The weak December sun filters through the crimson leaves of the sugar maples overhead. This stretch of Quincy Street is uncharacteristically quiet at the moment—she pictures students all tucked into lecture halls, their backpacks slouched at their feet, the cavernous hallways silent. The foliage is still flaunting its riotous colors, later than usual it seems, and she idly names the trees in her head, a habit instilled in her by hours of forest field trips at summer camp (she can still differentiate between a chipping sparrow and a dark-eyed junco by hearing just a few notes of their trills): American sweetgum, smooth sumac, Kentucky coffeetree.
A man cycles past on a bright blue bicycle, a striped scarf fluttering behind him. Busses come and go, heaving themselves to a start after spitting out a stream of passengers. She unwraps her sandwich: roast turkey, Swiss cheese, tomato, and lettuce on toasted seedy bread swiped with pesto mayonnaise. The lack of commotion is a balm to her today—a woman walking past gives her an odd look as she tilts her head back and massages her temples.
She smiles politely in lieu of saying what she’d like to say, which is: “If you’d ever combined bourbon and tequila in the breadth of three hours, you’d feel this way the next morning too!” although she suspects that the woman—who is wearing a tailored herringbone blazer with dark jeans, mauve pointed-toe mules, and a crisp white blouse—is more of a white Burgundy drinker, one who can likely coolly ask a waiter for a bottle and specify that it be from Montrachet, one who probably has never batted an eye at the price on a wine list (or dines primarily at places where there is no price list).
Matthew had been in fine form last night as a host—his latest enthusiasm is craft cocktails, and they are strong. (He has always been a person of many enthusiasms, most of which burn brightly yet briefly, like his interest in rooftop beekeeping which flamed out after 3 months, leaving his apartment strewn with odd paraphernalia like a hive frame grip and elbow-length white leather gloves that looked more appropriate for a Gone with the Wind audition.)
Upon opening the door, Matthew had kissed her on the cheek and then tugged her into the kitchen, pressing a highball glass filled with crushed ice and a pale amber liquid into her hand. “I’m calling it an apple pie fizz!” he said, and she raised her eyebrows. “How...very Ina Garten of you.”
The truth is that, of all his hobbies, mixology seems best suited for him. The cocktail was dangerously easy to drink: a mix of apple butter, bourbon, ginger beer, and cinnamon bitters with a cinnamon sugared rim.
Matthew works in consulting. To imagine his day job, he quipped once, you’d have to banish all traces of creativity from your mind and picture a very dull, but very exhausting, parade of spreadsheets. Add to that a hefty travel schedule that takes him from city to city each month, and it’s hard to comprehend exactly why someone as funny and warm and interesting as he is would want to do the job at all. Having known him in college, full of lightness and ambition and fun, she feels he has landed on an expected (read: lucrative) but misplaced path
She’d asked him this very question once, in so many words, over pomegranate sticky ribs and smoked eggplant hummus at Sarma. Matthew had just landed at Logan from a long-haul flight back from Singapore, where he was overseeing a project involving a very demanding client who manufactured—of all things—ophthalmic lasers for corrective eye surgery. His hair was flattened in the back from the half-sleep of flight, and his eyes were red and tired-looking.
He’d laughed when she’d said it (“God, Matthew, how do you keep doing this job?”) and had replied, “Money. Really, that’s why. Money,” reaching over her to tear off a piece of simit bread and drag it through the pomegranate sauce.
Even in a perfectly tailored suit, walking briskly into a glass office with a determined expression, Matthew retains a boyish charm that no amount of prestige can dim. His tousled blonde curls are forever tumbling into his eyes, and he has a very child-like habit of pushing at them with the back of his hand. One deep dimple appears in his left cheek when he smiles, as if someone had reached over when he was a baby and—pop!—stuck a finger right into his chubby face.
Women find Matthew irresistible; Matthew has no idea that they do. He is forever misreading signals from girls, thinking they’re being friendly when in fact, they’re one step away from unbuttoning their blouse and writing their phone number across the swell of their creamy breasts for him.
The crowd last night was a typical Matthew mix: a smattering of coworkers and their friends, a few couples who live in his building, a knot of his college fraternity brothers (the sort of men who used to be fresh-faced and athletic and are now either ruddy-cheeked and athletic or, in most cases, gaining the sort of paunch that strains the buttons of their shirts and belies a stodginess yet to come as the years pass), more mutual college acquaintances at whom she smiled vaguely and made polite small talk, and an assortment of people in Matthew’s orbit: a few guys from his Saturday morning soccer league, three women from his MBA program, and so on.
As she wandered around the living room, she was glad for the drink in her hand, which gave her something to do, but also meant that she drank it twice as fast as she meant to. Matthew’s boss, a bright-eyed Irishman named Aiden, ushered her towards the bar with a hand on the small of her back and refilled her glass, all the while telling a hilarious but hard-to-follow story involving Matthew, a very formal client dim sum dinner, and a misplaced chopstick.
Time tumbled on in fits and starts as it does at such parties, the bourbon imbuing the ticking past of minutes with a pleasant, syrupy quality. She reached for her phone every now and again, running her finger over its edge but not taking it out of her pocket, like a talisman that could summon him at any moment.
