The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [37]
Sean and Meredith were late eaters. On typical weeknights, they both worked until at least eight or so, we’d learned of their late patterns over the month or so of becoming neighbors. Sometimes the phone would ring at eleven o‘clock, Sean asking us if we wanted to come for a round of cocktails, or to try some cake he had just pulled out of the oven. So when Sean called to apologize that he and Meredith were running a little behind for our scheduled eight o’clock dinner that Sunday, Ben and I weren’t surprised. After another call to push back the start time, we finally arrived at their apartment around nine thirty. When we stepped in, Sean was standing in the kitchen with his hands in his pockets and Meredith was holding an unopened bag of carrots. They were both dressed impeccably, even though it was the weekend, Sean in his typical suspenders, bowtie, and dress shirt beneath an apron and Meredith in a ruffled blouse and buttoned cardigan.
“Those just need to be cut up,” Sean told her, nodding toward the carrots.
“Like how? In strips? Discs?” she asked.
“Discs,” he said.
I asked if I could help with anything, but Sean assured us they had everything under control. I handed him a bottle of white wine that we’d picked up on our way over.
“Oh, thanks. I’ll pop that in the fridge,” he said, and swung open the refrigerator to squeeze it against two other white wine bottles on the door.
Sean and Meredith had moved into their place only a few weeks before, and the spacious living room had the appearance of a hobby shop filled with antique clothing and horse-riding memorabilia. An old jockey helmet was placed here, on the wall, a Gatsbyesque straw hat there on a stack of books. Boxes of more books lay in the center of the living room floor, a few thick ones with marble-painted sides placed on top and opened to ecru-colored pages. Cooking magazines littered the single wicker-framed couch, many of them opened to a page with a recipe. The walls had been decorated with old photographs and paintings with antique frames, while other framed art leaned against the walls, yet to be hung. And taking up one large card table just outside the kitchen was Sean’s liquor collection. He picked up a bottle of red wine and showed it to us.
“I just picked this out the other day. It looked amazing. It’s from this tiny little vineyard in Austria that you couldn’t get anywhere else in the States before. So I got two bottles of it,” he said, pointing to an identical bottle on the floor. They both were unopened, as were most of the other dusty bottles underneath the square side table. Some were cut-glass flasks with different-colored liquors, and the whole collection of bottles spilled out to the living room floor, well beyond the margins of the table. He pointed to a bottle of liquor with a warm golden hue.
“I also got corn whiskey,” Sean said, picking it up and bringing it to his eye level as if holding a newborn baby. “I just love the color of it.”
He put the bottle down, then clapped his hands and looked at us expectantly. “Can I fix you a drink?”
Ben and I eagerly accepted. As Sean set about fixing us oldfashioneds, first reaching for a vintage ice crusher with a manual hand crank, we seated ourselves at a drawing table in the living room.
“Oh—yeah, I guess we can use that for dinner. We don’t really have a dining table, but that should do,” Sean said.
Meredith came over to clear a few books off the table and went back to chopping carrots on a cutting board she placed on her lap, while sitting in a chair. The counter was covered with bags of produce and kitchen tools that Sean was using. At the stove, a wide pan was bubbling with a fragrant saute.
Sean presented us with two cocktails expertly filled to the rims of the glasses,