Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,58

a chance?”

“If that’s what you want.” Florio was all business. “Merry Christmas.”

Michael said nothing. Nick was quiet. The silence grew as they stared resolutely at their plates. “Say it,” I said. “Whatever it is. Just say it.”

They looked at each other. Michael cleared his throat. “Are you sure you should have done that?”

“Why not?”

“Now it’s on your shoulders.” He pointed at the turquoise box as if it contained all of Condé Nast. “If the numbers keep going down, Giulio’s not going to be the only one who fails. It’s going to be your fault too.”

WHEN DIANA STRODE INTO MY office to announce that she too was leaving, all my fears came roaring back. Laurie had gone. Gina had gone. Giulio was in trouble. And now Diana was walking out the door.

“Why?” I moaned. Even to my own ears I sounded like a child.

“I’ve decided to retire. I’ve got enough money saved, the book’s running smoothly, and it’s time for me to go.”

“I warned you,” said Truman. “Diana gets restless. She enjoys creating new things and fixing broken ones. Gourmet’s not new, it’s no longer broken, and the day-to-day operations pose no challenges to her.” He gave me a searching look, saw my fear, and misunderstood. “You can’t take it personally,” he said.

There was no point in trying to explain. But as a parade of art directors trooped through my office, I grew increasingly uneasy. I met talented art directors, pleasant art directors, creative art directors—but none of them inspired me as Diana had done. She had given Gourmet a signature look, and none of them struck me as capable of building on it. On the dreary, rainy afternoon when Robin ushered the latest candidate in, I was in despair.

The man was slight, so thin that the large black umbrella he clutched looked like it weighed more than he did. In the other hand he carried an enormous portfolio, which seemed to be tugging him forward like an impatient dog. Richard Ferretti dripped across the office, brushed back his long black hair, and joined me at the table.

He slid his résumé in front of me, and I sighed as I examined a long list of clients from Coach to Revlon. Although it included many magazines, they were all in the past, so I began with the obvious question: “Why would you want to go back to working at a magazine?”

“I don’t want to work at a magazine.” As he smoothed back the strands of shiny blue-black hair, I wondered how old he was. His lean, intelligent face seemed much younger than his résumé indicated. “I want to work at Gourmet.”

“Why?”

He looked directly at me, startling me with the intensity of his gaze. “Because I love to cook and I like what you’re doing here. But the visuals could be so much stronger. You need to take more chances.”

When I just stared at him, he rose, went over to the rack of back issues, and extracted a few. Opening the first to the big “Gourmet Entertains” centerfold, he threw it down before me. Then he did the same with the others. “The food’s beautiful.” He gestured at an elegantly set table. “Often the setting is too. But that’s it. These are random pictures of pretty food. And it would be so much more powerful if you were telling stories.”

Pulling out a notebook, he began to sketch. “We could create a script for every menu and shoot it like a movie. Nobody’s ever done that, but think about how much more exciting it would be. You’d be able to imagine yourself sitting at the table with these people, know what their relationships were and what they were talking about. We could invite the readers to join us at a party every month.”

This is what went through my mind: Why didn’t I think of that? What else did this extraordinary person have to teach me?

“There’s so much you could be doing!” He got up, so animated now that a force field seemed to surround him. “All the food magazines use the same photographers. Why limit yourself when there are so many other talented people? What if we used photographers who have never shot food before? Think how different they’d make everything look; it would give us a whole new perspective.”

“And what else?”

“I’d like to shoot a real party, in real time.”

This was ridiculous. Our photo shoots required weeks of preparation; we arrived at each location with at least two versions of every