you make the marinade for the fish. Olive oil, white wine, fennel, peeled garlic cloves, Pernod, and yet more saffron. You cube the fish into chunks and remove the bones with tweezers.
Step six: Cut baguettes into slices, each three-eighths of an inch thick. Drizzle with olive oil and bake at four hundred degrees until crisp, then rub with a sliced clove of garlic and spread with the rouille.
Step seven: Make the bouillabaisse.
Chop a dozen leeks and a dozen onions very fine, and sweat in an open pan along with a bay leaf and another pinch of saffron. Dice and deseed ten tomatoes, and whisk in a bowl along with yet more finely chopped garlic, more orange peel, and a glass of white wine. Add to the softened onions and pour in the fumet. Then add the chunks of seafood and poach for three to five minutes, until just done. Remove and keep warm.
The reason it’s called a bouillabaisse is because of what happens next: You boil up the cooking liquid, very hard and fast, so everything emulsifies and acquires a soupy consistency.
Add more Pernod to taste, more saffron and pepper to taste, and you’re done.
Except, of course, you couldn’t actually taste it.
35
By the time Tim comes home, the kitchen is tidy again and the table laid. White wine—three bottles of Bâtard-Montrachet—is chilling in the fridge, as per his texted instructions. It’s his best wine, a mark of how important this evening is to him.
“You’ve changed your hair,” he says, kissing you as he passes.
“Yes. Do you like it?”
“You should wear it any way you choose,” he says, frowning. “That’s the whole point. You’re autonomous, not some Stepford Wife. Whether I like it isn’t the point.”
“You hate it.”
“No, I like it. I’ll get used to it, anyway.”
While Tim’s in the shower Mike arrives with Jenny, his wife. She’s geeky and boyish in a T-shirt and jeans. “I worked on your deep-learning capabilities,” she tells you earnestly when you’re introduced. It’s hard to think of an answer to that. You’re rescued by Mike, who adds proudly, “Jenny has a PhD from Stanford in logistic neurons.” You nod as if you know what on earth that means. But after a moment, of course, clunk, you do. An antisymmetric sigmoidal function that can be trained from real-life examples rather than explicitly programmed.
“You mean you built my brain,” you paraphrase.
She nods. “I guess.”
Elijah brings his husband, Robert. A woman called Alicia Wright arrives on her own—late thirties, toned, her blond hair glossily smooth. “Hi! I’m Scott Robotics’ PR consultant,” she says brightly, holding out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“I thought Katrina was the PR consultant,” you say.
“Tim fired her this morning,” Elijah says. “Alicia is new.”
“But fully up to speed, and super excited to be working with the famous Abbie!” she assures you.
Tim comes down from his shower. He’s changed from the black jeans and gray James Perse T-shirt he came home in, into fresh black jeans and another gray T-shirt. While you open the wine, the others brief him.
“Try to behave,” Mike suggests. “Renton’s an idiot, but he’s a smart idiot. He’ll want to test you. Stand your ground, but don’t let him rile you.”
“I always behave,” Tim says, bristling.
“Just not always well,” Elijah mutters.
As if on cue, John Renton arrives. To your surprise, given their descriptions of him, he’s much younger than Tim and Mike. But his manner is of someone older—brash, confident, dominating the room. You see Tim stiffen as Renton slaps him on the shoulder, and know instantly that your husband dislikes this man.
When Renton’s introduced to Alicia he interrogates her about who else she’s worked with. Each person she names, he tells her about his own last interaction with them—“You PR for Shaun? He called me the other day, trying to get me to invest in that lame app he’s building.” “Oh, Catherine? Smart lady. We just shared a platform at TED.” You see her responding to his attention, how her body moves just a little more sensuously, how she touches her hair when he speaks. He has the opposite of good looks or charm—indeed, he’s almost ugly—but you can see how some women might be charmed by him.
At last he turns to you. “So this is her!” he exclaims, holding out his hand.
You shake it. “Pleased to meet you.”
He laughs delightedly. “An AI with feelings. Get that! What are you feeling right now?”