Kitchens of the Great Midwest (19 page)

“I got heirloom Golden Bantam. From a woman who sells herbs at the St. Paul Farmers’ Market.”

“Wow, never heard of it,” Eva said. “Who’s the herb vendor?”

“Anna Hlavek. But she doesn’t sell it to the public, you have to ask.” Octavia had the inside track; she’d heard about it from a friend of hers who’d dated Anna’s son Dougie the year before.

Octavia knew she had won this round. With American cornfields at close to 90 percent GMO corn, and all of the numerous crosses and hybridizations and so-called improvements made to corn even before genetic intervention, Anna Hlavek at the farmers’ market was growing something almost unheard of: an open-pollinated corn variety that hadn’t changed a bit in more than one hundred years. From what she was told, Anna had inherited the seed stock from her grandfather, who’d bought it from a catalog when Burpee first introduced Golden Bantam 8 Row back in 1902. This was the exact corn Octavia’s great-grandparents ate at their farm near Hunter, North Dakota—old-fashioned plump, firm, milky kernels that burst in your mouth and were so sweet, it could’ve been served for dessert. No one, not even Eva with the fancy ingredients, could’ve gotten hold of this sweet corn; you had to know someone to make sure you were getting the real deal, and Octavia, as luck would have it, did.

“Can’t wait to try it,” Eva said.

 • • • 

The seating chart had devolved a bit from the week before. Adam Snelling still sat across from Sarah Vang, but now Eva sat across from Robbe and Octavia sat across from Elodie. Octavia did get to sit
next
to Robbe, however, which in a lot of ways was really better than sitting across from him. Lacey, meanwhile, sat at the tail with her baby, facing no one again.

“Why do I always have to sit down here?” she asked. It was rare for her to complain; Octavia felt that Lacey should be happy just to be there, and figured that she had been.

Everyone stared down the table at her. “It’s just the way it turned out,” Robbe said.

“Can someone switch with me?” she asked, and looked at her friend, the woman who had invited her. “Octavia?”

Octavia shook her head. “I need to be here, I’m handling one of the early dishes.”

Robbe shook his head. “You don’t
need
to be anywhere, Octavia.”

She was stung that he didn’t seem to want to be next to her as much as she wanted to be next to him, but put on a smile. “It’s easier to distribute from over here. Her dishes always come at the end.”

“Fine,” Robbe said. “Well, sorry, Lacey.”

Lacey nodded and sighed. She used to have a perfectly nice place to sit, across from someone and everything—at least until fancy Eva showed up—and was probably doing the math in her head just then, figuring that out. “You know, I’m gonna go,” she said, and stood up.

“All right,” said Octavia.

“Why?” asked Adam Snelling. Adam was super nice like that.

“You guys don’t like my food, you make me sit here at the end of the table by myself, you never talk about anything I know, and you never even ask me any questions about myself.”

“You shouldn’t wait to be asked,” Robbe said. “I don’t.” This, from Robbe, passed for empathy.

“Well, see ya later,” Lacey said, and stomped to the kitchen, coming back out with the Tupperware bowl of ambrosia fruit salad she’d made with canned fruit cocktail and Cool Whip. Her baby daughter had started to cry from all of the jostling and Lacey had to shout over the child’s wail. “Have a good dinner party,” she said, standing in the open doorway. “Bye.”

After she closed the door, hard, the remaining six diners sat in silence for a moment before Robbe stood up and cleared Lacey’s wineglass and silverware.

“I think in the future when we invite a new person, we should run it by the whole group first,” he said as he walked into his kitchen.

Eva, the newest person, and invited by Robbe’s decree—not run by the group at all—had the nerve to speak up. “I know someone who I think might like to come,” she said.

“Looking forward to hearing about them,” Robbe said, setting the two white bowls of succotash on the table.

 • • • 

Octavia tried Eva’s first. She hated to say it, but it was exquisite. The green beans and corn were each just slightly firm, the bacon was fragrant and not too salty, and the nearly diaphanous white onion pieces were in that Goldilocks zone of piquancy, neither overbearing nor nominal.

Then Octavia tried her own. Her corn was firm and starchy; she didn’t know when Anna picked it—Octavia had just bought it the morning of the day before—but the kernels hadn’t kept their sugar. Some of them even felt like loose teeth in her mouth. She looked around the table and saw people spitting into their napkins.

