A Second Bite at the Apple (18 page)

The date is a disaster before it even begins. The moment I open my front door, I know the hour I spent grooming myself—beating my hair into submission with a blow-dryer and brush, carefully covering the zits on my chin, and choosing the right outfit—was entirely a waste of my time. The temperature has bounced around all week, throwing the mercury up and down the Fahrenheit scale as spring sputters to a start, and today the air is a tepid fifty-six degrees and heavy with the smell of grass and rain. The sky is one thick sheet of gray stratus clouds, which hover ominously and threaten to blanket the city with rain, and the humidity is approximately 5,000 percent.

This wouldn't be a problem if my hair weren't a sponge, sucking every last droplet of moisture out of the air and swelling like a Chia Pet. But my hair is a sponge, and I do look like a Chia Pet, and I wish I hadn't tried so hard. The fact that I did try hard is, in and of itself, an issue, but it is one I choose not to address because it brings up a host of other issues I'd rather not deal with.

I hop down my front steps, and as I walk along the path toward Swann Street, I spot my crazy downstairs neighbor Simon staring at the front of our house from the sidewalk. He stands with his arms crossed over his chest, transfixed by something I cannot identify. For all I know, he is staring at his doorbell, which still bears the duct tape covering he put in place back in February. It looks trashy and terrible, but I decide it's not my problem. If neither Simon nor our landlord Al can bring himself to fix the stupid bell, then I can live with the hideous block of silver tape. Knowing Al, the doorbell will look that way for months.

If I had any sense, I would ignore Simon and hurry to the L2 bus stop, but, as I have established on many occasions, I do not have any sense, so I sidle up beside him and join him in staring at our building.

“What are we looking at?” I ask.

Simon shoots me a sideways glance. “Why do you care?”

“Because I live here too?” He doesn't respond. “Is something wrong? Is one of the windows leaking?”

“Why would one of the windows be leaking?”

Sweet Lord. “I don't know. You tell me. You're the one standing out here staring at the house.”

He narrows his pink-rimmed eyes. “Your hair is very large,” he says. Then he stuffs his hands into his black leather jacket and scurries toward our door.

If this is an omen for the rest of the evening, I might as well give up now.

 

Thanks to my run-in with Simon, I am ten minutes late in getting to Jeremy's place, which adds to my state of disarray. At this point, my hair has swollen with so much moisture that I could hide a squirrel in there and no one would know.

Jeremy lives in Washington's West End, a small neighborhood just east of Georgetown. For the most part, the area is home to upscale condos, hotels, and restaurants, with the odd embassy thrown in. Unlike the buildings bordering the West End, which bleed history and age from every crack, the construction in Jeremy's neighborhood is mostly new, with smooth concrete fasciae and swathes of glass. The neighborhood is only a mile and a half southwest of my apartment and yet, with its wide streets, level sidewalks, and multistory buildings, feels like part of a different city.

I hurry through Jeremy's lobby and ride the elevator to the seventh floor. As soon as I step out, I hear the pulsating rhythm of Dave Brubeck's “Take Five” filling the hallway, emanating from Jeremy's apartment at the end. His door is ajar, and when I knock, it opens further.

“Hello?”

I poke my head inside and hear loud clanking sounds coming from the kitchen. I slip into his entryway, close the door behind me, and creep toward the kitchen, where I find him standing in front of his sink dressed in a sleeveless
Star Wars
T-shirt and mesh Adidas shorts.

“Jeremy?”

He whips his head around. “There she is! I was beginning to think you'd had second thoughts.”

My eyes land on his sleeveless shirt, which features an enormous photographic rendering of Harrison Ford as Han Solo, surrounded by a rainbow.

“I am now . . .”

He glances down at his shirt. “You're not a
Star Wars
fan?”

“I have no problem with
Star Wars,
” I say. That is true. What I have a problem with is the lack of sleeves on his shirt and the nonexistent barrier between me and his armpit hair.

