PROLOGUE

It’s a wonder any of us survived those Friday-night dinners.

They were heated, impromptu little affairs, or at least they had begun that way in the days before the Great Odyssey. Each week I’d invite a revolving gang of friends over, scrape together a couple of dishes using whatever looked harmless in the fridge, and by ten o’clock, with enough wine to pickle a Welsh pony, the atmosphere in my cluttered, steam-filled kitchen seemed perfectly combustible. It was a weatherbeaten little room, dark and stuffy, with a wall of tatty window screens that looked out over a stream. But it was cheerful while we were in it. Warmed by trembling candlelight, we squeezed around a badly stained pine farmhouse table that made no concession for elbows. There was a lot to be said for the informality of it. Everyone pitched in, keeping the traffic flow moving between the stove and the seats. No one minded the rattle and clash. Plates were passed with reckless abandon; I worried about midair collisions, and there were always a few near misses. Otherwise, we ate with a desperate greedy desire, jabbering like magpies late into the night.

The world’s woes were solved over those meals—capital punishment, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Clarence Thomas, you name it; we put the entire Cabinet to shame. The next item on our agenda was the Democratic malaise when one night someone, I think it was Craig, made the mistake of saying, “Boy, the food was good.” Which, somehow, got scrambled in my brain and translated as: “You’re a great cook.” And nothing was ever the same.

Thereafter, by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest, I’d have planned a menu with all the trappings of a state dinner: three courses minimum, plus a cheese platter followed by dessert. A selection of wines was handpicked like pearls to match each dish. Everything else—assisted suicide, the Kurds, even that year’s Oscar race—paled in importance. Those dinners took over my life. Thursdays were spent behind the wheel of my car, scouring the county for groceries and fresh herbs; Fridays, I remained imprisoned in the kitchen, where, by noon, the countertops resembled a grisly forensic lab. Tension would always mount as I raced to finish preparations so that by the time my guests arrived, I’d have grown manic. “Who cares about stem-cell research?” I’d screech, scooping up a trail of loose saffron threads as if they were cocaine. “Taste the fucking flageolets!”

Things had spun out of control.

Of course, my hysteria shouldn’t have surprised anyone who’d come within a mile of me. For several months, I’d been storming around in a cloud of rage, like a bee-stung character in one of those Warner Bros. cartoons. You could almost see the funnel of agitation swirling around me. My closest friends feared I was coming apart at the seams. The causes for my behavior were clear enough. In a relatively short span of time, I’d finished a difficult eight-year book project, a biography of the Beatles, that had left me nearly destitute. To make matters worse, I had fled New York City, which had captivated me like a lover for thirty years. I turned fifty (if only on paper). A fourteen-year marriage ground to an end and lapsed into a bitter divorce, after which I became embroiled in a relationship with a woman…but I am getting ahead of my story.

To escape the constant upheaval, I took refuge in the kitchen. Somehow, amid the knives and icepicks, I felt safe there. Comforted by the awful hush of groceries, I attempted to work out my frustrations, chopping, dicing, slicing, and grinding with the kind of vigor one devotes to, say, global jihad. And I muttered as I worked, providing a demonic counterpoint to the physical assault. The blade of a chef’s knife on wood sounded the backbeat, accompanied by fragments of lyric—she coulda smiled now and then…gave me a hug…it wouldn’ta killed her—that facilitated those purple moods. If art indeed imitated life, then I was doing to pork loins and veal scallops what fate was doing to me.

The dinners themselves, however, gave me something to grab hold of. Nothing else mattered in those precious hours as I labored over a symphony of splattering pots. There was always some clumsy but extravagant concoction in the works: lamb shanks lacquered with a luxuriant pinot-noir sauce bursting with black currants; or sea bass wrapped in prosciutto atop a puddle of salsa verde. I’d clipped the recipes from high-gloss magazines whose pictures had seduced me into believing that any healthy biped could follow the instructions and reproduce to perfection a dish that had probably taken a squadron of cooks and food stylists weeks, if not months, to develop. Yet, on the page, at least to me, the creation looked about as demanding as a paint-by-numbers panel. After all, what was so difficult about melting a few spoonfuls of butter, sautéing shallots, adding a bouquet of fresh herbs, and deglazing a pan with chicken stock or Cognac? It didn’t take a rodeo star to roll and tie a roast. Or a surgeon to bone a sea bass. There was nothing a bedraggled and broke, ex-metropolitan, middle-aged, divorced, pussy-whipped writer couldn’t pull off in the kitchen if he followed directions.

