Gotham by Nick Earls

Author:Nick Earls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkerman & Blunt

A beef Wellington is waiting when we arrive at the restaurant, but the next is two minutes away, so Nati decides to take that and give me the older one. The place is empty, the kitchen closed but for Nati’s production line. There is no suggestion that I be given a menu. A great beef Wellington that has spent a few minutes under a hot lamp is still, by my reckoning, likely to be a great beef Wellington. And it’s deep into the night, not near a meal time for me anyway.

Smokey is on his way to his new daughter, finally.

The table, set for two, has a bud vase crammed with small red plastic flowers and a tea-light candle in a bowl.

While my dinner spends its final minute under the light and his is being plated up, I ask Nati what makes this his favourite meal and he says, ‘It’s just the best. The pastry’s flaky, the duxelle…it tastes real good.’ He lifts his chin a little and sets his hands on the table. I notice a tiny pilled ball of tissue lodged in his moustache, where Smokey dabbed a Kleenex dipped in Perrier to clean away the blood. ‘It tastes refined. I believe they add cream, which many people don’t. And the mushrooms are straight from Italy.’

There are no deep truths to be mined in his dinner choice, no heartfelt connections to bring to the surface. He’s more concerned with sounding like an aristocrat, someone who has lived and Wellingtoned anywhere a person should.

As our meals are served, I ask him what music meant to him when he was younger and he tells me, ‘I liked the sound first, the way cool guys had it coming out of cars.’ He picks up his fork. ‘Then I see that Jay Z come from Brooklyn and he the richest dude.’

‘Mos Def, Notorious B.I.G.—they were from Brooklyn, too, weren’t they?’ I can talk music endlessly. I want to look as if I’m doing just that, but it’s Brooklyn I want to take us to—the past, always the reluctant past and the light it might throw on the conflicted present.

‘Them too, but I only knew about Mos Def from when he worked with Kanye in ’bout 2010. Anyway, he got a different name now.’ He cuts into his beef Wellington and a rush of steam comes out. ‘And Biggie, well, I was young then.’

Young when Biggie was shot dead in LA is what I think he means. By my reckoning, Lydell Luttrell Junior turned two that year.

‘I met his mom, though,’ he says. ‘Ms Wallace. She call him Christopher, but.’

‘So you talked about him with her?’

‘No. It’s what I hear.’ He sticks his fork into the pink beef. ‘You don’t want this to get cold.’

‘How did you know her?’ I’m imagining a young Lydell, hand in his mother’s, Voletta Wallace bending down to talk to him. She was a preschool teacher, maybe still is.

‘Just in the neighbourhood.’ He lifts the fork to his mouth and sits back to chew, appreciate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.