She won’t see him until the following afternoon, when he’ll drive down to meet her with his friend Alfie—a name she always privately thinks suits him to a tee, as it conjures up floppy-eared, sloppily affectionate family dogs or attractive Colin Firth-esque British men with rumpled shirts and impish smiles. Alfie is all of that in one adorable package, although he is also an incorrigible bachelor who spends his free time primarily on grand outdoor adventures (he’s hiked the Camino, the John Muir Trail, and most of the PCT and he’s currently planning to tackle the Paine Circuit of the Torres del Paine next). Alfie is up for anything: Beers in the afternoon lazing about in the sun? He’ll bring the beer. A spur-of-the-moment kayak trip? He has a kayak. Late night pizza? Always.
Alfie is the reason she has skinny-dipped at a wedding in Ipswich, unzipping her silk cocktail dress and racing into the water while the rest of the guests were forking up fondant-covered lemon meringue wedding cake (soaked with Italian limoncello syrup and filled with a cloud-like sumac-infused whipped lemon mousse) and stumbling around the dance floor while the band segued into the afterparty playlist.
They’d all emerged from the inky black water, sputtering and laughing, and had to sneak back up the hill clutching their clothes in order to find a towel in the back of Alfie’s car with which to dry off before getting dressed and running barefoot back into the grounds of the extremely fancy estate, garnering more than a few questioning looks from the waitstaff.
Alfie drives a maroon 900 Turbo Saab that looks like it shouldn’t turn on but somehow does. The interior of the car smells like a combination of chewing tobacco, fresh pine, and the spicy drugstore deodorant he wears.
When they arrive tomorrow, she will go meet them and Alfie will coax her into abandoning her plans for their dinner date in favor of some unknown debauchery with him—he’ll take them to some party (he always knows of a party going on) and introduce them to dozens of people. Invariably, an hour in, a pretty girl will have attached herself to his arm, and he’ll announce a grand idea to go sit in a booth at Charlie’s Kitchen and order double cheeseburgers. She’ll borrow a few quarters and go put Bob Seger on the jukebox and they’ll all sing at the top of their lungs.
After a cab ride through the darkened streets (his hand slung around her neck, his fingertips just gently grazing the skin of her shoulder in a way that makes her want to stop the car and ask everyone please to leave them), Alfie will be the one to drag them into a corner store so he can pick up a pack of cigarettes (smoking is Alfie’s least attractive quality). He will return, triumphantly holding a plastic bag over his head and say gleefully, “I got everything we need!”
She will wonder what anyone could possibly need at 1 AM, other than a large bottle of water and some Saltines and their bed, and will laugh when they find a bench and he unpacks the following: potato chips, four waters, and two Kit-Kats. “A Kit-Kat,” Alfie will intone solemnly, “is the best hangover prevention food. Medically recommended.” As he snaps each one apart and hands them around, he will tap his against everyone else’s, like he’s doing a cheers with a glass, and she will watch as the girl (whose name turns out to be Cleo, and who knows Alfie from summer camp of all places and is clearly infatuated) accidentally drops hers, then giggles too loudly.
Then they’ll say goodbye, walking back to her apartment as Alfie and Cleo stay intertwined on the bench (she’s unclear about where Alfie plans to stay but he always has friends everywhere with a futon or a couch or a penthouse suite at the Four Seasons). Once they’re under her covers, he’ll lean over and kiss her softly and she’ll laugh and tell him that he tastes like potato chips.
“But, you love potato chips, so that’s good,” he’ll say. And then she’ll find herself telling him about a casserole her mom used to make when they were little: an odd but incredible dish of chicken and diced celery in a creamy sauce (the secret being a packet of store-bought ranch dressing mix), topped with a layer of crushed potato chips and cheddar cheese which got toasty and gooey in the oven.
“Potato chips...in a casserole?” he’ll muse, “okay, okay. Weird.”
“But is it really?” she’ll say. “They’re good in sandwiches—as you know—and the other day I crumbled them into chocolate chip cookie dough and may I just say: A+.”
“You did what? I needed to know this at the time,” he’ll say back, and she’ll remember that she still has some in the freezer and will tiptoe out to the kitchen to get two, warming them briefly on a plate and bringing them back to bed, where he eats one and groans loudly with pleasure, making her laugh until they forget about the cookies altogether.
Potato Chip Cookies
Makes about 2 dozen cookies
3 cup (360g) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (226g) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (213g) brown sugar
1/3 cup (66g) granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups lightly crushed potato chips or crisp, salty crackers
2 cups (340g) dark chocolate chips or chunks or chopped chocolate
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and set aside.
Cream together the butter and both sugars until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium speed in a stand mixer.
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each and then add the vanilla.
Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined.
Using a spatula, fold in the potato chips and chocolate.
Place big spoonfuls of dough onto the baking sheets, leaving some space as they’ll spread. (You can also chill the dough at this point, or shape the cookie dough balls and freeze them if you want to get ahead.)
Bake the cookies until golden brown on the edges, about 10 to 12 minutes.