WHEN MOHAWK, MY FIRST NOVEL, WAS ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION, my wife, Barbara, and I were living in New Haven, Connecticut, in a two-bedroom apartment we could barely afford on my assistant professor’s salary. Our two daughters weren’t of school age yet, which meant that Barbara was home with them all day while I was teaching. She typed dissertations for Yale doctoral candidates when she could get the work, and we used the extra money to hire a sitter and go out for pizza at Frank Pepe’s on Wooster Street or, if we were really flush, to Tony and Lucille’s for linguine and clams and a carafe of house wine, which in those days would set you back thirty bucks, including tip. For us, big money. We still had unpaid college loans (deferred and deferred and deferred yet again) that had followed us like bloodhounds from one end of the country to the other, and our car was so old the thieves that roamed Whalley Avenue and the Boulevard at night had stopped breaking into it. In other words, publication and the advance against royalties that publication would bring were welcome.
You want to experience joy in its purest form? Here’s what you do. Stand in front of a freshman composition class and explain that you won’t be able to meet them next Tuesday because you’re taking the train into the city to meet with your editor. When you’ve done that, tell the chair of your department. Tell anyone who asks if you’ll be able to attend a meeting that Tuesday, “Sorry, I can’t. I have to take the train into the city to meet my editor.” If someone wants you to attend a meeting on, say, Wednesday, you reply, “Sorry, I can’t. No wait, I can. It’s Tuesday that I’m taking the train into the city to meet my editor.” Is there a more glorious sentence in the English language? Each phrase—take the train … into the city … meet my editor—so magical, so full of Cheever and Fitzgerald. Not New York City, the city. Saying such a sentence out loud is like having sex that first time; you just know you’ll never tire of it.
Barbara, whose birthday was in a few days, had never even visited New York (having grown up in Tucson), so I was anxious to show her around, this despite the fact that I’d only been there a couple of times myself since I was a kid and had seen little more than the packed elevators and beige corridors of MLA convention hotels. The actual advance from my publisher hadn’t arrived yet, but we knew it was coming, so we felt justified in plundering our anemic savings. In fact, we left just enough in the account to keep it open. I wanted to make sure we had enough cash to cover taxis and two good meals; our sole credit card would be of no use, maxed out as usual, with not even enough leeway to charge a pair of socks.
We had lunch at the Top of the Sixes, the only restaurant I knew of with the requisite loft for the occasion. We arrived without reservations but I must have looked to the maître d’ like a man who’d just sold a novel, because he took us to a table at the window with sweeping views of Manhattan. Sitting there, we couldn’t help but feel we’d turned a corner. The people at the next table were speaking rapid French, for god’s sake, though the only word we were able to pick out was Bloomingdale’s. We both ordered pan-seared scallops, which our waiter informed us were served rare unless we objected—in which event, his manner implied, he would think less of us. We did not want that and so said that of course, rare scallops would be fine with us. They came three to a plate, which would have been disappointing had they not been the size of filet mignons. They’d been in a pan, and recently, but not for long. They wiggled like Jell-O beneath our forks and were ice cold in the center, but they tasted like scallops taste when you’ve just taken the train into the city to meet with your editor and you’re eating them fifty floors up. Damn good. I was about to say to Barbara, “These are damn good,” when I happened to notice a man come out onto the roof a couple stories below, where he unzipped and arced his yellow stream into the street below, proving, as life will, that nothing ever comes to you clean. I glanced over at my wife to see if she’d noticed the man and saw that she’d stopped chewing.
INGREDIENTS: olive oil, scallops, the juice of one lemon, a pan.
PROCEDURE: Put a little olive oil in the bottom of a pan over very high heat. You’re looking for that magical moment just before the oil begins to scorch and you have to throw it out. In other words, really, really hot. You’re going to sear the scallops, not cook them. Once you put the scallops in the pan, don’t mess with them. Let them bond with the pan at the molecular level for one minute, tops, then turn them over. If they stick, good. Find a way to unstick them and sear the other side for forty-five seconds. Add the lemon juice. Fifteen seconds later remove the scallops. Lower the heat a bit and reduce the pan juices until the liquid resembles thirty-weight motor oil in terms of consistency, drizzle it over the scallops, and you’re good to go. Serve with something that goes well with scallops. (This may or may not be the way scallops are prepared at the Top of the Sixes.)
Which brings us to Turf. Now I do realize that in some restaurants Surf and Turf will be steak and lobster, or steak and jumbo shrimp, but for us it was steak and scallops and we ate them about six hours apart in different restaurants that day in New York. Some restaurants actually serve them together as part of the same meal, but I’m just telling you how we did it.
