The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [107]
I stumbled to a convenience store down the street to use the ATM for cash to take a cab home. I stood for a moment on the busy main drag of Williamsburg, which was flooded with people getting out of bars, looking to grab grub or a ride home. I waited as a couple of cabs went by, already filled with passengers. Then a familiar face approached me—it was Brian, who had just been at the Whisk and Ladle party, too.
“Hey, Cathy,” he said. “Waitin’ for a cab?”
We chatted for a minute on the street, glancing up and down the streets for yellow taxis. “I’m going in to grab a slice. Want one?” Brian asked, motioning to the pizza place next door.
“Uhh ...”
“Come on, I’ll get you one,” he said.
“This is kind of against my religion . . . ,” I heard myself saying. But I followed him inside, and as Brian signaled with two fingers to the counterperson, and was handed two white plates with steaming-hot, shining slabs of pizza, I felt my resolve immediately weaken.
The pizza was too soggy to fold in half. I couldn’t actually lift it from the plate without it bending like a thin sheet of paper, so that all the cheese and sauce rushed toward the triangular tip. I ended up shoveling it into my mouth from the plate. We stood outside eating, watching the street. Though Brian was making some sort of conversation, I couldn’t actually answer him since my mouth was working the molten cheese into fine, chewable pieces. Seeing that my mouth was unavoidably smeared with grease, Brian handed me a napkin, grinning politely at my hearty appetite.
Finally, an empty taxi stopped in front of me. I waved good-bye, thanked him again for the pizza, and got in. It was my first slice of New York pizza in more than a year. I was still working on the cheese when I noticed that Matt had called and texted a few times to see whether I was okay. I returned his messages while slurping my sloppy slice. The next morning, I found that my cell phone and purse had orange goo all over them. And I had a disgusting taste of pizza and pink booze in my mouth. Never again, I vowed.
Less than one week before our supper club was scheduled, panic broke loose. Jordan, who had decided to wait until the week before to invite her coworker, in order to make it seem more “casual,” discovered from another coworker that he was gay.
“I got nothin’. Or no one, as it were,” she wrote to the core supper club members (signed, “Fifi”). A few minutes later, I received an e-mail from Karol.
“Why don’t you send a casual invitation about the newly formed supper club to a bunch of male acquaintances of yours? Hopefully ones who Jordan might like,” she wrote, reading my mind exactly. I realized that, of anyone else in the group, I would be best suited to this task since the dinner was at my home and everyone knew how nuts I was about food. But I didn’t feel up to playing match-maker again; before Karol had gotten George to come, I tried to invite someone I thought she might like to dinner, as her secret SOS date. It was Adam from Ted and Amy’s supper club. But I couldn’t fathom inviting just Adam without also inviting Kara; it would seem rude. So I ended up inviting them both, and settled in to see what would happen. As it turned out, Adam already had plans, but Kara was eager to come. Of course, we were all happy to have Kara at our dinner, and one extra guest couldn’t hurt. At the very least, it might make the game more interesting. But I was wary of things backfiring now. Plus, with all the recipe planning, food purchasing, and preparation to take care of, I was beginning to feel frazzled and overextended.
But I gave in. I wrote to about a dozen male friends of mine who I had a vague notion might be single. The first one who replied was Thaddeus. It was settled; he would be Jordan’s “date.”
I suddenly realized how brave all those people who held supper clubs, like Kara and the Whisk and Ladle residents, were. Who knew what types of people might come