He studded the joint with rosemary sprigs and rubbed it in lemon juice (in Iceland they glazed it with coffee, something he’d always meant to try), and started to prepare a fricassee of oyster mushrooms for the appetizer. The previous day he’d given a ride to a hitchhiker, a barefoot young guy who reeked of pot and was trying to sell wild mushrooms to the local stores. Matthew had asked what he had, and he’d opened the sack he was carrying, filling the truck cabin with the loamy pungency of what he assured Matthew were chanterelles, something he called “chicken of the woods,” and oyster mushrooms. The latter had looked safely unambiguous and Matthew had bought the lot.
He got a vegetable bouillon going and went down to the cellar: the recipe called for some muscadet. Being in the basement, which was very much Charlie’s domain, got him thinking of their discussion earlier, or rather of his failure, once again, to open the real subject he’d wanted to discuss. He wondered if he’d just been plain wrong about Charlie seeming uneasy when Chloe left. Either way, it was pretty obvious he wasn’t ready to hear that his wife was cheating on him, and as Matthew found what he was looking for-a 2008 Domaine de l’Ecu-and carried it back upstairs, he found himself reversing his earlier resolution to take a more direct approach, deciding once and for all (or so he hoped; he knew from past experience that these mental circlings of his had a way of defying all efforts to stop them once they started) to ignore things and just enjoy the summer.
None of my business, he told himself as he diced the shallots and began wiping clean the shelved clumps of oyster mushrooms. None of my business, as he debated whether to run out in the truck again on what would almost certainly be a fool’s errand to track down some real cane sugar in the “ethnic” aisle at the grocery store or stay put and hope the so-called brown sugar in Charlie’s pantry, which would almost certainly be white sugar sprayed with molasses, would make a not-too-calamitous substitute for cassonade.
He was aware that he could get a little obsessive at times about the finer points of his recipes. It was his own kind of Zen practice, in a sense. What all the niceties of bamboo breathing, positive versus absolute samadhi and so on were for Charlie, balanced flavors and correct technique were for him. The patient pursuit of culinary perfection was his way of escaping his own “wandering thoughts” and achieving the no-mind state of mushin. At any rate, the little mantra, None of my business, seemed to be working, and as he assembled the fricassee he felt a welcome blankness descend.
But it didn’t last long. Without warning his calm was shattered by one of those waves of apprehension that render entirely futile any notion one might have of being able to master one’s own mind. With it came an image of Chloe and her lover fucking in the A-frame, and the realization that however much he might wish to ignore what she was doing, it was going to be impossible.
Yes, it was none of his business, it was Charlie and Chloe’s business alone. And yet it was his own sense of reality that was being threatened. The geometry of his relationship with Charlie and Chloe might shift as one of them drew closer or further away, but it was permanently and excusively triangular. Inconceivable, somehow, had been the possibility of a fourth figure breaking open this shape altogether, and the intrusion of such a figure was proving remarkably difficult to accept. It was like having to believe, suddenly, in a fourth prime color, or a second moon.
Charlie returned from his wine tasting a little before eight. He came into the kitchen carrying a mixed case of burgundies and looking much happier than he had before.
“Let’s open one of these babies, shall we? What’s for dinner?”
“Gigot d’agneau.”
“Aha!”
Charlie selected a bottle from the box and uncorked it.
“I love your gigot d’agneau.”
“Thanks.”
“Here.” Charlie poured him a glass. “Cheers.”
“First time I had it,” Matthew said, “was with my dad, on our trip across Europe. It made an indelible impression on me.”
“Oh?” Charlie composed his features into a look of polite interest. It always seemed to make him nervous to hear Matthew talking about his father. Usually Matthew avoided the subject, but occasionally he felt a perverse desire to bring it up, unfurl it like an old rug and waft its mildewy odors in Charlie’s direction. He wasn’t sure why. Certainly he didn’t regard Charlie as implicated in any way in his father’s misfortunes. Not even Charlie’s father, Uncle Graham, could really be held responsible for them. True, in his informal capacity as the family’s financial advisor he had talked Matthew’s father into taking advantage of the new terms by which Lloyd’s was making it possible for middle-class investors to join its hitherto exclusively super-rich club of “names.” But there was never any suggestion that he had any inkling of the Armageddon of claims about to descend on the company, or that he stood to profit by recruiting his brother-in-law. And even if privately, irrationally, Matthew’s father did accuse his brother-in-law of all kinds of heinous treacheries and deceptions, obviously Charlie himself, a boy at the time like Matthew, had nothing to do with it.
Still, as Matthew knew from his own experience, a father’s deeds have a way of lingering in the psychic atmosphere of their offspring. Which was perhaps why Charlie was looking so uncomfortable right now. The contented air he’d come home with had left him. He gave the impression that he would have liked to remove himself from Matthew’s presence, and yet he seemed at the same time transfixed, his wine glass stalling in the air as he waited, head bowed, to hear what else Matthew might be about to bring up from the past.
But in fact Matthew had had no clear motive in bringing up his father in the first place, and, seeing Charlie’s discomfort, was as eager to move away from the subject as Charlie was.
“Anyway, it should be ready in about twenty minutes,” he said.
Charlie’s tension seemed to lessen.
“Sounds good.”
“I assume Chloe’ll be back by then…?”
“I would think. Magic hour’s pretty much over.” Charlie checked his watch and looked out at the sky, from which the pink evening light had almost drained.
“I think I’ll sit outside for a bit,” he said.
He crossed the terrace and turned toward his meditation garden. Passing between tall viburnum bushes, he checked his watch again, and disappeared from view.
He was very attached to that watch, a Patek Philippe Calatrava that had belonged to his father. It had a loud tick and Matthew had often wondered how Charlie could get into any serious samadhi state with that racket going on.
Chloe came home as Matthew was putting the finishing touches to the dinner. She seemed at once fragile and elated: full of smiles and clearly wanting to share her joy, though just as clearly at a loss how to do so without giving herself away. Her solution seemed to be an exaggerated all-round friendliness. She watched Matthew with a fond smile as he finished the fricassee.