Long before it served to mask my rage, cooking had sustained me. From the age of ten, I was hooked. I took over the family kitchen and tested recipes, mixing ingredients like a mad chemist, and blew up many a chicken potpie. No doubt some of the things I cooked might have qualified as weapons of mass destruction. But I learned how to make veal scallopine, and there was a recipe for steak au poivre I’d personalized by adding Cognac and Worcestershire sauce to the pan drippings. For the longest time I served my family something called “Chicken Divine,” which I got off a Campbell’s soup label. As preparations go, it was child’s play: two tablespoons of Dijon mustard and a can of Cream of Mushroom soup slathered over chicken breasts, the top dusted with a mixture of grated Cheddar and bread crumbs. There was nothing to it, no skillful chopping or herbal infusions, but in those days we served it to company as if presenting a foie gras.

In the years that followed, my cooking skills improved marginally, a triumph of enthusiasm over finesse. As a writer, I spent too much solitary time hunched over a computer, grinding out copy overseasoned with adverbs. Almost incidentally, after working inside my head all day long, cooking became a sort of daily cooldown. It was a different, more physical means of expression. After work, instead of heading to the gym (where I was long overdue), I did my workout on machinery around the stove. You have to give me credit for effort. I worked on my mussels, lifted pie weights; nothing got my heart rate up like a perfect crème anglaise. Meanwhile, I learned hundreds of recipes, all by shorthand, and continued serving them with relentless panache. When things were really cookin’, I was filled with joy. I’d crank up some music, dance at the counter, whisk in hand, and occasionally grab my daughter, Lily, and jitterbug from stove to table.

Everything I made turned out just-so—pleasant enough if a bit soulless. It didn’t matter that my food lacked excitement or style. My friends loved to eat, and whether I realized it or not, they loved to be fed and feted, even if it meant enduring a series of stovetop experiments that often looked better on the plate than they tasted. We made a ceremony out of it. Every Friday night the gang wandered in at the usual hour, delighted that I’d invited them; delighted to see each other; delighted that I’d kicked out the jams; delighted that I’d put some thought into the menu despite the unreliability of my record. There was a lot of approval in it for me, which accounted for my gung-ho approach.

One day, dreaming of food orgies, I came across a recipe for pan-roasted cod in the New York Times Dining section and immediately grew flushed. There was something sensuous about the way it appeared on the page. What I couldn’t get over was its aching simplicity, nothing more than a tiny saddle-shaped fillet dressed with a thorny sprig of thyme, looking lost and forlorn in a copper sauté pan. No sauce, no vegetables, just as buck-naked innocent and provocative as the girl next door. Is it normal to gaze at a hunk of fish as if it were the Penthouse Pet? I doubt it. Anyway, I decided to serve this little wallflower as the centerpiece the following Friday.

Even so, it had never occurred to me that the meal should be an exercise in minimalism. My friends liked to eat sensibly, so they said, and I was determined not to disappoint them. But I wasn’t about to cater to timid stomachs; nothing bored me more than underseasoned food. The cod, on the other hand, gave me a chance to show off with subtle, everyday ingredients and still redeem myself. The week before, feeling extravagant, I’d whipped up a whole roasted beef tenderloin so overcooked it was better adapted to structural than culinary purposes. My guests acted with well-intentioned grace, but they pushed the meat around on their plates until they developed arm cramps. The chickpea ragoût went a long way toward solving the country’s gas crunch. No one even touched the dessert, a swollen little soufflé that later tore through the trash bag like a Scud missile.

I was encouraged by the simplicity of the pan-roasted cod. Instead of the usual rigmarole involved with saucing fish in an aromatic broth or cream, this fillet triumphed on its own essence. Looking at the recipe, I figured it would be a cinch to pull off. All I had to do was to wash and dry a few center-cut fillets before seasoning them on both sides with salt and pepper. Then I needed to cook them, skin side down, for three minutes in a large skillet filmed with a scant tablespoon of peanut oil, just long enough to crisp the skin. After a short interlude in the oven, the pan got two nuggets of butter to baste the fish until it was cooked through. That was it in a nutshell. My friends would no doubt approve of the accompaniments of sautéed escarole and fingerling potatoes.

