Reasons
for Restaurants
by
Matthue
Roth
The restaurant was vegan but it
still priced its entrees like steak. That was one of the reasons why I picked
it. I’d never needed a reason for a nice restaurant before.
“Wow,”
said Itta when she saw my entourage. She took it all in, giving me a once-over
like the sleazy guy does to the attractive and immodestly-dressed woman in
every bad movie ever.
I
wouldn’t say I wasn’t worth it. Maybe I didn’t look lust-inducing, but you
could for sure say I looked interesting. I looked like an adventurer, if you
were in a generous mood.
It
was the day after Thanksgiving. I’d just gotten back to New York. I hated
traveling with suitcases—it felt like too much of a commitment—so I boarded the
bus with two shoulder bags, the backpack I usually carried, another backpack
filled with books, and this awkwardly bulging duffel stuffed with early-autumn
warm-weather clothes and late-autumn wintry clothes that I thought I’d be able
to just hold in my arms. The circumference formed by my possessions was too
clogged—I had more bags than I had room around my body—and I had to constantly
keep one package raised up or pushed out. This had created quite a problem on
the subway. Compared to the flush of embarrassment currently writhing its way
across my body, however, I would gladly have chosen another rush hour on the B
train.
“Don’t
mind me,” I said. “I, uh, didn’t want to waste time unloading before I saw
you.”
“I
don’t mind,” she consoled me, taking pains to summon a forgiving smile right
before she raised her water to her lips, likely to hide that forgiving smile,
likely because she had no idea what to make of me. That was okay. I didn’t know
what to make of myself. I excused myself, hustling to stow my luggage in the
restaurant’s back room—I knew it was there; I’d been here before; it was a
kosher vegan restaurant; of course I’d been here before—and stopped in the
restroom on the way back, dousing myself thoroughly with whatever was in the
soap dispenser. It was a sticky, liquidy, oozing thing, roughly the consistency
of semen, but with a minty pine overture. I hoped it would drown out the
airport. I prayed it would.
I
got back to the table, eyes on her, trying to pretend I hadn’t just come in
looking like a bag-person Santa Claus. “So,” I said, “how was your first
Thanksgiving?”
“Shit!”
she said, palm flying to her forehead. “I forgot to take a picture of the
turkey.”
“Shit!”
I repeated, letting the word tickle up and down my oscillating teeth, the
rollicking of my lips, my clicking tongue. “Wow. That word. It sounds so much
better in your accent.”
She
looked embarrassed. “I’m an Ozzie, mate,” she said. “We curse. You might have
to get used to that.”
“I
look forward to it.” I grinned, stupidly. And then, lest she thought I wasn’t
Orthodox enough, I added: “I know. I wrestle a lot with cursing, too. I mean, I
try not to do it except when it’s something I really believe in. Like, when I’m
saying something with a real about-to-explode spiritual intent.”
“Um,”
she said, “right,” she said. And then she retreated to the menu.
Itta
had landed the past week, on Thanksgiving, right before dinner. She went
straight to the house of her best friend from yeshiva. She and her husband
lived an hour or two upstate, in an old wooden house. It was going to be Itta’s
first Thanksgiving ever, since—and we mused on this extensively, drawing it out
on our phone conversations for hours, hours—they
didn’t have Thanksgiving in Australia. For about two seconds I contemplated
inviting her to my parents’, and she contemplated inviting herself. It took us
that long to decide it would be awkward. Hi, great to see you again, yeah so
are we actually dating or not?, and by the way, here’s my parents. Of course it
would be awkward. It would be the most awkward thing in the world. Or at least
that was our thinking then. Right now, it felt like this very moment, this
conversation, was winning the award for most awkward thing ever, beating out
whatever competition could possibly exist by a landslide.
“Couldn’t
you guys just do it again?” I said.
“Thanksgiving?”
She looked at me like I was the Australian and not her.
“Sure.
Do a reenactment. An instant replay.”
