it.
Ripping open boxes and unwrapping the packages was therapy. I pulled at cardboard with my fingers, not caring if I broke nails or shredded skin. I picked out staples with my fingertips and tugged at tape that seemed cemented on. I went to work on box after box as if the thing I was searching for might actually be found there.
One box was full of velvet ribbons. About three dozen rolls in pastel colors that felt the way cotton candy tastes. Interrupting my search for the rice paper, I took each roll of ribbon out and put it on the unpacking table in the middle of the room. A tower of hues and tones. Baby blues the color of robins’ eggs, pinks the color of little girls’ ballerina skirts. Greens and yellows that looked like the fancy mints made with white chocolate that my mother bought every Easter and put in a bowl for guests after dinner.
The colors were like lullabyes, finishing off the job Grace had begun calming me.
I cut strips off of eight of them and laid them aside on the table as I continued to search through the boxes looking for the rice paper, which I finally found.
The paper and streamers of ribbon in hand, I went back to my office, more tranquil than I’d been after leaving Grace’s office. Much more so than after leaving Jeff’s.
I opened my door. The windowless room was waiting for me. Small. Cramped. Overflowing with half-finished projects and supplies. It didn’t matter. It was a space that was utterly without emotional connections to anyone or anything in my personal life, and I was free there to work without being bombarded by any of my ghosts. The dead ones, or the ones who were still living.
8.
At 4 p.m. , I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day except for Grace’s chocolate, so I grabbed some money from my bag and went across the street to Dean & Deluca to get some coffee and an apple.
The store is a food museum with every item displayed as if it were a treasure. The fruit and vegetables stand in towering, glittering piles, everything bigger and better and more intensely colored than what you see at an ordinary supermarket. Strawberries the size of your fist. Carrots, thick and robust with deep green leafy stems - beautiful enough to be a bouquet. Giant artichokes from Israel that seem sculpted from jade, Meyer lemons all year long. Raspberries and blueberries that beg to be eaten straight out of their wooden crates. Fresh herbs and more choices of lettuce than you could try in a week, all sparkling with diamond droplets of water from the tiny automatic sprinklers that spray the produce every few hours.
Cases show off an extravagant array of cheeses, chocolates, and pastas as if they were expensive jewelry. The bakery offers more than fifty types of scones, muffins, croissants, and breads, and standing in front of its counters, the scent is so overwhelming you have to hold yourself back from reaching out and breaking off a heel of a three-foot baguette or ripping into a sourdough loaf.
There is something to lure even the most worn out foodie, from the glistening caviar and sushi to the opulence of thirty different kinds of honey, three dozen different salts, four dozen jams and jellies, and almost a hundred varieties of olive oil and vinegar.
Usually I wandered up and down the aisles, allowing myself to give in to the temptation of one treat: a portion of lobster saffron ravioli for dinner, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil infused with garlic along with one perfect head of butter lettuce, or a small sack of fleur de sel tied with a black ribbon.
But not that afternoon.
I grabbed one green apple and went straight to the counter at the front and got on line for coffee.
“Next!” the barrista called and I stepped up to the register. Ignoring pastry, panini, soups, slabs of carrot and zucchini cake, wedges of pie and cheesecake, I ordered black coffee. Plain. I wasn’t in the mood for a creamy cappuccino or a sweet mocha. All I wanted was a cup of coffee, hot and
Ripping open boxes and unwrapping the packages was therapy. I pulled at cardboard with my fingers, not caring if I broke nails or shredded skin. I picked out staples with my fingertips and tugged at tape that seemed cemented on. I went to work on box after box as if the thing I was searching for might actually be found there.
One box was full of velvet ribbons. About three dozen rolls in pastel colors that felt the way cotton candy tastes. Interrupting my search for the rice paper, I took each roll of ribbon out and put it on the unpacking table in the middle of the room. A tower of hues and tones. Baby blues the color of robins’ eggs, pinks the color of little girls’ ballerina skirts. Greens and yellows that looked like the fancy mints made with white chocolate that my mother bought every Easter and put in a bowl for guests after dinner.
The colors were like lullabyes, finishing off the job Grace had begun calming me.
I cut strips off of eight of them and laid them aside on the table as I continued to search through the boxes looking for the rice paper, which I finally found.
The paper and streamers of ribbon in hand, I went back to my office, more tranquil than I’d been after leaving Grace’s office. Much more so than after leaving Jeff’s.
I opened my door. The windowless room was waiting for me. Small. Cramped. Overflowing with half-finished projects and supplies. It didn’t matter. It was a space that was utterly without emotional connections to anyone or anything in my personal life, and I was free there to work without being bombarded by any of my ghosts. The dead ones, or the ones who were still living.
8.
At 4 p.m. , I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day except for Grace’s chocolate, so I grabbed some money from my bag and went across the street to Dean & Deluca to get some coffee and an apple.
The store is a food museum with every item displayed as if it were a treasure. The fruit and vegetables stand in towering, glittering piles, everything bigger and better and more intensely colored than what you see at an ordinary supermarket. Strawberries the size of your fist. Carrots, thick and robust with deep green leafy stems - beautiful enough to be a bouquet. Giant artichokes from Israel that seem sculpted from jade, Meyer lemons all year long. Raspberries and blueberries that beg to be eaten straight out of their wooden crates. Fresh herbs and more choices of lettuce than you could try in a week, all sparkling with diamond droplets of water from the tiny automatic sprinklers that spray the produce every few hours.
Cases show off an extravagant array of cheeses, chocolates, and pastas as if they were expensive jewelry. The bakery offers more than fifty types of scones, muffins, croissants, and breads, and standing in front of its counters, the scent is so overwhelming you have to hold yourself back from reaching out and breaking off a heel of a three-foot baguette or ripping into a sourdough loaf.
There is something to lure even the most worn out foodie, from the glistening caviar and sushi to the opulence of thirty different kinds of honey, three dozen different salts, four dozen jams and jellies, and almost a hundred varieties of olive oil and vinegar.
Usually I wandered up and down the aisles, allowing myself to give in to the temptation of one treat: a portion of lobster saffron ravioli for dinner, a bottle of extra virgin olive oil infused with garlic along with one perfect head of butter lettuce, or a small sack of fleur de sel tied with a black ribbon.
But not that afternoon.
I grabbed one green apple and went straight to the counter at the front and got on line for coffee.
“Next!” the barrista called and I stepped up to the register. Ignoring pastry, panini, soups, slabs of carrot and zucchini cake, wedges of pie and cheesecake, I ordered black coffee. Plain. I wasn’t in the mood for a creamy cappuccino or a sweet mocha. All I wanted was a cup of coffee, hot and
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