The entire menu is just one printed page and as she scans it she realizes every offering is some variation on oysters. And she’s never heard of one. They feature names like Oysters Delluc Piquate and Oysters L’Herbier in the Half-shell, Cavalcanti’s Oyster Bisque and Feyder’s Saucy Oyster Canapés and Fried Oyster Epstein.
She looks up at the waiter and says, “Your specialty?”
He gives a little pleased-with-himself smile and says quietly, “Food of the gods.”
She smiles back. “And the goddesses, I hope.”
“Of course.”
“Why don’t you surprise me,” she says.
He takes the menu and moves off before she can broach the subject of Mr. Gaston. And then as she watches the waiter disappear into what she assumes is the kitchen, an awful thought occurs to her — what if there isn’t any Mr. Gaston? What if Mr. Quevedo was putting her on or just being cruel? She has no reason to think this is the case. But then she had no reason to think that Jack Derry’s Camera Exchange would vanish overnight. She had no reason to think that a walk to the edge of the Canal Zone would degenerate into a riot. And she had no reason whatsoever to think that she’d spend part of today watching hard-core porn on a thirty-foot screen.
The images come back now. The woman, Leni, on her back on that long wooden table. The young guy, wearing only a white apron around his waist and then not even that. The older Asian man, the dishwasher, approaching the two of them, bouncing from a badly feigned shock to full participation in about ten seconds. Bulkie rolls, sliced tomatoes, a jar of olives all falling to the floor as the three-some’s convulsions escalated. Leni, grabbing a handful of the dishwasher’s hair with one hand, a load of rye bread with the other. And her face as she looked into the camera, looked out of the screen and at Sylvia, closed, then opened, then closed those beautiful eyes and bit down on her bottom lip.
Sylvia takes along sip of her drink and it occurs to her how curious she is about Leni Pauline. Even in the dim light of the balcony, dressed in a bathrobe and her hair hanging, munching popcorn for God’s sake, the woman was gorgeous. And Sylvia realizes this contradicts everything she’s always assumed about porn stars. She doesn’t know where the assumption came from, but she’s always thought the women in those movies looked like retired strippers gone to seed. The image doesn’t even add up since she knows, has read, all about the teen runaways who end up before the camera, the sixteen-year-olds who use fake IDs to get the job.
Leni didn’t fall anywhere near either of those categories. She’s got to be twenty-five or so. And she’s got the look of some hip, urban model. Nothing retro or cheap. Sylvia thinks of her image there, in person, in the flesh, not the woman on the screen. She thinks of her in the balcony, without makeup or camera filters or kind angles. Leni looked like she could be the choice paralegal down at Walpole & Lewis. She looked like she could be the manager of some Newbury Street boutique in Boston, some place where Sylvia would have to get the nerve up just to go inside and browse. And Leni was quick with a line. The woman could more than hold her own against a personality like Hugo Schick’s.
Though Sylvia hates thinking in terms like this, she can’t get around the reality of the fact that from day one, a woman with a face and body and nerve like Leni Pauline starts off about five steps ahead of everyone else. So how did Leni end up on that screen? What series of events could have brought this woman in front of Schick’s camera? Sylvia has no idea why it intriques her so much, but she genuinely wants to know Leni’s story. And it annoys her that she probably never will.
She fingers the glass. She brings it up to her mouth and holds it there a second, taking in the smell. Then she takes another sip. It goes down warm and makes itself known all the way to the stomach. Then it settles in and radiates. It’s doing its job. She feels much better already.
The waiter returns, puts a steaming plate before her, and asks if she needs anything else. Sylvia tells him no, then grabs his arm before he can leave and asks, “Maybe a glass of wine? What would you recommend?”
He brings a hand over his jaw and stares at the plate. “For this particular delicacy?” he says. “I would probably suggest a Benoit-Levy Chardonnay.”
“Sounds perfect,” she says and he disappears again. She looks down at what he’s presented — a wheel of fat, beige spokes of oyster drizzled with a heavy-looking, rust-colored sauce.
She spears one of the oysters with the fork and puts it in her mouth. She tastes the garlic and the lemon and the Worcestershire, lets the oyster rest on her tongue and its juices run down and into the well of her mouth. It’s fantastic. She’s not even this big oyster fan, but this is tremendous, the kind of food that justifies words that normally seem pretentious or clichéd when you read them in magazines—succulent, savory, delectable. She can’t believe the Spy has never done a write-up on this place.
The waiter brings the wine in a flamboyant glass, shaped, of course, like a rose in full bloom. She takes a sip, lets it pool around her tongue for a while before swallowing. She’s immediately overwhelmed by taste, by shadings and gradations she didn’t think she had the capacity for, and she wants to laugh. She’s feeling giddy. She’s thinking, not really seriously, that the blow to the head has transformed her, thrown switches that have been shut down since childhood. It’s like some archtypal comic book story, the eternally boring and noble scientist caught in the lab explosion, knocked to the gleaming floor underneath the shards of her equipment, broken test tubes and splintered Pyrex beakers, green smoke rising up to the ceiling, the whole room bathed in an ultraviolet glow. And then she emerges from the rubble, larger than before, her muscles forcing the seams of her lab coat to burst, her eyes now bulging just a bit from the sockets. And a slightly mad smirk across her lips.
Sylvia closes her eyes and fixes her mouth around another oyster. She sucks on it, refuses to swallow right away, puts all her concentration into discovering flavor. And then she senses someone standing next to her and gets embarrassed, as if she’s been moaning over the food. She opens her eyes and swallows and says, “Absolutely wonderful.”
But it’s not the waiter. It’s the kid with the big ears who was reading the notebook when she came in. He just stands there, awkward and hesitant, smiling, nodding his head.
“Oh, God,” she says, “I thought you were the waiter,” then adds, “Is there something I can do for you?”
“I’m glad you like the food,” he says and she picks up an accent she can’t place. “Papa will be happy to hear.”
She’s annoyed. It’s not often you get the kind of enjoyment she was pulling out of this lunch and this kid has just stepped on it. It simply isn’t going to be her day. She stares at him and waits for his pitch.
“Marcel’s in the kitchen,” he says.
Sylvia looked at him like she doesn’t understand.
He flinches just a bit and says, “Marcel,” and jerks his thumb toward the kitchen door. “The waiter.”
“You must be a regular,” she says and then she could shoot herself for extending the conversation.
“It’s a quiet place to come,” he says. “A good place to work. Undisturbed.”
“That’s good to know,” she says, resigned to the interruption now. “I take it you’re a student?”
He shakes his head no, seemingly embarrassed, starts to fish around in every pocket of his suit. “I just wanted to give you … I seem to have left my cards … forgive me, I’m not very good at this. I’m a filmmaker.”