Phyllis, for one, rarely left anything on her plate. A healthy-looking woman with kind eyes and a foxy grin, she ate with an endearing nervous gusto, the result of a housing-project upbringing in the Bronx, where survival of the fittest meant beating siblings to the table. Though she’d since flourished as a bond trader, a full plate represented something extra, lavish, undue. “No, no, that’s too much!” she’d protest as I carried dishes to the table, pleading with me to give her “half that”—a child’s portion. It never failed that her food disappeared in an instant and she eyed seconds with longing.

“Phyllis, really,” Craig objected, flashing one of those faces that swung between shock and disgust. “I don’t want to hear it tomorrow, when you’re yapping about your stomach.”

Every week it was the same. Their routine, I suppose, was cathartic. Like “Who’s On First?” they played these parts so well and so often that the rest of us knew even the pauses and hand gestures.

The role of straight man especially suited Craig. He was pale and compact, no taller than Phyllis, with the kind of flat Midwestern features that made him seem like a church deacon, which was misleading. Underneath the candy-coated shell lurked an ex-marine with a strong sixties portfolio—Vietnam, drugs, Harleys, the works—contributing to an epic batch of stories. Craig could go on for longer than an opera, with strange rabbitty anecdotes about diesel-fuel efficiency or the mathematical patterns of bird flight or…weird shit like that, but fascinating. He was a stickler for precision and punctuality. If dinner was called for seven o’clock, Phyllis and Craig’s car pulled up to the curb at six fifty-nine and a half and as the clock struck the hour they barged through the door.

Carolyn, on the other hand, always arrived late.

It seemed as if I’d waited hours for her to arrive, although it was probably no more than a few minutes later than the other guests. I stood in the kitchen instead of going to greet her.

Eventually, I poked my head into the living room and caught her eye. “Glad you could make it,” I said, grinning foolishly to show it was meant in good fun. She looked at me coolly. Craig took her coat, and she handed me a bouquet of pale pink peonies wrapped in a paper cone before spiraling back into the gathering, out of my reach.

I laid the flowers on the messy counter. I had hoped Carolyn would help me with dinner, even phoning her earlier to make sure she would be available. “I’ll get there as soon as I can,” she had said, but her reply had been vague.

“We’re drinking pinot grigio,” I said now, holding up an open bottle of Carolyn’s favorite drink.

“I’ll have vodka,” she said. She threw me a quick little smile, perhaps as an afterthought, and the impulsiveness of it made my heart surge.

Carolyn was a slim, attractive woman about my age, although she looked years younger. She had a lovely smile that revealed a single bashful tooth turned slightly away from the others, a protest against perfection. There were times I’d seen her in a tailored suit and admired how she carried it off, but for the most part, like tonight, she wore blue jeans and a crisp white linen shirt, with a gauzy scarf of soft pastel colors tied just so at her neck.

For a year and a half, I had been in love with Carolyn. We met by chance, soon after my marriage broke up, and I was completely in her thrall. Smart and intuitive, well-read and well-informed, she could captivate me for hours with her conversation—adult conversation that I craved as I adjusted to life as a single parent. But she was also difficult, difficult as calculus—and I was never that good at math.

She soon wandered back into the kitchen with a short-handled pitcher—the kind that holds just enough water to splash in a cocktail—and began stuffing it with the flowers. The arrangement was wild but beautiful. Carolyn was nothing if not dramatic.

She stood at the other end of the counter and spoke without looking at me. The flowers were worth her attention. I pretended to busy myself stripping a sprig of thyme.

“I hope you’re not making anything fancy again,” she said. “My stomach can’t take those rich sauces.”

“Don’t worry. We’re having a fillet of cod.”

Her mouth pursed as she fussed with the flowers, but I could see from a softening of her lips that she was pleased. “Oh. Well…that sounds wonderful,” she said, her voice full of relief, even…warmth? “As long as you don’t drown it in butter. Fish doesn’t need to be so greasy.”

