The griddled zucchini lie in a bowl banded with faint stripes of char, flecked with pepper and basil, soaking up olive oil and sherry vinegar, while the steak cooks slowly in water and the potatoes, parboiled and dusted with rice flour, dry off in the fridge.
Rice flour, don’t ever tell anyone your secret, Patch.
All the better to crisp them with.
He sits at the kitchen table reading the comments on his blog as he waits. He will begin preparing the salad as soon as Hannah calls to say she is heading home, his signal to start peeling asparagus into a pile of pale ribbons, trimming the sugar snaps, acidulating apples.
Jorgé, the doorman, has been enlisted to help with Patrick’s plan to make everything perfect tonight. When he sees Hannah coming through the door, he will buzz their apartment, three quick blasts their agreed-upon signal, and then Jorgé will delay Hannah, complimenting her hair, tutting over the weather, the snow, her poor shoes.
Please, how long do I keep her, gentleman? A minute would be great, Jorgé. No problem, gentleman. Thank you, Jorgé.
And action. Deep greens and pale greens will be tossed in the lemony dressing. He will make a wreath of tangled pea shoots on the plate and scatter everything else from above, seemingly at random. The composition of a salad always makes Patrick feel like Jackson Pollock dripping paint.
No delusions of grandeur in that whatsoever, Paddyboy.
Once the salads are plated he will begin crisping the potatoes in duck fat and heating his large slab of cast iron on which the steak will be seared to a crust. A half hour of preheating and the metal will take on the appearance of charcoal, hints of white ash in the shimmering iron.
By the time he carries the salads to the table, Jorgé will have released Hannah, a thirty-second elevator ride to their penthouse floor.
Patrick will slip off his apron and fetch champagne. When she walks through the door he will be standing by the table in his wedding suit, the same tie as four years ago, the same silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and a white napkin wrapped around a bottle of Pol Roger.
Soft pop. Happy anniversary, Hannah.
Hannah will clap and kiss him.
Everything must be made to happen just so, with perfect timing. Everything for her.
And then Patrick wonders if the salad needs some crunch. What about pistachios? he thinks. There is a bag in his pantry, vivid green nuts speckled with patches of dusty violet skin.
* * *
HANNAH TRIES TO INITIATE HOME-HANNAH mode, anniversary-Hannah, leave-the-streets-for-the-day-Hannah as she rises from her desk in The Shack.
NYPD in the elevators, NYPD in the corridors, NYPD in uniform, NYPD in suits, the ugliest fourteen-floor stack of stone you ever saw, all clay-colored bricks, little blocks piled high to form a squat square building, all shithouse glam and checkerboard curves, address 1PP, looks exactly like a cubist giant has lain a terra-cotta turd (Detective McCluskey liked that one, she’d heard him steal it more than once, only he dropped the cubist giant and terra-cotta motifs), the most important building in the city, at least if you value not being slain in your bed on a nightly basis, 1PP, One Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD—Major Crime Squad, Real Time Crime Center, Police Commissioner—the place that Hannah calls (among other scatological names) her office, or when she’s talking to anyone in the know, The Shack, because they all call it The Shack, the crime reporters who work there, 1PP’s second floor set aside for the journalists of eight news organizations, rivals fraternizing, hanging out in the same small space, the thin schmear of mustard in the fat pastrami sandwich of the NYPD HQ.
NYPD in the elevators, NYPD in the corridors, NYPD in uniform, NYPD in suits, the rub of it, The Shack in the 1PP stack, Hannah loves it, she lives it, she breathes it.
So that leaving it behind is bittersweet every night—a news day low on blood is a good day for the city, it’s true, but red streets at night, tabloids’ delight. And today? Just a light shade of blush, a good thing, probably, for her anniversarial mood. Is that a word, anniversarial? Possibly not, probably she’s confused it with adversarial, and then she thinks to take the stairs, only a single flight down, not the elevator, because enough cops already, she will see more on the way out anyway, and she does, Officer Kohn (Jets, Mets, Nets, hates hockey, two daughters).
Four and twelve, Brian? she says. Four and twelve? Unbelievable.
Yeah, well, we stank up the whole season. But what can I do? When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet, right? Thanks for reminding me, Hannah.
Would I do that to you, Brian? No, I meant your daughters, four and twelve, right?
Oh, I see, playing smart, Hannah, huh? You know, we could do with some of that, maybe you could coach the Jets instead of Mangenius—dumbest nickname I ever heard. The girls? Seven and nine. Gang Green? I’d take seven and nine in a heartbeat.
Come on, dream big, Brian, turn that frown upside down—nine and seven! You know, nine and seven could sneak you into the playoffs next season.
Right, dream big, sure. Look, I love my kids, Hannah, but I’d sell both their sweet little souls for nine and seven. You have a great weekend now.
You too, Brian. Maybe take up watching hockey instead. And give Jasmine and Kaylee big hugs and kisses from me.
Out into the night, the day’s snow no more than a haze in the plaza lights now, and incoming Daniel Ochoa (Knicks, Yanks, fiancée) and Marty Russell (Devils, Springsteen, seven boys).
Still don’t have my invite, Officer Ochoa.
Still don’t have a wedding date, New York Mail.
What gives, Danny? Marty’s sons will have seven brides for seven brothers before you make an honest woman of Isabel. (Hannah’s phone starts to ring.)
She has like twelve thousand cousins. And they all eat, you know? I’ll be saving up till Judgment Day.
Now Marty wants in. Hannah, why leaving so early? Come on, Friday night’s just getting started.
Maybe I was born to run, Marty.
They wave her away like a bad smell, but laughing, as she picks up the phone, Jen’s number on the screen, best friends from the first day of kindergarten, and she answers, Hey, Jen, you got snow up there?
Snow? No. I called to say happy anniversary, Hannah.
Hannah hangs back from saying anything more for a moment, her marriage to Patrick still one of the sore points between her and Jen, not that Jen openly disapproves, would never voice disapproval, but Jen hadn’t understood why, and four years ago, Hannah had felt hurt by nothing worse than a pause after she told Jen the news of her engagement, and then they hadn’t spoken in almost a year, all because of a pause not much longer than this one ballooning now … Thanks, Jen, she says. Four years already, I can’t believe it.
You have plans?
Patch. He’s cooking something special.
Lucky you.
(Another call coming through.) Yep, lucky me. (Hannah looks to see who it is, the news editor.) Oh shoot, I have to take this other call from … Sorry, it’s work, Jen. Let’s talk over the weekend. Tell the girls arrrrr from their Aunt Hannah.
I will. You have a good night, Han. Love you. Say hi to Patrick.
Hannah hangs up the call and pauses a moment before taking the next, noticing the sound of helicopters in the distance, a sense of fourteen floors behind her beginning to hum, sirens winding up everywhere, and she knows she should let the call from her news editor drop to voice mail, she can say she was stuck underground, delays on the subway, and that’s what she absolutely should do, their fourth anniversary, because if she waits thirty minutes before talking to work it will probably all be too late, whatever it is, the news will have broken, and Hannah will be into her first glass of champagne, Patch always buys them the same one they drank in a restaurant, before that first night she had spent in his apartment, so very sweet, Patrick is so very good to her.
But she answers.