Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,40
sell. A lot.”
I worried about that cover for the entire month, and once it was printed I haunted the newsstands. The piles seemed to be going down, but I couldn’t be sure. The night before the first newsstand report, I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep, and the next morning I got to the office early.
Truman had beaten me there.
Sitting on my desk were five crisp twenty-dollar bills. There was also a note. “Si and I have been talking; we think you should forget about turkey this year. Just put a fish on your November cover.”
I picked up the bills and stood staring down at them, thinking how different this was from the last time I’d gambled on a fish.
A few years earlier, still at the Times, I’d submitted three fish-centric reviews to the James Beard Foundation for the restaurant criticism award. I didn’t have much hope—Alan Richman, GQ’s critic, always won—so it was a thrill to learn that I was, at last, a finalist. I could not, of course, blow my anonymity by attending an event filled with chefs, so the editor of the dining section, Rick Flaste, went in my place.
In those days the Beards were not nearly as flashy as they have since become, and in that pre-social-media era, there was no outlet to report the winners. Rick said nothing, so I figured Alan had once again taken home the trophy and I forgot all about it. I was, therefore, astonished a few days later when I got a congratulatory note from the Beard Foundation.
“Why didn’t you tell me I’d won?” I asked Rick.
“Didn’t I?” he replied carelessly. “I guess I forgot.”
And that, I thought, was the difference between the Times and Condé Nast. To the Times I was just a food writer who didn’t really count. Despite my prominent position there, I’d never felt like more than a cog in a vast machine, someone who could be easily replaced. It was different at Condé Nast; they took what I was doing seriously. To me, those twenty-dollar bills represented more than money: They were proof positive that Truman had my back.
“THIS IS VERY GOOD,” ROBIN breathed as she handed me the thickly embossed invitation. “The only other editors invited to Si’s birthday are AnnaGraydonDavidPaige.” She ran the names of Condé Nast’s most important editors together, seeming to consider my elevation into this exalted group a point of personal pride. “The invitation says no gifts, but what are you going to wear?”
I couldn’t imagine.
“Anna will be there,” Robin persisted. I thought of the last time I’d shared a room with the supreme fashionista; she’d been dressed in a silky teal dress trimmed with pale puffs of gray fur that looked so soft I wanted to reach out and pet them. On her feet were tall butter-colored suede boots that would surely dissolve with the first drop of rain. I pictured myself, the dowdy in a room filled with fabulously gowned women swanning through Si’s legendary art collection, as turbaned waiters proffered extravagant tidbits and bartenders set spectacular cocktails on fire. Even the pre-party—Si celebrated each year by remastering a vintage film for a private screening at the Museum of Modern Art—sounded exotic.
“You have to get a driver.” Robin stood by my desk, hands on hips, face screwed into her fiercest frown. “If you don’t, you’ll be the only editor on the bus.” This, her stance implied, would be deeply humiliating to her.
“The bus?”
“Si hires a bus to take the other guests from the museum to his house. But the editors all take their own drivers. You can’t get on the bus.”
I was not about to be one-upped by AnnaGraydonDavidPaige. On the night of the party, I let her call a car. “Ask for Mustafa when you get downstairs,” she said.
The man standing by the sleek black Mercedes was short and thick, with a rugged pockmarked face. As he held the door I noticed he had the hands of a boxer: calloused, large, strong.
“You don’t use cars.” The sentence, uttered in a heavy Arabic accent, was an accusation.
“How do you know?”
He slid behind the wheel and looked into the rearview mirror with a sardonic lift of the eyebrow. “When a new editor comes to Condé Nast, everyone is hopeful. Maybe we can be their regular driver.” I liked the deep, gravelly sound of his voice. “But you? You make us all sad. You never use a car. You don’t bring us a penny.”
He glanced into the mirror