I wanted to explain that butter would bring a subtle sweetness to the dish and keep the cod moist and meltingly tender. But Carolyn was the ultimate challenge for an ambitious cook. For her, meals were a necessity, not a source of pleasure. She could be satisfied, as she liked to tell friends, with “a chunk of cheese.” There were plenty of holes to punch in this logic, but if I could win over Carolyn, I’d know I’d arrived as a cook.

I waited until she left the kitchen before turning to the fish. Dinner would take only a few more minutes to prepare, but I didn’t want to feel hurried by anyone looking over my shoulder. Cooking, for me, was not a spectator sport. I needed to concentrate on each recipe in order to produce a finished dish. Besides, I was hardly an artist in the kitchen. No one needed to see me snatch a lamb chop from the floor, finger some eggshell out of a sauce…or stop some bleeding.

Alone again, as the cooking reached a climax, I experienced my usual crisis of culinary confidence. I’m a fool, I thought, to have slaved all day like this. I’m a fool, spending all this time and money on groceries and without a clue as to how everything would turn out. Then I let out a long breath and swayed slightly where I stood, glancing approvingly at the beautifully set table, the mauve sunset in the window, and the candles that flickered like a shrine. A choir of crickets communed outside the screen door.

To put myself at ease I had had more to drink than I should have. Throughout the late-afternoon prep work, I’d polished off two glasses of wine and then, with Carolyn’s unapologetic lateness, a third. In this condition, I felt lifted above a collective intimacy, like an angel in a Chagall tableau, and the kitchen seemed to swim up around me.

Since the divorce, I reflected, the world had become a high-wire act for me. I had felt secure in my family for a very long time. My wife, our daughter, and I used to gather around the dinner table, eating, laughing, and sharing our days, and now when I grew nostalgic about the familiar everyday comforts, I never failed to replay that scene. Occasionally, in a sentimental mood, I paged through my cookbooks, associating different recipes with corresponding dinners I had made for my family, or intended to make for them: coq au vin, boeuf Bourguignon, fajitas, swordfish with mango and black-bean chutney. Now, I stood on the outside of things, testing each new footstep, like a man who might slip and fall. I felt adrift, lost, clumsy. To regain my emotional footing required courage, and I was a quart low at the moment. Carolyn sensed this, and I’m afraid she saw it as weakness.

At least my daughter gave me strength. Most nights, I still cooked for Lily, and most mornings I sent her off to school with a lunch bag full of leftovers, the most gratifying moments of my day. Only eleven years old, Lily was a chef’s ideal at the table, game for trying all my crackpot creations. She was the only kid I knew who’d attack garlicky escargots, a seared foie gras, or a dozen raw oysters with fearless relish, yet. I often felt lonely with just the two of us. With Carolyn, I had hoped to re-create that dream of an intact family around the dinner table—or, at least, to make the perfect dinner—but I worried I couldn’t pull it all together. It seemed that I was too anxious, not thinking clearly enough, to achieve either goal.

Several minutes passed before I felt like resuming the preparations and began to work in a more decisive manner. Everything had to come together, to flow, in a fine orchestration. Recipes were laid on the counter, like the score of a symphony, each dish a separate movement. The steamed potatoes were nearing doneness; the escarole, slick with olive oil, was approaching the wilted stage; a salad of baby arugula, with roasted beets and pear slices, needed dressing; the wine—a late-model Chablis sweating on a trivet—remained corked; a sourdough baguette awaited slicing. On top of everything else, the fish had to hit the oven at precisely the right moment so that it could cook and be served à la minute, still sizzling in its own fragrance.

Everything hovered at the tipping point. Some dishes looked perfect, others needed but a finishing touch. The stove, hot and crowded, with all four burners going full blast, grew more manageable as my confidence rose.

Our friend Lynn hurried in, with another bottle of pinot grigio under an arm and a neatly wrapped gift clutched in the other. She slid the package onto the table and took in the scene as she worked the cork from the bottle.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said in a breathy rush. I looked over at the gleam of the straw-colored wine sluicing up her glass. “But fortunately Carolyn was here to help you. Oh, it all looks marvelous. It must have been so much work. You two must have had your hands full.”

