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Authors: Charlotte Silver
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those poor, desperate younger women prancing around Orpheus’s apartment earlier that evening. Bennington girls! thought Lee to herself, digging into her empanada. She herself had graduated many years ago now from Sarah Lawrence, so she knew what she was talking about. They were so incredibly young and really fucking annoying.
PART II
Clementine’s Picnic
CHAPTER 12
P rofessor Sobel asked to see the wine list. It was April in New York and he and Cassandra were having lunch together at a French restaurant.
“Champagne, it seems to me,” said Professor Sobel, scanning the menu. Cassandra had no opportunity to scan it herself. This was not so casual or collaborative a lunch as that. Professor Sobel was paying, and as such, in charge, which was the way both of them liked it.
The French restaurant was one of those that have a storied past but are seldom spoken of in these days of competitive dining and celebrity chefs. It was even in midtown, on a rather dowdy stretch in the East Fifties, a neighborhood in which Sylvie, for one, would not be caught dead. But Cassandra would be, and Professor Sobel knew this, just as he knew that she would think that an invitation to an illicit lunch was much more chic than dinner.
He ordered two glasses of champagne. After the waiter left, he dropped his voice to a whisper and said to Cassandra: “Ordering wine always reminds me of a favorite joke of mine. Oh, you might remember from my classes what a weakness I have for telling the occasional bad joke. So. A man walks into a bar. One woman says to another: ‘Hey! Check out the size of the wallet on that guy.’ ”
Cassandra laughed, and then looked down at her menu.
“Cheese soufflé,” she said immediately. It cost twenty-five dollars
at lunch.
Just wait till she told Sylvie. Sylvie wouldn’t approve, because when a man was paying, you ought to make the most of it and order meat—the ideal outcome of any date in Sylvie’s view being not getting laid but getting to tuck into a big rare steak. For otherwise she lived on bloodless, spinsterish things like Wasa crisps, lentil soup, carrots, and raisins.
But to the more romantic Cassandra, the pleasure of being in the moment was the goal; and cheese soufflé, a delightfully old-fashioned dish, straight out of the pages of Julia Child and not much seen on menus anymore, seemed to her exactly
the
thing to order at a French restaurant on a spring afternoon. The elegance of her selection was not lost on Professor Sobel, who, being an old fogey himself, went with frogs’ legs Provençale.
Cassandra made a note of this, thinking that there
was
something slippery and sinister, rather like frogs’ legs, about Professor Sobel. Professor Sobel’s energy was very masculine but, at the same time, subtle: an unusual combination. Surely a more obvious man would have ordered the filet mignon. But there was nothing transparent about Professor Sobel, nothing stable. A deep ocean, Cassandra thought with approval, not a shallow pond.
Cassandra had just turned twenty-eight years old and was now officially living in New York City. That February, she had seen Professor Sobel for the first time since graduating from Bennington. The two of them had locked eyes with each other during intermission at this concert she was attending with her new boyfriend, Edward Escot. Cassandra had been introduced to Edward at a dinner party the year she was twenty-seven, about six months after the fallout of a broken engagement to her first boyfriend. She and Edward had been together for nearly a year when she decided to move to New York, to get closer to him. Edward was a Harvard man and he and Cassandra did grown-up things together like go to chamber music concerts at Bargemusic. The program that night was called “The Complete Bach Cello Suites Part I.”
Professor Sobel thought that Cassandra, who, back at Bennington, had been a pet of his because she was one of the handful of students there who actually
PART II
Clementine’s Picnic
CHAPTER 12
P rofessor Sobel asked to see the wine list. It was April in New York and he and Cassandra were having lunch together at a French restaurant.
“Champagne, it seems to me,” said Professor Sobel, scanning the menu. Cassandra had no opportunity to scan it herself. This was not so casual or collaborative a lunch as that. Professor Sobel was paying, and as such, in charge, which was the way both of them liked it.
The French restaurant was one of those that have a storied past but are seldom spoken of in these days of competitive dining and celebrity chefs. It was even in midtown, on a rather dowdy stretch in the East Fifties, a neighborhood in which Sylvie, for one, would not be caught dead. But Cassandra would be, and Professor Sobel knew this, just as he knew that she would think that an invitation to an illicit lunch was much more chic than dinner.
He ordered two glasses of champagne. After the waiter left, he dropped his voice to a whisper and said to Cassandra: “Ordering wine always reminds me of a favorite joke of mine. Oh, you might remember from my classes what a weakness I have for telling the occasional bad joke. So. A man walks into a bar. One woman says to another: ‘Hey! Check out the size of the wallet on that guy.’ ”
Cassandra laughed, and then looked down at her menu.
“Cheese soufflé,” she said immediately. It cost twenty-five dollars
at lunch.
Just wait till she told Sylvie. Sylvie wouldn’t approve, because when a man was paying, you ought to make the most of it and order meat—the ideal outcome of any date in Sylvie’s view being not getting laid but getting to tuck into a big rare steak. For otherwise she lived on bloodless, spinsterish things like Wasa crisps, lentil soup, carrots, and raisins.
But to the more romantic Cassandra, the pleasure of being in the moment was the goal; and cheese soufflé, a delightfully old-fashioned dish, straight out of the pages of Julia Child and not much seen on menus anymore, seemed to her exactly
the
thing to order at a French restaurant on a spring afternoon. The elegance of her selection was not lost on Professor Sobel, who, being an old fogey himself, went with frogs’ legs Provençale.
Cassandra made a note of this, thinking that there
was
something slippery and sinister, rather like frogs’ legs, about Professor Sobel. Professor Sobel’s energy was very masculine but, at the same time, subtle: an unusual combination. Surely a more obvious man would have ordered the filet mignon. But there was nothing transparent about Professor Sobel, nothing stable. A deep ocean, Cassandra thought with approval, not a shallow pond.
Cassandra had just turned twenty-eight years old and was now officially living in New York City. That February, she had seen Professor Sobel for the first time since graduating from Bennington. The two of them had locked eyes with each other during intermission at this concert she was attending with her new boyfriend, Edward Escot. Cassandra had been introduced to Edward at a dinner party the year she was twenty-seven, about six months after the fallout of a broken engagement to her first boyfriend. She and Edward had been together for nearly a year when she decided to move to New York, to get closer to him. Edward was a Harvard man and he and Cassandra did grown-up things together like go to chamber music concerts at Bargemusic. The program that night was called “The Complete Bach Cello Suites Part I.”
Professor Sobel thought that Cassandra, who, back at Bennington, had been a pet of his because she was one of the handful of students there who actually
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