“Heresy!
You can’t wave a wand and make it happen again. Karen’s father carved a whole
turkey. The gravy boat was rich enough to drink. Gravy,” she said. “What a
funny word.”
“Do
you guys have a different word for it?”
“We
just call it ’juice,’ I think.” Her brow furrowed, as if trying to reenact some
long-ago distant Australian Thanksgiving in her mind. “Sometimes I have to use
it in a sentence to be sure. In my mind. It’s creepy, how the American word for
everything becomes the word that everyone uses.”
“Usually
I like the British words for things better,” I said. “I mean, you say ’aubergine’
instead of ’eggplant’ and everyone just stares at you like you just won a Nobel
Prize. But, juice? That sounds so
ordinary. I guess it’s more, like, raw...”
“Not
to offend you,” she added quickly. “About the meat.”
“Not
to offend you,” I shot back. “About
the British thing. I know you’re not British.”
“It’s
fine,” she said. “Everyone mixes it up.”
“Even
though you gained your independence in 1784?” I said.
She
looked at me like I was joking. I thought that I was, too—only I thought it’d
be a good thing. You wouldn’t figure it, with someone whose name was as rare as
hers, but Itta had been damn near
impossible to Google. She was on Facebook, and some other personal pages, but
I’d left a trail of a million internet hits, and she barely had any. Even her Australian Idol performance was shrouded
in mystery—apparently, Australians were less trigger-happy with posting
everything online than I was. I abandoned internet-stalking her and reverted to
doing Internet research about Australia, which was the closest thing I could
get.
“Are
you sure?” She picked at her fake steak uncertainly, thinking perhaps that the
menu had misspelled the word seitan.
“That talking about meat doesn’t freak you out, I mean?”
“I’m
actually really fascinated about meat,” I told her. “Last Yom Kippur, when the
fast started and I couldn’t eat anything, I pulled down all these cookbooks. I
was staying at my friend Sonja’s, and she’s a chef, and we spent hours looking
at pictures of food. All kinds of dead animals twisted and fried into all of
these weird positions. It was bizarre, but it was kind of incredibly
fascinating.”
“Fascinating?”
I’m not even fascinated by meat, her
face was saying, and I EAT it.
“It
was a strange night.” I tried to backpedal. “And, you know, she’s a chef. She
could explain all that stuff.”
“She?”
“My
roommate, I mean. Well, my housemate. I mean, that’s what people call it. I
mean we didn’t live in the same room
or anything....” I was heating up. I was feeling starkly conscious of how my
life sounded, and of how it sounded to someone who’d grown up Orthodox.
“Have
you been here before?” she said, fast. “What should we order?”
“Whatever
you like.” I willfully ignored my wallet and smiled.
“Appetizers,
then.” She flipped her menu back open—this time purposeful, for real, no longer
a mere diversionary tactic. “What looks good to you?”
Appetizers. When we ate, it was
always appetizers.
Some
things you inherit from your family. Not just politeness, rules and customs and
values; things deeper than that. Like when my parents were at Mike’s parents’
house and Mike’s mom offered them a glass of wine; they turned it down, but
only after a long pause, as if to ask, really?On
a weekday, and before sunset? Not even with a meal?
It
was the same pause that my parents used before answering when a waitress at a
restaurant asked if we wanted appetizers. Nearly as expensive as a main course,
but not as filling, and one more thing you’d have to wait for. For the price of
appetizers and dessert, you could go out for a whole second meal. They never
said this, of course; it was all I could piece together, read from their
silences and sideways glances, and the waitress’s apologetic retreat. Do we look like appetizer people to you?