“Good,” he says. “Because like I said before: George Lucas was a visionary.” He studies my taupe cardigan and dark jeans. “Your outfit is going to be a problem.”

“
My
outfit is a problem?
Mine?
”

“It's my fault,” he says. “I forgot to tell you. Making beer . . . My apartment gets a little warm.”

“I'm sure I'll be fine.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don't know. . . . There's a lot of steam. . . .”

“If this is your plan to get me to take off my clothes, allow me to disabuse you of that notion right now.”

“Why do you always assume I have some sinister plan? I'm not that crafty. Trust me.”

“You say this, and yet history suggests otherwise.”

He flushes and rumples his brow. “How do you mean?”

“Never mind,” I say. Now isn't the time to discuss his past. “So where do we begin?”

Jeremy clears a spot on one of the barstools for me to lay my purse and finishes arranging all of his brewing equipment on the counter. Once everything is in the proper place, he rubs his hands together.

“So, I figured for your introduction to homebrewing, I'd start with something interesting but basic. I remember you ordered a porter on our first date, so I thought we could start there.”

“You remember what beer I ordered?”

His cheeks redden, and he scratches at his temple. “I'm not a stalker or anything. I just . . . I like you. I pay attention to the things you seem to enjoy.”

I think back to the cannoli and hoagies he made for our picnic and the obvious thought he has put into all of our activities. “Thanks. That's very thoughtful.” My eyes drift to his sleeveless shirt. “Now might be a good time to mention I prefer men's shirts to have sleeves.”

He groans. “It's not like I wear this to work.”

“But you would if you could. Am I right?”

“No.” He glances down at the image of Han Solo. “Maybe. I don't know. The point is, this is my brewing shirt. It's part of the magic. You'll see.”

He pulls out a large mesh bag and begins filling it with three different types of grains that he weighs on a digital scale. He twirls the bag around to seal the top and tosses it into a large metal pot, which he has filled with several gallons of water, and begins heating everything up on the stove. It is clear from his quick, precise movements that he has done this many times, to the point where each step is almost instinctual, requiring little thought or explanation.

The boiling grain fills the kitchen with a sweet, toasty aroma, and once the pot reaches 170 degrees, I help Jeremy remove the soggy bag of grain. He cranks up the heat and instructs me to pour in the malt extract, holding his hand over mine to steady my grip as I tip the pitcher over the pot. His hands are warm and sticky from all of the heat in the kitchen, and as the steam rises toward the ceiling, beads of sweat develop along my hairline, helped along by my increasing anxiety over the proximity of Jeremy's body—and, by default, his armpit hair. As I put the pitcher back on the counter, I feel his other hand graze my hip.

“What's next?” I ask, unsure whether to lean into his touch or pull away.

Jeremy steps back and nods toward the big metal pot. “We add some hops when that comes to a full boil, and then we let it boil for an hour.”

“An hour?”

He nods. “An hour. And while that's going on, you're going to help me make dinner.”

My stomach churns as memories of Zach and me cooking together come rushing back. I've barely cooked anything in the nearly five years since we broke up, and I certainly haven't cooked with another potential suitor.

“Now I have to cook my own dinner?” I say, trying to sound relaxed even though I hate this idea. I don't think I'm ready for this. Sleeping together, fine. But cooking together? That's different. That's intimate. That means something. To me, at least.

“I already did the heavy lifting,” he says. “You just have to help me put it all together.”

He reaches into his refrigerator and pulls out a bright red, lidded pot, which he puts on the burner diagonal from the simmering beer. He peers beneath the lid, takes a whiff, and then replaces the lid and cranks the heat to medium.

“Are you sure?” I say. “I don't want to ruin whatever you have planned.”

“That would be impossible. I've already braised the pork and pickled the peppers. I'll fry the eggs, so all you need to do is cook the rice. Unless you don't know how to cook rice.”

I purse my lips, suddenly defensive. “I know how to cook rice.”

“Then we'll be fine.”

