A DARK LADY AND WHITE ASPARAGUS

WHY NOT TO GET DISTRACTED MAKING HOLLANDAISE SAUCE

Back in the nineteen-forties, a number of normally intelligent performers had a hit record with a lachrymose recitation called The Deck of Cards, which suggested how 52 cards could serve as a prayer book, almanack and calendar.

Not much of a card player, I do my seasonal calculations using fruit and vegetables. One can date to the week when the first Gariguette strawberries come on sale, when the Passe Crassane pears appear with the distinctive glob of red wax on their stem, followed not long after by heaps of moist, golden girolle mushrooms.

This week, it's the turn of those thick white asparagus, juicily succulent when steamed and served with….well….let me tell you a story, and explain why they always make me smell something burning.

The Paris Book Fair was in full swing, and we had rashly invited about a dozen dealers to dinner. Since the white asparagus were then in season, I decided to serve them as an entrée with Hollandaise, and, in the final example of folie de grandeur, to make the sauce by hand.

            I was too busy in the kitchen to do more than greet our guests, but did notice the arrival of John Wronoski of Cambridge Mass.'s Lame Duck Books. John demonstrated his taste for the good things in life by bringing two bottles of an obscure but obviously exceptional champagne and a striking female companion but, preoccupied with beating melted butter into eggs over a high flame, I had no time to appreciate either.

It was only when I smelled perfume that I realized John's friend had entered the kitchen. Champagne flute in hand, she eased herself onto a high kitchen stool and crossed her legs. Her tight, shiny black skirt and shocking-pink blouse complemented a personal style with more of Berlin than either Paris or Cambridge.

 She was beautiful in a way to which I was particularly susceptible. Her skin, beige with a faint slaty undertone, as well as the way she piled her black hair on top of her head, recalled Leni Riefenstahl and Hedy Lamarr, as did her low, murmuring voice

            Still whisking the Hollandaise, I apologized for neglecting my duties as a host. "Are you a book dealer also?"

            "No," she said. "I am artist."

            "Oh? What is your medium?"

            She sipped her champagne. "You would say, I think, flesh."

            I briefly stopped whisking. Flesh? ”I don't understand…."

            "Once I was dealer in books," she said. "I have shop with my husband. It is where I meet John. But then I learn that my husband has other woman…."  

              Picking her way through the subsequent events like someone strolling in a garden of poisonous plants, she described how she wreaked her revenge. "Growing up on my father’s pig farm, it is my job to cut dead pigs into pieces for the freezer."     

     Selecting two of her spouse's best suits, she stuffed them with raw pork, took them into the country with a pair of hungry Dobermans, and watched as they tore clothing, pork and, metaphorically, her husband, to shreds. 

               Halfway through her mesmerizing description, I stopped whisking, and only towards its conclusion smelled something burning. In turning away from the stove in fascination, I'd backed into the gas flame and set fire to my shirt.

            One of these days, remind me to tell you why pickled onions remind me of Marcel Proust.