables, near a gurgling fountain in the garden patio at the rear of the restaurant. Bright green ivy grew on the trellises behind them, and there were yellow tulips everywhere. Wealthy old ladies chatted in small groups at the other tables.
"You need money," his mother said; a statement, not a question. The chef nodded, trying to smile sheepishly.
"Remember how we used to make breakfast?" asked the chef's mother, changing the subject. "In France?"
"With the chocolate?" asked the chef, grateful his mother wasn't chiding him about the money.
"Yes," she said, "with the baguette, the Normandy butter and the big bowl of hot chocolate. We'd serve it in those big blue bowls."
"I loved that," said the chef. "I miss it. Can't do it here, it's not the same."
"It's the butter," said his mother.
She was tall and thin and elegant in a dark blue dress and a single strand of pearls. Her silver hair was put up in a tight bun, giving her countenance a severe aspect. . . Her face was pale and white, offset by the single slash of dark red lipstick. She sat ramrod straight in her chair and, with two long, manicured fingertips, removed a piece of tobacco from the tip of her tongue. Without turning her head, she sensed the waiter's approach, and she extinguished the unfiltered Gitane in a cut-glass ashtray.
The waiter placed an oversize china plate in front of her, saying, "Madame." She inspected the carre d'agneau without moving her head or changing her expression. Three tiny rib chops, impeccably trimmed, were crisscrossed on a stripe of sauce in the middle of the plate. An arrangement of baby vegetables, tied into little bundles with blanched bits of leek, surrounded the lamb. The waiter came around the table and put the chef's turbot down in front of him.
"Look how many truffles they put," said his mother in her slight French accent.
The chef smiled broadly. "Is that cooked to your liking, Maman?" he asked her.
"Parfait," she responded. She liked it when he called her Maman.
The waiter poured her a little more Côtes du Rhône, then lifted a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse from a silver ice-bucket and refilled the chef's glass. He asked the chef's mother, in French, if there was anything