But given the uneasy feeling in my stomach, I'm not sure we will.

 

One thing is definitely not fine, and that thing is my outfit.

Between the gallons of rapidly boiling beer and the bubbling pork—not to mention the simmering rice—Jeremy's apartment is a whopping eighty-six degrees, and I am basically wearing a sweater. I never thought I'd envy a sleeveless shirt with a photo of Harrison Ford circa 1977, but right now I would murder for that sartorial eyesore.

By the time we add the second bag of hops to the beer boil, I am having trouble breathing. The cream camisole beneath my cardigan is sheer and skimpy, but I have reached a point where self-consciousness is trumped by potentially life-threatening discomfort. This cardigan cannot remain on my body for another second.

Jeremy's eyes flit in my direction as I throw my cardigan over the back of one of his barstools. “Don't get any ideas,” I say. “I just need to cool down.”

He holds his hands up defensively. “I didn't say anything.”

“I know what you're thinking.”

“I'm thinking you should borrow a pair of shorts. That's what I'm thinking.”

I lift the lid off the rice and fluff it with a fork. “I'm guessing we don't wear the same size.”

“You could borrow a pair of boxers. Roll them up around the waist?”

I put the lid back on the rice and place the pan on the counter. “You want me to wear your underwear?”

“Why do you have to make it sound so gross? They're boxers—clean, unworn boxers. I have a new pack I haven't even worn yet.”

I place my hands on my hips and tap my toe on the floor. As much as I want to say no, as much as I do
not
want to get any more undressed than I already am, I must admit that boxers—airy, cottony boxers—sound glorious right about now.

“Fine,” I say. “Where are they?”

Jeremy leads me back into his bedroom, where the white duvet is pulled up over the bed, each pillow properly arranged against the dark walnut headboard. The top of his dresser is bare, apart from a small black leather valet case containing a watch, some loose change, and a set of keys. There are no clothes on the floor, no stacks of old bills or piles of old batteries, no expired credit cards or licenses. Drew could learn a thing or two from this guy.

“Try a pair of these and see if they work,” he says, handing me a three-pack of cotton boxers.

“Thanks.”

He glances over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “I'm going to head back out there and finish cooking dinner. By the time you come out, everything should be ready.”

He heads for the door, but I stop him before he crosses the threshold. “Hey, Jeremy?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“For the boxers?”

“For everything.” I fidget with the packet in my hands. “I haven't cooked like this in a long time. The beer, the dinner. It's just—it's nice.”

His cheeks flush, and his smile seems to take up the whole room, and I can't help but believe this is the real Jeremy Brauer—this man right here, who made me dinner and taught me to make beer and is letting me borrow a pair of his boxers. The man I read about on Wikipedia, well, I don't know who he is, but he isn't the Jeremy I know.

“You're welcome,” he says. “It's my pleasure. Truly.”

He smiles again, his hand resting delicately on the door handle, and then he turns around, closes the door behind him, and heads back into the kitchen.

I am wearing boxers. Not just any boxers: Jeremy's boxers. Jeremy's red boxers with bright yellow chickens, which are now rolled up around my waist, beneath my skimpy camisole. I'm not sure how I could look any worse or if that's even possible. Maybe if I'd chosen the turtles? No. The chickens are worse. Probably the worst of the three. But I'm not changing now. I don't want to seem like I'm trying too hard, as if that's even an option when I am wearing a grown man's underwear.

I take a deep breath before opening the bedroom door and heading back into the living room, where the ambiance has undergone a noticeable transformation. The room is still a sweltering eighty-some degrees, but Jeremy has dimmed the lights and lit a few candles on the small, square table behind the breakfast bar. The table is set for two, with two tulip-shaped glasses filled with mahogany-colored beer, each topped with a thick crown of white foam. The apartment smells of sesame, eggs, and yeasty beer all at once.

