Food Whore Read Free Page B

out of there.”
    I made a sound of agreement, but my skin still tingled from Michael Saltz’s kiss.
    E LLIOTT AND I had planned to wander our new neighborhood for good restaurants, but I didn’t want to socialize after the NYU reception disaster. Instead, I made an excuse and stayed in my apartment and thought.
    Now my application was out of my hands.
    I needed to get the Helen Lansky internship and wanted to start the year on the right foot.
    In retrospect, I’d had so many things handed to me in high school and college. But after that article, I’d stagnated, waiting for opportunities to arrive at my doorstep. I’d devoted myself to articles that only a handful of ­people read.
    And I’d thought I’d land a top-­tier graduate school internship placement with a batch of cookies.
    As much as I didn’t want to acknowledge it, Michael Saltz had put something into sharp relief. I couldn’t stand idle about my own future now. I had gotten all the way to grad school with one person in mind. Why would I leave my entire future in other ­people’s hands if I had the ability to help things along?
    I wasn’t thrilled about accepting back-­channel help from an erratic, mysterious stranger, but I decided my days of passive waiting were over. This was New York, and if you don’t push, you’ll be pushed. And I couldn’t let that happen.
    I pulled Michael Saltz’s email address out of my pocket. He had written it on a receipt from a restaurant called Sargasso. The total: $608. Each line was some complicated dish reduced to two words: offal terrine; rye risotto; papaya choux . It was a different food world than Helen’s. I had fifteen of her books on my bookshelf and not one of them had a recipe for rye risotto. What did rye risotto taste like, anyway?
    I typed out the email address—­a vague collection of random letters and numbers—­pecking at the keys one by one. I kept my message short and sweet, knowing deep down that this was an underground transaction, wrong in some intangible way I couldn’t put my finger on.
    Hi—­I’ve attached my essay. Please let me know if Helen needs anything else.
    But he was the one doing me the favor. So I deleted the last line and started again.
    Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.
    Send.
    I still don’t know what made him pick me. Maybe my cookies had told him something about the level of my desire. Or maybe he’d know from that one line—­ anything else I can do for you—­ that I would play by his rules, as long as it got me closer to Helen.
    He never responded to my email. The next time he wrote to me, it was under his real name.

 
    Chapter 2

    â€œH EY! D ON’T YOU LOVE MANGOES?”
    Emerald Grace whirled through the door in a backless teal boho maxi dress with three bags and a big leather purse hurled over her shoulder. The straps of her bag tamped down her long hair and I thought she looked quite beautiful and exciting, like an heiress forced out of her mansion by revolutionaries.
    My glamorous roommate had returned.
    I had moved in two weeks earlier and seen her just three times since, always at weird times when she seemed to be rushing off to somewhere more important. I had found the apartment through Roooomies.com and ultimately chose it because Elliott’s new place was two blocks away. He and I had considered living together, but we’d both heard horror stories of college ­couples who made misguided decisions to cohabitate in New York. Suddenly, you have less space, things cost more, work winds you up. Explosions abound. Besides, there was always next year, and we didn’t want to rush it.
    And so I’d sublet a room in Emerald’s three-­bedroom in the East Village. Emerald and I had Facebook friended and chatted a bit. There were a lot of exclamation points and Can’t wait s to soften the blow of