I didn’t have the heart to contradict her. “Could you ask her to come in here for a moment?” I said. “There’s a procedure that requires her expert advice.”

There was an inquisitive silence from the living room. Finally, Craig called out: “Need a hand in there?”

After a long moment, Carolyn appeared at my elbow. “I’ve already had as much talk as I can stand about real estate,” she said.

I handed her the plates. “Would you mind warming these for me? If you just place them between your thighs…”

“Very funny,” Carolyn said, fighting down a smile.

While she dealt them onto an oven rack like a hand of cards, I dressed the fillets with thyme sprigs and placed them evenly around a pan. “You know, it’d be nice if you stuck around here until the food is served,” I said. “I could use some moral support.”

“You seem to be doing fine by yourself.” She sounded determined to believe it. “And, anyway, it’s your dinner party. Big or intimate, simple or splashy, you’re in your element. It would be cruel to deprive you of the glory.”

“That’s kind of a harsh motive to lay on me, don’t you think?”

“Don’t take it the wrong way. It takes effort to absorb all your energy. You don’t even realize it. Really, you should try walking in here one Friday night when you’re in the middle of this extravaganza and experience what it feels like from the other side. It’d be a revelation.”

“Nobody else seems to mind.”

“That’s because they’d lose their meal ticket,” she said. Carolyn realized the sting of her words and backpedaled. “You know how much they love your food. Everyone looks forward to coming here.”

“Everyone except you, it seems.”

“Now you are taking it the wrong way.” With a studied pout, she took a sip from my wine glass, hoping it would distract me enough to reroute the conversation.

I decided to help her out. “You have a nerve looking so lovely tonight.” An errant ray from the overhead fixture danced across the bridge of her nose, revealing the palest polleny triangle of freckles.

“It must be the light in here.”

“Either that, or someone has a portrait of you stashed in their attic.”

“You’ve obviously had too much to drink.” She took the wine glass and smoothly placed it on a high shelf, out of reach. “Maybe it’s a cushion for all this work you put in.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know, all of this. This melodrama.”

She began glancing, aimlessly, lightly, about the room, as though taking a silent inventory, lingering over ingredients that would soon be cooked, looking at the elaborate table setting, the swan’s-neck decanter and hand-painted napkin rings. She flinched at some dried stems of lavender left over from last week’s dinner party that I’d strewn among some pine branches to make a centerpiece. Depending on the lighting, it looked lifted from either Family Circle or Return of the Swamp Thing. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Why must you always go to so much trouble? You insist on going overboard.”

“Because I enjoy cooking—cooking for you. And I love having friends here.”

“It’s only food. No one really cares whether it’s elaborate or not. You could serve….”

“A chunk of cheese. I know, I’ve heard it before.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” she said, her mouth registering the appropriate wound. “You could serve hamburgers and we’d be just as delighted.”

“We’re going to have to order in hamburgers if I don’t get this fish going,” I said, turning my back. “Would you mind dressing the salad while I get to work?”

Carolyn splashed spoonfuls of a simple vinaigrette over the lettuce, while I seared the cod in a preheated skillet and then slid it into the oven. Invariably, the kitchen filled with smoke from some burned bits and grease that stuck to the pan, but tonight only a sweet, steamy perfume bloomed in the surroundings. There was a lot to be said for restraint, and the aroma in the room was fairly singing its praises.

“There’s too much salt in the dressing,” Carolyn said, making quick little gerbil noises with her lips and tongue.

“Here,” I said, removing a portion from the salad bowl and depositing it on a plate. “Just add more oil and vinegar and put it next to your place setting.” I popped the caps on two bottles of fizzy water. “Would you call the gang to the table? It’s showtime!”

The kitchen in the house I’d rented since the divorce was comfortable enough for me and my daughter, but with five adults parading through the narrow aisle to the table in back, it felt like the Lexington Avenue subway at rush hour. There was a small electric range with burners that tilted at strange angles, and a wall of plywood cupboards with doors that swung open at the most inopportune times. In any case, it was difficult to maneuver in what little space there was. Lynn and Phyllis squeezed past me at the stove, holding two wine glasses each above their heads, nearly tripping over Craig, who was crouched at the freezer filling a tumbler with ice cubes. My dog, Wink, was underfoot, as usual. Carolyn hesitated in the doorway, as though deciding whether to join us. Silhouetted in the frame, she seemed to me ever more beautiful, serene. I reached out and pulled her toward me. “Let’s have a good time,” I whispered, lightly kissing her cheek.