Jeremy puts the finishing touches on our dinner, taking care to keep everything as far away from the brewing beer as possible. He moves quickly, sliding a fried egg on top of each dish and scattering some sort of garnish over the top. Then he carries the bowls, one in each hand, to the table.

“Bon appétit,”
he says as he places a bowl in front of me.

Steam rises from the surface, smelling of soy and ginger and hot peppers. A fried egg sits atop the slices of braised pork, the golden yolk loose and glistening in the light of the candles. A thick layer of white rice covers the bottom of the bowl, sopping up the rich, porky juices.

“So what exactly is this? Bibimbap?”

“Similar. It's a riff on a Japanese dish—donburi. Meat and an egg with rice.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“I thought it would go well with the beer. Speaking of which, tell me what you think of the red ale.”

I take a whiff before swallowing a large gulp. The beer smacks of sourness but with a fruity kick, reminiscent of raisins or plums. “It's good,” I say. “Fruity.”

“I added some prunes during the fermentation. It just about works.”

I rest my beer on the table and tuck into my meal, poking the egg so that the gooey yolk bursts and trickles down into the rice. “When did you get into homebrewing?”

“A few years back. I was always into beer and science—I almost majored in chemistry in college—and I'd always wanted to try my hand at homebrewing. And then a few years ago I had a lot of time on my hands due to some . . . career changes, so I decided to join a local brew club and give it a whirl.”

I push the rice around my bowl with the tines of my fork. “Can we talk about that now? Those ‘career changes'?”

He takes a long sip of beer and then places the glass back on the table and sighs. “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Well . . . what happened, exactly?”

“You've read the articles, right? You've seen Wikipedia? That's pretty much it. A PR company paid me for columns I wrote, and the
Chronicle
found out and fired me.”

“Yeah, but . . . what
really
happened?”

“That is what really happened.”

“But why did you do it?”

He swirls his tulip glass around by the base. “I was broke, and almost all of my
Chronicle
salary was going toward my student loans. It seemed like a good way to make a few extra bucks.”

“But you were basically selling your opinion.”

“I never wrote anything I didn't actually believe. All of those reviews, whether they were of a product or a place, were my honest opinions.”

“It isn't honest if you're effectively being paid by the subject of your review—and if you didn't tell your employer about it. You had to know the
Chronicle
wouldn't be okay with that.”

He picks at his pork. “I should have. But I was twenty-five and needed the cash, and at the time it didn't seem like the end of the world. I wasn't hurting anyone. I wasn't writing lies.”

I rub my fingers around the edge of my glass and look into his eyes. “Did you know, at least on some level, that what you were doing was wrong?”

He tears his eyes away and shovels a forkful of pork and rice into his mouth. “Yeah, but it's . . . At first, it was just one piece. A little story on Pizz-o-rama's national rollout of their new gluten-free pizza crust. My mom has celiac, so I'm always looking for new products for her, and the crust was really good. I figured, what the hell? What was the big deal in getting paid extra for something I'd write anyway? But once I wrote that one piece, my PR contact kept sending me new pitches, and with all the bills and debt I had piling up, it got really hard to say no. It's not that I thought what I was doing was right, but at the time I didn't necessarily think it was wrong either.”

“And what do you think now?”

He drops his fork on the table. “That I made a mistake, okay? A bunch of mistakes. And it used to be that if you made a mistake, you'd have a second chance. You could wipe the slate clean. Some people would forgive you, others would forget, and you could move on. But that isn't true anymore. The Internet isn't written in pencil. It's written in ink, and now no matter what I do, no matter what I achieve, I will always be the sleazebag who got fired from the
Chronicle
. Forever.”

I glance down at my bowl. “I'm sorry.”

“Me too. I've done a lot of good work since I left the
Chronicle
. I did a lot of good work
at
the
Chronicle.
But it's like my whole identity is caught in an Internet trap—a time capsule of a fraction of the work I've done my entire life.”