The other restaurant I was determined to take Barbara to was a legendary steak house, a hangout for famous writers, editors, athletes, and celebrities. I couldn’t recall its name, but back in grad school my writing mentor was always telling us stories about the place where his agent, also something of a legend, took all his clients and, when the meal was finished, signed for it. “Imagine,” Bob, my mentor, said. “All the other dick-swingers at nearby tables are pulling out their gold and platinum credit cards, but this guy just signs the bottom of the check.” It had been a while since I’d spoken to Bob, so I called and told him I was going to be in the city and what was the name of that great steak house he used to rave about, the one where his agent just signed the bottom of the check. He told me the name, adding, “and it ain’t cheap,” no doubt remembering me from the days when we grad students congregated at a local campus dive after our Thursday workshop and tossed coins and the odd crumpled dollar bill into the center of the table in hopes that they’d add up to the price of a pitcher of cheap beer. When he asked what I was going to be doing in the city, I had no choice but to tell him.
Having been warned, I should have glanced at the menu posted on the wall outside the restaurant. My thinking was, this was a street-level type restaurant. It couldn’t be as expensive as the Top of the Sixes.
“Uh …,” my wife said, when we were seated and she’d opened her menu.
“Yes,” I agreed. “You’re right.”
“Can we?”
“Just about.”
“You think?”
“Just … about,” I said, doing some arithmetic in my head. Just about. If we didn’t order appetizers. Or side dishes. Or anything to drink. And if we tipped fifteen percent rather than the twenty demanded, I knew, by New York waiters. I resisted the impulse to pull out my wallet to make sure. I did, however, pat my shirt pocket to make sure I still had our return train tickets.
“Our beef is aged and served medium rare,” our tuxedoed waiter informed us helpfully, and we agreed that this was the proper way to treat an aged steak. Barbara normally ordered her steaks medium, but having declined the offer of appetizers, we were both anxious to get back into the man’s good graces if possible. “And what else can I bring you? The creamed spinach is excellent.”
“No, nothing else,” I said, trying to sound jaunty.
“Just the steaks, then?” he said, rather louder than was absolutely necessary, I thought, the tables being so close together.
“Just,” I said, even jauntier, nearly adding the phrase, “my good man.”
“Just whatever normally comes with the meal,” my wife clarified hopefully.
What came with our steaks was a sprig of parsley. The curly kind.
INGREDIENTS: you will need two steaks (I don’t recommend aging them at home, and the ones aged in the supermarket beyond their sell-by dates are different, I’m told, than steaks aged in dry meat lockers), a fire, an oven preheated to 450 degrees, and two extra-large plates.
PROCEDURE: Your steaks should be thick and round, like a baseball, so that it’s not immediately apparent which side should go on the grill. To ensure a char, your fire should be very hot. Turn your steaks over when it seems like a good idea to do so and char the other side. Take them off the grill while they still wiggle like raw scallops and pop them in the oven. There your steaks will plump, whereas continued grilling will result in shrinkage; the idea is to trick yourself into believing that the steak you’re eating is bigger than it is. How long you leave it in the oven will depend on how big the steak really is. Don’t worry, you’re probably going to ruin four or five before you get the timing right. The extra-large plate is to emphasize the fact that you’re not having a baked potato or any creamed spinach. A very small sprig of parsley also helps in this respect.
After a fine meal, my wife and I always enjoy a walk. Our steak house was located in the theater district, which meant a walk of about twenty-five blocks to Grand Central Station, and it wouldn’t have been unpleasant at all but for the rain and the fact that we’d not thought to bring an umbrella. My own spirits couldn’t have been higher. That afternoon my editor had told me he thought I’d written a very fine novel indeed. Better yet, he expressed every confidence that I had other good novels in me. I would write them and he would publish them, the very division of labor I had in mind. Mohawk was only the beginning. A corner had been turned.
It was nearly midnight when our train pulled back into New Haven. Barbara had been reading mail she’d hurriedly stuffed in her purse that morning as we headed out the door, so she didn’t immediately respond when I said I was starved and a pizza would really hit the spot. Wooster Street was just a few short blocks away and Frank Pepe’s might still be open. “Look at this,” she said, holding up the twenty-dollar bill that had slipped from one of the birthday cards.
Don’t kid yourself. Nothing beats a white clam pizza at Frank Pepe’s. Not surf. Not turf. If I had any idea how to make such a pizza, I’d give you the recipe.