“I’ll have more of the one with the beans,” Elodie said, and Adam quickly concurred.

That bitch Anna Hlavek. It should be required for a sweet corn vendor to post the exact date and time of their harvest to avoid these awful mistakes. Eva, of course, had used corn that was probably only four or five hours old at that point;
that
had made all the difference, not what damn varietal it was.

“Whose was whose?” Sarah asked, with her loud, disharmonious harpy voice.

“I brought the one with the red pepper,” Eva said. “It was really good a day ago. I don’t know what happened.”

Before Octavia could even gather her thoughts, everyone started talking.

“The sugars in sweet corn can turn to starch really fast,” Sarah said. “You’re still so amazing for someone your age. So amazing.”

Eva nodded. “Thanks. I know I still have a lot to learn.”

“This might actually be my favorite thing you’ve ever made,” Elodie said, looking at Octavia. “This could win awards.”

Adam nodded and smiled, mouth full.

“Octavia is back, ladies and gentlemen,” Sarah said.

Robbe, who’d seen the women transfer their succotash into his bowls, said nothing. He just stared at the side of Octavia’s head, the way someone stares at a theater curtain in the moments before the play begins.

“Thanks, everyone,” Octavia said, watching as Adam gathered everyone’s plates, mounds of her Golden Bantam succotash sitting, lightly touched, on every one.

 • • • 

The next day, Robbe insisted on meeting Octavia for drinks at Horseless Carriage, his favorite old-man bar, for 5:00 p.m. happy hour. Though Octavia was busy updating her résumé—she was going to leave off her previous employer altogether and just tell people that she’d been volunteering with children the last two years—she obviously agreed to meet him.

When she arrived, he was halfway through a martini already, sitting under a backlit sign advertising a Prime Rib Special, playing with his cell phone. The place smelled like stale popcorn and Bar Keepers Friend, and the handful of other people there were hunched over pull tabs at the bar or watching baseball on silent TVs.

Robbe looked up from his phone and nodded when she entered, but did not put down the phone, much less rise from his seat like a gentleman.

 • • • 

“I’m kinda seeing Eva,” Robbe said. “I just wanted to tell you.”

She’d suspected this travesty was under way, but actually hearing it hit Octavia in the heart with a cast-iron skillet. “Why did you need to tell me that in person?” she asked.

“Because I know you like me.”

“Well yeah, as a friend, I like you as a friend.”

“Have it your way,” he said. “I actually did think about sleeping with you at one point, but you seem like the type that would get all psycho afterwards.”

Octavia took a deep breath. “I’m so glad we skipped all that. I have been meaning to ask you, though—how come you didn’t say anything about the succotash during the dinner yesterday?”

“What do you mean?”

“You saw us put our succotash into bowls. You were there in the kitchen.”

“I don’t remember that. But I’d had a few.”

“All right.” She got the bartender’s attention and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, which was wildly passé, but Christ, she needed it, and it wasn’t like anyone in this bar knew her.

“So what’s going to happen to you guys when you move to Bali?”

“What’s going to happen to who?”

“You and Eva.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’ll come with.”

“What kind of woman would just drop everything and run off with you?” Octavia knew she would’ve skipped town indefinitely and left for Bali with Robbe at any moment, at least until maybe five minutes ago.

“Have you been to her place?”

“God, no.”

“She lives in a totally sketchy apartment with her dad off of Lake Street. I was there a few days ago, and when I was waiting for her to come down, I seriously thought I was going to get shot. If I were her, I’d get the hell out of there first chance I had.”

“So that’s it. You think you can rescue her.”

“Who the hell knows,” Robbe said. “But do you know who she’s bringing to the next dinner? Mitch Diego. Nobody will have to bring anything. He’s going to make all the food. How do you like that?”

“I’m intrigued,” Octavia said.

 • • • 

For the dinner with Mitch Diego, Octavia wore her best dress, a chocolate BCBG jersey dancer dress with a plunging neckline, cinched at the waist with a red wool belt. It wasn’t a summer color—the dress was from the fall 2008 season—but it literally stopped men on the street, so screw it.

Mitch Diego looked like a slightly heavier version of the pictures on his Web site, but he still had a look that Octavia lusted after: a beard of silver and charcoal, with slick, curly obsidian hair and dizzying brown topaz eyes. She even loved the black chest hair popping up from the neckline of his white pearl-snap shirt; not a trendy look, but she admired men who ran with it. He looked Octavia up and down but didn’t introduce himself, so neither did she, but she caught him looking so many times she started folding her arms in front of her chest.

