Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,36

room that still radiated power, I tried seeing it through my mother’s eyes. It was not, I realized, a dining room: It was a kind of living theater.

I surveyed the captains of industry seated with such easy arrogance at their capacious tables: None of them had come to eat. They were here because they could be seen but never overheard. They were here because the light in the room made everyone look better. They were here to bask in the obsequious sarcasm of the owner, Julian Niccolini, an elegantly attired Tuscan with saturnine good looks, who made sure that meals for these extremely busy people never lasted too long. They were here because no annoying check was ever presented; when lunch was over they simply strolled off. (How Mom would have loved that little detail!) They were here, ultimately, because everybody else in their world was here too.

But Steve Florio was different. He was also here to eat.

“Have you experienced the Florio potato?” he asked as Julian led us to a prominent banquette in the center of the room.

Julian answered for me. “She has not.”

“Then,” said Florio regally, “we’ll have two.”

A few minutes later a pair of giant baked potatoes made their way across the vast dining room, each one modestly perched upon a plate, emitting little puffs of steam. As they got closer I could see that each had been slit open and paved, from one tip of its brown top to the other, with a wide, glistening swath of beluga caviar.

“Dig in,” said Steve, sticking his fork into the middle of his spud. “They make these just for me.” He glanced around the room to see if anyone was watching and noted, with some satisfaction, that he had captured the attention of the former mayor, seated at the next banquette. As his mouth closed over a mound of fish roe, he actually smacked his lips. “Fantastic!” he cried, a little too loudly. Philip Johnson, seated on the other side of us, turned to look.

Florio ordered a stunningly expensive Italian red wine to accompany the caviar and proceeded to regale me with sensational tales of Si. Most were scurrilous and many untrue, but I nodded, pretending to believe the myths about Si’s scintillating private life.

The business stories were easier to swallow. Steve began by bragging about all the money he’d lost during his tenure at The New Yorker. “Si didn’t mind,” he said airily. “There have been times when Condé Nast couldn’t meet payroll and he simply wrote a check.” He leaned conspiratorially toward me, his forehead almost touching mine. “After I moved up, my brother Tom became the publisher of The New Yorker for a while; we used to argue about which of us had bigger losses.”

“You boasted about losing Si’s money?” I was incredulous. “Didn’t he mind?”

He waved a hand, batting the thought away. “Si doesn’t mind about the money; he just wants to be the best. But don’t think you can cross him; he really hates to lose. Has anyone told you about the time one of the fashion books published a negative article about a major Italian label?”

I shook my head.

“The designer retaliated by pulling his ads from every Condé Nast publication.” Steve picked up his glass, gave it a swirl, and took an appreciative sip of the Gaja Barolo. “Si was furious. It was the editor’s fault, but Si punished the publisher. He made him fly to Milan and undo the damage. Told him not to return unless he succeeded.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” I said.

“Fair?” He laughed. “Si has no boundaries when it comes to business. Has Gina told you about her father’s funeral?”

“No.”

He gave me a wicked grin. “During the service Si berated her about lost ad pages.”

“He didn’t!”

“He did.” Florio took another sip of the deep-red wine. “But don’t worry—that will never happen to you. He behaves very differently toward the editorial side. He gives you all a lot of rope.” He frowned resentfully down into his glass, then looked up, adding cheerily, “And then he lets you hang yourselves.”

I looked at the salt-and-pepper hair, the big mustache, and he suddenly reminded me of Groucho Marx at his most sardonic. I wondered what had happened to the editor of the fashion magazine.

“Dessert?” he asked. I shook my head, but from across the room Julian was approaching with an extravagant cloud of fluff. Setting it before us, he leaned in to whisper, “Cotton candy gives our guests their childhood back. It’s