I think about what an Internet snapshot of my life would look like. In first grade, I would have been the space-crazed introvert. In high school, the food columnist glued to her boyfriend's side. In college, the driven broadcaster. And a snapshot taken today would be different than any of those three. But does that make any of those prior snapshots less true? Aren't all of those moments a part of who I am today?

Jeremy shovels another forkful of pork, egg, and rice into his mouth and washes it down with a long sip of beer. His movements are sharper now, brimming with frustration. It isn't clear whether he is annoyed with me for bringing this up or with himself for what he did, or a combination of both. But whatever the reason, he is irritated, and to my surprise, I feel worse about having possibly contributed to his mood than I do about being on a date with food journalism's persona non grata.

I glance down at my watch. “About two hours into date number three, and I've already ruined it, huh?”

He smirks. “I wouldn't say that. . . .”

“I just . . . I had to ask about it. I didn't mean to upset you.”

“It's okay. The subject was bound to come up eventually. Better to get it out of the way now.”

He polishes off the rest of his beer, and, in the silence that follows, I load my fork with a heap of pork, peppers, and rice. “So what's it like now, working on the other side?”

He shrugs. “Took a while for me to get used to pitching ideas rather than being pitched, but I caught on pretty fast. Frankly, I was happy anyone would hire me after what happened.”

“Do you like working in PR?”

“Most days. But lately . . .” He trails off.

“Lately what?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, it's nothing.”

“No, what? You can tell me.”

“One of my projects is sort of stressing me out, that's all.”

“The Green Grocers deal?”

He fixes his eyes on mine. “Yeah, how did you know?”

“You mentioned on the phone that you'd been working on the farmers' market partnership.”

He lets out his breath. “Oh, right. I forgot.”

“What's going on? Is the deal not going through?”

“Oh, no, it isn't that. It's . . .” He bites his lip. “Never mind. I shouldn't talk about it.”

“Listen, if something is bothering you, you can tell me.”

He rubs his temples and leans back in his chair. “Okay, but this is just between you and me, got it?”

“Sure.”

He leans forward again and rests his elbows on the table. “So I'm working on the rollout of this pilot project, which is going to be a pretty big deal, and we're helping the company plan a big launch campaign. Since I'm the company's point person, Green Grocers sent me a bunch of documents to help with the launch, but someone obviously didn't scrub the correspondence too closely because I've definitely seen something I shouldn't have.”

I lean forward, suddenly alert. “Something . . . like what?”

He rubs his eyes with his palms. “Apparently before Bob Young became CEO, when he was the chief operating officer, he found out one of the suppliers for Green Grocers' private label was using horse meat instead of beef in their frozen meals. But instead of going public, he just sort of . . . swept it under the rug.”

“Wait. Green Grocers' ‘organic beef bourguignon' is actually ‘horse bourguignon'?”

“Not anymore. At least I don't think so. But it was for a period of time.”

“How is that even possible? I thought horses weren't slaughtered in the US.”

“They aren't. But they are in China and Mexico, and that's where these frozen meals were made.”

“But . . . Green Grocers is all about ‘local.' That doesn't sound very local.”

“Another reason this is really bad.” He grabs his beer and takes another sip. “I went to my boss to ask how I should handle this, but he basically told me to keep my mouth shut because it isn't my business. Our job is to focus on the launch of this new initiative, and we shouldn't do anything that would scupper or detract from the launch.” He sips his beer. “The whole thing is really stressing me out. If I say anything, I could lose my job, but keeping this a secret—it just seems wrong.”

My ears are burning. “So . . . what are you going to do?”

“I don't know. Probably nothing. I'd love to say something, but I don't think anyone will ever hire me again if I get fired from another job.”

“But this time it would be for a good cause.”

“I guess.” He lets out a long sigh. “Anyway, I don't really want to talk about it anymore, if that's okay. I shouldn't have told you in the first place.”

“Sure. I understand.”

And I do understand. But as we finish our meal and make our beer and start kissing each other passionately, there is only one thing on my mind:

I just landed the scoop of a lifetime.