Eva stood in the corner of Robbe’s kitchen, next to his Kitchen Aid mixer, watching Robbe and Mitch from a distance. Robbe touched her every time he passed by her, and she touched him back, rarely speaking to him or Mitch, but obviously happy to be along for this ride, in an exquisite kitchen with a rich handsome man-friend and a legendary local chef.

Adam Snelling froze when he walked into the kitchen and saw Octavia. “You look real beautiful,” he said to her face, in a way that seemed like it was involuntary, like he just
had
to say it, which was nice, and took a cigarette out of his pocket. The clean white cylinder shook between his fingers.

“Give me one of those,” Octavia said, and led him out to the backyard. For some reason, Mitch Diego followed them.

“Bum a smoke?” he asked Adam.

Adam held out the pack for Mitch. “You don’t need to be in the kitchen?” Octavia asked, preemptively crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Dirty little secret,” Mitch said. “Eva has saved my life. She does
everything I can do and people can’t tell the difference. I’m actually writing a book now, I have time to write a book.”

“What’s it called?”

“
Tapas Girls and Bottomless Sangria: Hot Times in Spanish Kitchens
. You know anyone who can help me with a book proposal?”

 • • • 

Robbe sat across from Eva at the end of the table, then Sarah across from Elodie, and, in a new twist, Adam across from Octavia at the other end. She was hoping that Mitch, who’d be in the Lacey Dietsch position, would sit next to her, but when Mitch saw the table he left the room and came back in from the study with a desk chair, which he put at the head of the table. Octavia wondered why no one had thought of that before.

“Tonight’s menu,” Mitch Diego announced, “is summer corn chowder, made from Golden Bantam sweet corn. Main course is slow-cooked organic pork shoulder tacos with mint, black beans, and Wisconsin feta cheese, and salsa made from Nebraska Wedding and Cherokee Purple heirlooms. Dessert is Paula Red apple crisp.”

Everyone applauded, and Octavia watched as Eva rose and disappeared into the kitchen,

 • • • 

The meal that Eva made and Mitch Diego took credit for was predictably incredible. People begged for leftovers, Sarah Vang demanded that Mitch Diego open a food truck, Robbe claimed that it was the best meal he’d ever had in his home.

The diners lingered over the extra salsa, a beautiful blend of yellow and purple heirloom tomatoes from Heirloom Johnny Lao at the St. Paul Farmers’ Market.

“Why do you buy from him?” Mitch Diego complained to Eva in front of everyone. “He’s too expensive and he’s an asshole.”

“He’s always been nice to me,” Eva said.

 • • • 

It could’ve been the ninety-degree weather, and the surfeit of Elodie Pickett’s amazing wine pairings, and the fact that Sarah had to leave early to pick someone up at the airport, but the remaining three women and three men found their way into pairs and were dancing in the living room, touching each other’s sweaty bodies and then draped on them, sitting on each other’s laps during breaks.

Octavia recalled lying across Adam’s legs, her head arched over the armrest of the sofa, looking upside down at Elodie, Mitch, Robbe, and Eva dancing on the hardwood floor to “Kids,” by MGMT. The smile on Eva’s inverted face was so unrestrained and beautiful, Octavia actually felt herself feeling happy for the stupid girl. She still couldn’t watch Robbe kiss her, but she was starting to feel OK about how things had turned out, maybe.

Octavia was also surprised that she’d begun to find Adam attractive; he wasn’t her type at all—gangly, with a cheap haircut and stubble and a love of cheap short-sleeved plaid shirts—she’d hardly spoken to him at all for the first few months they’d shared these meals together in this house. He hadn’t even registered to her as a sexual being. Now, all of a sudden, she wanted to lead him behind the toolshed and let him take all of her clothes off, and she wasn’t even sure exactly why.

 • • • 

If the afterglow from outdoor sex hadn’t lingered for the next few days, it would’ve been another horrifying week in Octavia’s life. First of all, how was she supposed to know that the stupid dashboard alarm on her BMW was telling her that her coolant tank was empty? Now she needed to replace the radiator and a bunch of hoses, and she didn’t have that kind of money anymore.