"I hope you like Asian fusion with a touch of Caribbean influence," Matt chuckled, amused at his own words. "This place was highly recommended."
Now "highly recommended" was not a criterion for Armanoush, mainly because she was always wary of "highly recommended" best sellers. Still, she didn't object, hoping that her cynicism would stand corrected at the end of the night.
That, however, turned out to be far from the case. A popular meeting place for urban intellectuals and artists, Skewed Window was anything but a cute, romantic restaurant. It was a funky warehouse with lofty ceilings, art deco pendant lights, and walls on which glimmered examples of contemporary abstract art. Dressed headto-toe in black, the waiters scurried around like a colony of ants who had just discovered a pile of granulated sugar. The colony of waiters served artfully crafted dishes with the knowledge that soon you'd be replaced by a new customer, probably someone who would tip better. As for the menu, it was simply incomprehensible. As if the contents weren't perplexing enough, each dish was shaped, trimmed, and garnished so as to allude to a particular abstract expressionist painting.
The Dutch chef of the restaurant had three aspirations in life: to become a philosopher, to become a painter, and to become a restaurant chef. Having badly failed in both philosophy and art during his youth, he saw no reason not to bring his unappreciated talents into his cuisine. Thus, he prided himself on rematerializing the abstract, and reinserting into the human body the work of art that had come out through an artist's desire to externalize his inner emotional state. Here at the Skewed Window, dining was less culinary than philosophical, and the act of eating was deemed to be guided not by the primordial urge to fill your stomach or suppress your hunger but by a sublime dance with catharsis.
After numerous aborted attempts to choose what they were going to eat, Armanoush decided to go for the sesame-crusted ahi tuna tartare with foie gras yakiniku, and Matt decided to try a prime rib-eye with hot mustard cream sauce on a bed of passion fruit vinaigrette and jicama. Not knowing which wine would match with these dishes but in need of making a good impression, Matt inspected the wine list and after five minutes of bewilderment, he did what he always did when he had absolutely no idea about what to pick: Decide on a wine by looking at its price. A 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon looked perfect, expensive enough but also within his means. Thus having given their order, they tried to read how good their choices were on the face of the waiter who served them, but all they could find there was a blank page of professional politeness.
They talked a little, he about the career he wanted to build, she about the childhood she would like to destroy; he about his future plans, she about the traces of the past; he about his expectations in life, she about family recollections. The Sugar Plum Fairy started to dance just when they were about to embark on another conversational topic. Armanoush fretfully checked the number. It wasn't a familiar number, but it wasn't private either. She answered.
"Amy, where are you?"
Dumbfounded, Armanoush stuttered, "Ma-ma! How did you… how come your number is different now?"
"Oh, it's because I'm calling you on Mrs. Grinnell's cell phone," Rose conceded. "I wouldn't have to go to this much trouble if you cared to answer my calls, of course."
Armanoush blinked blankly as she watched the waiter place a peculiar-looking plate of food in front of her, composed of hues of red, beige, and white. Amid a sauce that resembled smudged brush strokes rested three spherical chunks of red, raw tuna and a bright yellow egg yolk, altogether forming a sorry face with hollow eyes. Still holding the cell phone to her ear but not listening to her mother anymore, Armanoush puckered her lips, as she tried to figure out how to eat a face.
"Amy, why aren't you responding to me? Am I not your mother? Don't you allow me at least half the rights you grant the Tchakhmakhchians?"
"Mom, please," Armanoush said, because this seemed like a question that could only be answered by begging her not to ask it. She hunched her shoulders as if the weight of her body had doubled. Why was it so hard to communicate with her mother?
With a quick excuse and a promise to call her back as soon as she got home, Armanoush hung up and turned off the cell phone. She sneaked a look at Matt to see if he minded the phone call, but upon noticing he was still inspecting his plate, she decided not to worry. Matt's plate was rectangular, not round, and the food on it was divided into two zones separated by a perfectly straight line of mustard cream sauce. It was less the design or the colors that had struck him than the flawlessness of the arrangement. He swallowed hard as if afraid of spoiling the seamless rectangularity.
Their dishes were replicas of two expressionist paintings. Armanoush's plate was based on a painting by Francesco Boretti titled The Blind Whore. As for Matt's plate, it was inspired by one of Mark Rothko's paintings and was aptly titled Untitled. So absorbed were the two in their plates that neither of them heard the waiter when he asked them if everything was all right.
The rest of the evening was nice but only as far as the word nice can go. The food turned out to be delicious and they quickly got used to wolfing down works of art, so much so that when their desserts arrived, Matt had no trouble in messing up the impeccably lined blueberries in April Blues Bring May Yellows by Peter Kitchell, and Armanoush did not even hesitate to jab her spoon into the shaky velvety custard representing Jackson Pollock's Shimmering Substance. But when it came to conversing they couldn't make half the progress they achieved in eating. Not that Armanoush did not enjoy being with Matt or did not find him attractive. But something was terribly missing, not in the sense of a detail missing from the whole, but in the sense of the whole dissolving into pieces without that missing part. Perhaps it was too much philosophical food. At any rate, Armanoush had understood her limits; she could not possibly fall in love with Matt Hassinger. After making this discovery, she stopped questioning herself, and her interest in him was replaced by sheer sympathy.
On the way back home they stopped the car and walked a little bit along Columbus Avenue, both pensive and silent. The breeze shifted then, and for a fleeting moment Armanoush caught the sharp, salty whiff of the sea, longing to be by the seaside now, aching to run away from this very moment. Once in front of the City Lights bookstore, however, she couldn't help perking up with interest as she spotted one of her favorite books behind the window: A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.
"Oh, have you read that book? It's awesome!" she blurted out, and upon hearing a definite "no," she started describing the:;first story of the book, and then all seven of them. Since she sincerely believed the book could not be fully grasped without mapping the bumpy terrain of Eastern European literature first, during the ensuing ten minutes that was more or less what Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian did, thus breaking the promise she had made to her mother that very morning about not uttering a word about books, at least for just the first date.
Once back in Russian Hill, in front of Grandma Shushan's condo, they stood face to face, aware that the night was over and eager to make the ending better than the preceding evening in the only way they could think of. It was meant to be a real kiss, longawaited and fantasized. Instead it turned out to be a gentle kiss, sealed with compassion on the part of Armanoush and admiration on the part of Matt, as both were miles away from feeling any passion.
"You know I meant to tell you this all night long," Matt stammered, as if saddled with the uncomfortable truth he was about to confess. "You have this incredible smell…. It's unusual and exotic…. Just like-" "Like what?" Armanoush's face went pale, as the sight of a plate of steaming manta popped into her mind.