Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,27

So when Jonathan suggested I hire her as my assistant at the L.A. Times, I was disinclined.

“You should consider Laurie,” he insisted. “She’s the smartest person I know.”

I doubted that.

“I know Laurie’s quiet,” he persisted, “but I promise you she’s the best editor I’ve ever met. The least you could do is talk to her.”

It was a long time before I realized how much this must have cost him. Jonathan was a competitive person who wanted to be the best at everything he did. And he already knew what I was about to find out: Laurie Ochoa is one of those self-effacing people with a genius for making others look good. Unambitious for herself, she is enormously supportive of those she loves. She’s improved the work of every writer she’s ever worked with, and I am certainly no exception.

She asked endlessly thoughtful questions about my articles, picking up each word, touching it, tasting it, willing it to be the perfect fit. She read things into my writing I hadn’t known were there, so that each time I saw them in print I found myself thinking, did I really say that?

She was also extremely demanding. It was Laurie, in her quietly tenacious way, who insisted we try to take over the food section. “Think what we could do with all that space!” she kept saying as she urged me to write a proposal. I got all the credit for the excellence of the section, but at least half the ideas were Laurie’s, and I could never have done it without her.

Now I wondered how I could persuade her to move to New York. She’d agreed to consider it, but she’d seemed unenthusiastic, and as Jonathan drove, gears shrieking, to a Sichuan restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley, I marshaled my arguments. I planned to broach the topic at the table, so it was disappointing to find a few of their more eclectic friends—an experimental novelist, an avant-garde composer, and a performance artist—already there. I’d have to wait to make my case.

The proprietors greeted Jonathan with reverence and immediately brought out a huge hot pot, a vast metal bowl filled with meat and vegetables. While the others stuck to the vegetables, Laurie and I happily fished out sliced pig intestines and cubes of congealed blood; among other things, we share a taste for strong flavors. “I wonder,” said Jonathan as he watched us eat, “if there are any restaurants like this in New York?”

“We’ll have plenty of time to investigate,” Laurie replied.

And that is how I found out that they’d both decided to join the Gourmet experiment.

* * *

—

AIRPORTS. HOTELS. ROOM service. Interviews. In my memory, the book tour remains a blur of small-town America and endless plane rides. And then, at last, I was on my way back to New York and the final appearance on the schedule.

“Can Bob and I come with you?” asked Nick.

I looked at him, surprised. “You don’t think you’ll be bored? I’m just going to give a little talk and sign some books. It’s not all that interesting.”

“But I want to see what you’ve been doing while you were gone.”

“There are never any kids there,” I warned him.

I was wrong about that. At the end of the reading, the very first person in line was a man pushing his small son toward me. “You owe him an apology,” he said.

Nick moved in closer to hear.

“I was the chef at Capsouto Frères,” the man continued.

This was not going to be good.

“ ‘Bitter salad,’ ” he quoted sourly—he had memorized the entire review. “ ‘Mushy sole. Cottony bread.’ They fired me after your hatchet job, and I haven’t been able to find work since.”

I sat there, chagrined and embarrassed as the man glared at me, unmoving, hand on his boy’s shoulder. I did not know what to say.

My brother stepped smoothly into the silence. “This,” Bob said, bringing up the next person in line, “is Evelyn. She says her mother was an even worse cook than ours. As if such a thing were possible.” Still glaring at me, the chef moved on, pushing his son before him.

Shaken, I looked at Nick, wondering how he’d taken it. In more than twenty years as a restaurant critic, I had never been confronted in public, and when anyone asked how I felt about negative reviews, my answer was cavalier. “You can’t be a good critic,” I’d say blithely, “unless you’re willing to tell the truth. Nobody believes a critic who only says