Itta
and I discussed appetizers. We ordered big nachos, with avocado and habañero,
drippy black beans and stiff sour cream. It was an orgy. It was good—solidly,
warmly good—and it was stacked on a plate almost as big as the table. When we
had finished, dinner was almost superfluous, but we ate it anyway. I had a good
appetite. She ate gladly, joyously, more than me. I knew I was supposed to
think that girls should only eat plain lettuce or whatever, but it felt good to see her devour her food with
such abandon, like we’d dispensed with the formality of behaving fakely in
front of each other. I was more conservative—we were at a vegetarian
restaurant, and I’d unwittingly ordered an entree that was stuffed with beans.
I ate it gingerly, nervous about investing in possible future farts. I’d heard
of Orthodox dates going twelve hours long. I wasn’t sure if this counted. I
still didn’t know what Itta had in mind.
“Should
we keep going?” I asked her, once we’d finished dinner and stepped outside. The
night was cold, but it was a brisk cold, the kind that fired you up.
“I
can keep going if you can. Do you have something for us to do?”
“Definitely.
I told you I’d plan everything tonight, right?” I didn’t—my idea of planning
had been to load a Google Map of everything in the area that was open past
8:30, including convenience stores and a laundromat—but I’d spent enough time
studying everything so that I could sound like I was uber-prepared.
“Lead
the way,” she said.
She
stepped up into the night, enveloped by December. Wisps of dragon breath curled
from her mouth as she spoke.
Because
I wasn’t sure if she drank alcohol, or if she drank alcohol with boys, I took
her to a tea house. Actually, it was a health store owned by Israelis that sold
tea in the back. We got cups of it and climbed to the roof of the building, a
heated tent with chess boards on the tables, and we didn’t play chess, but we
talked about it instead. When we were finished tea, I asked what she wanted to
do next.
“Should
we have a beer, then?” she said.
I
re-tallied. She was Australian. She was Hasidic. Her entire family was Russian.
Okay, maybe I was the weak-stomached prude of the two of us. I hadn’t even
thought of looking at bars.
But
this was New York, and it was easier to find a bar than to find a subway stop.
We went to a basement Irish bar on Second Avenue, and then to a trendy bar near
Union Square. There was a DJ playing in the corner. A bunch of Williamsburg
kids kept pretending not to look at us, but the whole time they were trying to
work out what we were doing, whether it was kosher or not, whether we were
going to make out. My yarmulke, her skirt, our non-black-and-white clothes. Itta
kept glancing over to them, uncomfortable. I grinned.
“It’s
good,” I said. “It keeps them on their toes. We can play with them.”
“What
would you want to play with them for? They’ve got nothing to do with us.”
“Except
that they keep watching us.”
“Screw
’em! Look. You can either suspect that they’re thinking negative things about
Orthodox Jews, which will make you worried and paranoid, or you can hope that
they’re just curious and want to see native Orthodox people in their natural
environment, acting like regular people. And then you give them a little show.
Like talking.”
“Or
dancing.”
“Dancing?
Really?”
She
stood up. I want to say she pulled me up, and she did, but not by touching me.
Just the way her body sashayed out of that barstool, a twist as natural as a
car changing lanes. I weaved. I matched her.
The
song they were playing was something I’d grown up listening to, something heavy
and bassy and trippy, hip-hop-influenced without being actual hip-hop. It was
loud, so loud that the DJ was wearing earplugs inside his headphones, and so
loud that even if you couldn’t really dance you still felt your body being
moved, being vibrated, to one
direction and the other. I never knew how to move my hips—wasn’t even sure
where my hips were, really—but I felt them moving. Itta swayed slow,
calculated, almost not-dancing, still holding her thin beer glass in her hands.
The meniscus didn’t even shake. She was amazing. The soul that let black people
dance, that thing that had eluded white people for centuries, somehow had
buried itself deep in Itta’s body. She barely moved. She didn’t have to.
My
eyes fluttered, half hypnotized, half from lack of sleep. “Who are you?” I said. My mouth was dry.
She
smiled. As if she knew the true, hidden answer to this question, as if she’d
never tell me.
The
song changed. The music was louder now. As if G-d was telling me, you don’t
need to talk now, quit while you’re ahead. Just be here instead.