“Your fish is going to burn,” she said.

This didn’t seem to be going well. Yet the room was intimate and full of promise; my friends were already absorbed in conversation, in an obvious good mood, and excited about the food I had prepared.

I was pleased that so much thought had gone into the dinner. It was ambitious, though stubbornly unpretentious food, the baby potatoes encrusted in Provençal spices and the escarole as intensely fragrant and green as the lawn just across the way. When the cod fillets came out of the oven, sizzling in their own juices, filling the entire kitchen with the scent of thyme and the sea, it was impossible, under the circumstances, to let any bad vibes intrude.

I didn’t even flinch when Carolyn said, “No potatoes for me.”

The plates were passed clockwise around the table, first to Lynn, who added salad and a generous grind of pepper. Forks were poised over the plates: a beautiful still life, I thought.

As he dug in with gusto, Craig broke into a monologue on the return to glory of modern-day Berlin, while the Chablis relayed quickly from hand to hand.

At times like these, I often disengaged from the conversation to let the tide of the experience wash over me. On one hand, there was relief. There had been so many details, planned and fulfilled, and I glowed with the pleasure that comes with such accomplishment. But sometimes the outcome left me feeling rather melancholy, deflated. I drank some sparkling water, hoping to locate my hunger, while heads bobbed around me, keeping rhythm to Craig’s sermon: yes, yes, mm-hmm, I see. I nodded once or twice as a sign of fellowship, otherwise my mind skimmed across more personal terrain.

Since the new year, when I’d finished my Beatles book, I’d been bumping around like a stray dog, just reading, cooking for friends, and taking long walks on the beach—that is, doing nothing, dolce far niente, as the Italians say. It had been bittersweet, to say the least. In one respect, I’d been celebrating like a madman—the book was finally done. But I was only beginning to understand what a transition I’d undergone, coming to grips with the price I’d paid for the awful descent of my marriage and the fears and excitement of starting anew. My friends had only caught glimpses of this dark domestic drama from which I still hadn’t recovered. I had been forced to take a good hard look at myself, to reevaluate my ability as a writer and my place on the planet.

Turn and face the strange…But all those ch-ch-changes at once seemed extreme for one man to absorb.

And where did Carolyn fit into all this? Her brains and beauty seemed a gift, the perfect antidote. But a relationship needed to grow, to reach the next level gracefully, and there wasn’t anything graceful about this one.

I did expect her to say something about the food. Phyllis’s plate was nearly empty. Rather than ask for more, she seemed content to nibble from Craig’s while he rambled on about café life along Nollendorfplatz. It was Lynn who weighed in first.

“Hats off to the chef,” she said, raising her glass in my direction. “Everything is delicious.”

“As usual,” Phyllis agreed.

“As usual I’ve been jabbering too much,” Craig apologized. Ceremoniously, he picked up a fork and reeled at the evidence of Phyllis’s hunger—the mangled fish, some shredded escarole, the nubby remnants of a potato. “Jesus! It looks like a cyclone blew through here.”

Carolyn followed the action like a spectator at a play, her expression guarded. “How you doing over there?” I asked her, as one might a new acquaintance.

“I’m fine.”

“Because it looks like you haven’t touched anything. I just wondered if it was okay.”

“I could ask you the same question,” she said, nodding at my place setting.

I continued to stare into her silver-blue eyes, shaken by the lingering mystery that continued to attract me. Absentmindedly, I placed a bite of the fillet in my mouth.

My heart sank for the second time that night. From the first forkful I knew that my dinner was anything but a triumph. For one thing, it was obvious that the cod had cooked too long. Somewhere in the last few minutes, the fat had leached out, and with it the supple, briny, moist consistency that turns fish into an ethereal confection. This cod tasted, astonishingly, like any other piece of fish. There was nothing exciting about it, nothing sensuous. That isn’t to say it was not satisfying, but I hated satisfying, unless there was something more, something that made me cry, “Holy shit!” when I bit into it. It needed a boost—perhaps leeks sweated until they were jelly, some enriched stock, and a splash or two of dry vermouth. Perhaps a trip out the window courtesy of my Rubbermaid spatula.

