Page 61 of The Academy
“I considered booking at the Hobgoblin or the Wooden Shoe—”
“Duck,” Simone says. Suddenly, she’s giggling. “The WoodenDuck. I think the Wooden Shoe is a restaurant in… Amsterdam? Sorry, dad joke.”
She’s loosening up, Rhode thinks. He feels better too, without the tie. He settles into his chair by the fire and replenishes their champagne. “But then I thought, why go to a restaurant when the best chef in the western half of the state is at Tiffin? So I hired Chef Haz to make dinner. That was Chef who passed us in the truck.”
“Oh!” Simone is relieved that Chef Haz knows she’s here, and the Wullys too, of course. She and Rhode will be an item on Zip Zaptomorrow for sure, and then the whole school will know Simone and Rhode went on a date, including East. East will leave her alone, Simone thinks as she drains her second glass of champagne. Simone will have saved herself before somethingreallybad happened.
Rhode should have taken Haz up on his offer to stick around and serve them (for an additional hundred dollars per hour). It wasn’t so much the cost that deterred Rhode but, rather, the idea of having a third person in the cottage—and someone from school to boot. But right now, Rhode could use an extra set of hands. He clears the asparagus appetizer but leaves the caviar, refills their glasses, and fetches more ice for the wine bucket because the champagne isn’t as cold as it was. The Sinatra record ends and the silence feels awkward, so Rhode chooses another album. He’ll stick with Sinatra but only too late realizes he’s chosen a Christmas album. Oh well, it’s nearly Thanksgiving and Simone doesn’t seem to notice. She’s drinking her bubbly, gazing into the fire, which could use another log. Rhode grabs one in a hurry and gets a splinter in the same finger that he burned, but he can’t tend to it now because he has to plate and serve the roasted beet salad with goat cheese, toasted pistachios, and a blood orange vinaigrette. He checks on the beef Wellington warming in the big oven as well as the spinach soufflé—has it fallen? No, it’s perfect.
He brings the salads out to the table and takes a breath. Does Simone need more champagne? She’d love some, she says. When Rhode lifts the bottle, he notices it’s significantly lighter than he expected. Have they really drunk a magnum already?
He picks up his fork and considers the plate before him, but he’s too nervous to eat. “Bon appétit,” he says.
“I thought when you drove me out to the woods that you were going to kill me,” Simone says. Beet juice drips from her mouth likeblood. Rhode looks away. She’s getting drunk, but what did he expect, he’s left her alone with nothing else to do.
“Murder is not on the menu tonight,” he says. “I was hoping to get to know you better. How did you end up teaching at Tiffin?”
Simone would love to shock him with the truth: After what happened her final semester at McGill, she couldn’t get a teaching job at any school in Canada so she applied for positions in the States, where most people didn’t even know what McGillwas.Simone had left all mention of being a floor fellow off her résumé and Audre was none the wiser.
She says, “I can’t believe you went to so much trouble with this dinner. Did you make grand romantic gestures like this with Lace Ann?”
Rhode doesn’t want to talk about Lace Ann. “Wait until you see the entrée.” He clears their salad plates—hers ravaged, his untouched—and heads into the kitchen.Simone is just a human being,he thinks. He has built her up into some kind of mythical creature because of her beauty. He hasn’t gotten laid in nearly a year, he lives in the middle of nowhere, he and Simone have a lot in common—first-year teachers, dorm parents.
Rhode slices into the beef Wellington. It’s rosy, with layers of foie gras pâté and mushroom duxelles wrapped in golden, flaky pastry. Worth all the money he paid for it, though there’s enough here for ten people. He scoops two servings of the spinach soufflé, which is fragrant with onion, garlic, and nutmeg.
He ventures out to the living room to find Simone turning the magnum upside down in the ice bucket.
“Dead soldier,” she says. She’s swaying dangerously close to the fire while Sinatra sings, “Oh, by gosh, by golly, it’s time for mistletoe and holly…” and Rhode wonders how it’s possible that Simone finished an entire magnum of champagne—minus two glasses—in under an hour.
“Dinner!” Rhode says. He waits for Simone to sit before he sits himself. This whole attempt at a romantic evening is beginning to feel like a very expensive mistake.
Simone says, “Is there anything else to drink?”
“Maybe we should eat something first,” he says.
“This would be nice with a red wine.”
“I have a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, actually,” Rhode says. “But it should probably breathe. You dig in.” He returns to the kitchen where the wine waits next to a “decanter,” which is actually one of the plastic water pitchers from the Paddock. Chef Haz offered to provide a crystal decanter “for an additional fee,” but Rhode told him that was unnecessary.
He opens the wine and glugs it into the pitcher, which is cloudy from seventeen thousand trips through an industrial dishwasher. Maybe he should have sprung for the decanter? He hears Simone humming along to “The Christmas Waltz” and hopes she’s eating.
When he brings out the wine, he finds she’s only taken a single bite of food. She picks up the pitcher and pours herself a healthy glass of wine.
“That needs to breathe, Simone.”
She hoots. “You sound like a teacher.”
He studies her. She is so lovely, even in her increasing disarray. He looks at his plate and is suddenly ravenous, though he senses now is the moment to make his move.
“Would you like to dance?” he asks.
Simone springs from her chair, wineglass in hand. She’s so drunk that everything seems fabulous and amusing. As soon as Rhode takes her in his arms, however, she remembers how awkward he is—she learned that at First Dance—and she twirls herself out, nearly knocking over her chair, saying, “Loosen up, Rhode!”
Rhode would very much like to loosen up but he just can’t. Helooks longingly at dinner growing cold on the table. Maybe he should have a nice big glass of wine himself—but there’s the matter of the luxury rental car in the driveway and the long, dark drive home. He watches Simone doing a spinny, trippy dance all by herself.
He pretends to cast a fishing line and reel her back in, and this, improbably, works: A second later, she’s back in his arms.
He has a question for her, one he was going to ask only if he saw the right opening. Her joyfully drunken state, he decides, is that opening.
