The Cookbook Collector

“I’ve already told you no, and I’m not buying this one, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not asking,” said Raj, cradling the book. “It’s not for sale.”

“If it’s not for reading, and it’s not for selling, what’s it for then?” George inquired.

Later when Colm had gone to work in the back room, George whispered to Raj, “If you like him, why don’t you just ask him out?”

“It’s complicated,” Raj said airily.

He began to explain, but George said, “I don’t want to know.”

He couldn’t stand another set of complications. He felt so worn, tired, cranky, old. When he drove home that evening, up Marin Avenue, he thought his transmission was going. When he parked, the young deer devouring his daylilies barely looked up.

He collected the mail, climbed the steps, unlocked his door, and only then did he notice a pair of battered running shoes inside on the mat. His heart pounded as he ran into the dining room.

“Jess!”

“Just a sec,” she told him, holding up her hand to stop him.

She was sitting cross-legged at the head of the table with cookbooks stacked up all around her, the reference manuals, the laptop, the note cards, as of old. “What do you think of this? By 1736, McLintock includes sugar in over half her recipes. Generally she uses a pound of sugar for cake or biscuits. What was scarce is now a staple in the home cook’s pantry. The luxurious is now ubiquitous and sugar’s smoother, lighter, facile sweetness is not only desired but expected at the table. Desire shifts to expectation, and expectation creates desire. This dynamic applies to everyday mass consumption in the kitchen, and feeds new theories of supply and demand, hunger and satisfaction. Indeed, in 1739, just three years after McLintock published her Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, her countryman David Hume diagrams the cycle of desire in his Treatise of Human Nature: ‘Any satisfaction, which we lately enjoy’d, and of which the memory is fresh and recent, operates on the will with more violence, than another of which the traces are decayed….’ (Section VI).”

“Not bad,” said George. “Who wrote that?”

“You know I did! I’m still working on the transition to Hume. I know what I want to say, but I still have to …”

“Keep reading,” he said, but she shook her head and opened up her arms for him.

He knelt at her feet and rested his head in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair. “That’s as far as I got,” she said. “If I read you any more, I’ll have to back up and start from the beginning.”

“I thought you went to London.”

“Emily talked me out of it,” said Jess. “With a lot of lecturing.”

He lifted his head. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“She says I’m too young for you, and you’re too old for me, and we’re at different stages. She warned me that we’ll become a cliché.”

“So what?” He took her by the hand and led her up the stairs.

Part Eight Closely Held May 2002

32

By spring, fewer troopers with dogs and submachine guns stood guard at the airports. Obituaries and memorial services had tapered off, and flags were smaller where they still flew. Magazines showcased 9/11 widows and their families, especially the babies their husbands would never know, but those same publications featured recipes for easy, breezy outdoor fun, tips for praising children the right way, and full-page photographs of fruit cobblers, no-bake desserts, no-sew craft projects, closet makeovers, and illustrations of simple exercises for those mornings when there was no time to run. Death never died, but the idea of death receded, as it must.

The new reality was clear-eyed. Start-ups scaled back on spending, hiring, and hype. Google was still closely held, its culture whimsical as its search engine was bold. Its founders talked about managing finances carefully and refused to set a date for their IPO. Such were the lessons learned from the prior generation, those high fliers from two years before: Reap what you sow, and look before you reap. Transactions speak louder than words. Festina lente.

The new reality was all about repentance: no razzle-dazzle, just hard-earned profits; no more analyst exuberance, just sober assessments. Venture capitalists threw money at fewer start-ups, and demanded even more access to the businesses they funded. No one talked about going public in a year. People took the long view: three years, five years, even more.

Books were written about the old new economy. Memoirs, dissertations. Harvard Business School students studied the successful evolution of the ISIS business model from a focus on Internet security to Internet surveillance, and its shift from servicing small businesses to winning government contracts. Professors lectured on Veritech as well, tracing the rise and fall of the high-flying start-up: a company peaking at $342 a share, falling to under fifty cents, and at last returning to its roots as a much smaller venture, when its remaining principals, Alex, Bruno, and Milton bought back stock. No one knew the secret history of electronic fingerprinting. The germ of the idea remained mysterious, upstaged by larger historical and economic forces. The lightning-quick response by ISIS and other companies that could shift priorities with the shifting times showed up cautious Veritech as a young dinosaur. Once upon a time Xerox had developed the first graphical user interface, but Microsoft had capitalized on the idea with Windows. So now, Veritech had researched electronic fingerprinting, but ISIS cashed in with OSIRIS. ISIS thrived, and Veritech faded into footnotes.

Those who held onto their tech shares lost the most. The market punished true believers, so that Veritech’s cook, Charlie, lost his restaurant and drove a taxi. Laura and Kevin ran out of money renovating, and sold the house in Los Altos at a loss. They rented a condo in Mountain View, while Laura kept working and Kevin contemplated going back to school. Sometimes sadder, sometimes wiser, laid-off programmers returned to graduate school to finish their degrees, or joined the Peace Corps, or scrambled for money to start new companies, as seedlings grow in rings around a redwood struck by lightning.

The few who sold stock early traveled, or started nonprofits, or volunteered in soup kitchens, or began analysis, or wrote poetry, or bought land in Oregon and planted lavender. They hosted fund-raisers for Hillary Clinton and invested in innovative ventures, and sat on boards where they drew upon their own experience to deliver sage advice. Jake returned to school, and Oskar settled back into his chair at MIT. The ones who got out early did what they wanted. Jonathan had set up a trust for his younger brothers—a fund which would help and hinder them for the rest of their lives. Apart from that, he’d held on to all his stock, and left no cash. His legacy was still tied up in ISIS. Mel Millstein, on the other hand, had been a financial genius. Who knew? Because he’d sold all his stock at thirty-three dollars a share in October 2000, he’d netted enough money for Barbara to live in comfort for the rest of her life.

So it was on Mother’s Day that Barbara Millstein angered her children, and pleased herself, presiding at the dedication of the Melvin H. Millstein Center for Jewish Life. The mayor of Canaan attended the ribbon cutting at Barbara’s former mansion, now home to Rabbi Zylberfenig and his wife, Chaya, and their seven children.

“How could you give them your house?” Annie asked Barbara on the phone from California. “And how could you name the center for Dad, when you know how he felt about religion?”

Barbara smiled to think of the little Zylberfenigs racing up the stairs, and Chaya cooking in the grand country kitchen, and the rabbi leading services in the great room, and teaching mysticism in the paneled library, where a portrait of the Rebbe hung in space built for a flat-screen TV.

“I wanted to name something for your father,” she said, “and actually, I don’t think he minds.”