“Oh, this is just luscious,” Craig said, momentarily coming up for air. “The flavors are extraordinary. You’ve outdone yourself, my friend. I applaud you.”

Struggling to maintain my game face, I speared a few leaves of sautéed escarole and lapsed into darker desolation. The once-beautiful greens had taken on a slightly metallic aftertaste, and their texture was all wrong. Ideally, they should have held their shape, which would have brought out a concentrated sweetness; instead they were limp and soggy.

“I especially like the cooked lettuce,” Craig continued helpfully.

“Escarole,” I muttered. “Sorry, but it should have come off the stove much sooner.”

“Oh, it’s perfectly fine,” Carolyn said, sighing. “Why do you always have to find fault with everything you make?”

“It’s supposed to be crisp, that’s all. It would taste different if it were cooked properly.”

“Nobody knows the difference.”

“I know. And I know that the fish is overcooked and the potatoes are tasteless. How’s that for fault-finding, babe?” I didn’t give her a chance to answer. “The problem is, I love good food. I love the ingredients, the process, the smells, the way everything tastes. But like music, it has to hit all the right notes. You can’t cut corners.” Suddenly my voice was two octaves higher. “There are no compromises. You can’t settle for ‘fine’ or ‘good enough.’ I want the fish to melt in my mouth, the escarole to be tender, and potatoes to be full of flavor. Anything less, I feel cheated.”

The dog began to slink away.

“Well, I certainly admire your passion,” Carolyn said. Everyone else looked down uncomfortably.

My passion had gone the way of my appetite, which was to say south. Carolyn, on the other hand, proceeded to eat. I watched her devour the cod with real determination and realized there was nothing more I could do to express how I felt. Our relationship and my cooking turned on the same sorry axis: How could either find balance if I didn’t understand the first thing about them? My passion for Carolyn was deep and irrational. Cooking, I had hoped, was easier to embrace. Perhaps it was not too late for me to conquer that passion, or at least ground it in some kind of tangible skill. Maybe I should think small—start with learning how to cook and leave the rest alone for now.

Thinking about the dinner I had intended to make, I agonized over the dinner I had just served. I felt its clumsy mechanics in every dish. There was nothing imaginative about it, no flair. It was obvious I didn’t know much about cooking. I had the urge to express myself in the kitchen, but I was only executing recipes, hoping they would turn out all right. No matter how good a recipe, how accurate the descriptions and instructions for preparing a dish, I realized that it required that I add something of my own, something basic and probably indescribable, and that meant developing enough versatility to trust my instincts.

I confessed as much to my friends while they helped themselves to more salad. The sad fact, I admitted, was that I needed to learn how to cook, really cook—to grasp the mysteries and magic associated with the process. “Not like this coffee-shop fish on your plates. It takes more than a fancy knife and expensive pans to make delicious food. I need to learn what a chef needs to know and what the secrets are of truly great cooking.” Avoiding Carolyn’s eyes, I said, “Besides, I need to get away for awhile. I need to get my life back on track.”

The table fell silent, waiting. I had veered onto a road inhabited by snipers and land mines. Across the table, the creamy contours of Carolyn’s face changed shape, then stiffened, as she concentrated on pouring more wine. “It sounds like you’re headed for a midlife crisis,” she said, without looking up.

“Maybe you should buy a new Cuisinart,” Lynn offered. “I saw them on sale at Bed, Bath & Beyond.”

Craig was more generous: “Or a few weeks in a cabin, with no phone and a stack of books. Isn’t that what it takes to recharge the ol’ batteries?”

“Something like that,” I said.

Actually, I knew what had to be done, had been dreaming about it for a long time. I’d been distracted, preoccupied for the last eight years, but now seemed like the perfect time to pursue my odyssey, to follow my heart. With any luck, it’d help put my relationship with Carolyn back on track.

“I am getting out of here,” I announced. “I’m going to Europe, to learn how to cook.”

The announcement struck them as absurd, and not even the dog believed it.