The television is on with the volume muted in the waiting room. She tries to avoid looking at it, concentrating instead on the magazine in her lap — a back issue of the New Yorker open to an article on tracking musk oxen in the Alaskan wilderness — but the persistent neon flashing proves impossible to ignore.
She sighs, and sets the magazine aside, folding one leg up underneath the other and adjusting her weight in the overstuffed chair. The news anchor’s million-watt smile fills the screen, just above the ticker tape of breaking updates scrolling slowly at the bottom of the frame. All anyone is talking about is the storm: up to 19 inches predicted for Pembroke, 24 for downtown Boston, and Sharon forecast to be inundated with almost 30.
Outside the sky is still an innocuous-looking dove gray, but far off in the distance a strip of pewter-colored clouds are gathering. She feels a low-level anxiety fizzing in her stomach, like a bell is sounding for her to rush to the store and stock up on a week’s worth of Rice Chex and beef stock and canned beans. Storms always elicit disquietude in her, even though she isn’t in any danger: She doesn’t need to drive anywhere, she has a kitchen full of food and dozens of restaurants that will deliver even in the depths of a Noreaster. (Bostonians have weathered this kind of snow — and worse — for generations, and very little could bring the city to a standstill. The cafe around the corner, a cramped and nondescript spot notable to her only for the lack of lines and kind-eyed Indian owner — a man in his late sixties who always urges her to take a currant scone even though she’s never ordered anything but a coffee with milk — has only ever closed once for inclement weather, and that was because the temperature had dipped below 0°F and a pipe above the cafe had frozen and burst, flooding the peeling black and white tiled floor.)
Why, she wonders, is she so quick to sense danger? Up until her late twenties, she’d considered herself impervious to danger, if she considered it at all. Danger was something about which other people warned her — danger was a should: you should worry about getting mugged, sleeping around, cancer, your finances, your job, a better career, a husband, your fertility, your 401K, the stock market, global warming. To adults, it seemed to her, life was a series of tragedies you tried to avoid, like you were playing in a high stakes video game and had to stay sharply attuned to the obstacles whizzing towards you.
Danger wasn’t imminent to her, not really. It was implausible that anything truly bad would happen — and why wouldn’t she feel that way? Nothing ever had. Her low lows were vague and relatively mellow: the year her parents fought endlessly and her dad slept on her uncle Mark’s couch for three weeks, the time she was cut from the varsity field hockey team, her entirely inevitable and foreseeable break-up with her high school boyfriend after three months of long-distance college dating.
When she filled out medical forms, she automatically ticked off all the no boxes: no family history of anything wrong, no drugs, no issues, nothing but her strong, lithe body showing up reliably every day. Aside from a few ear infections and a broken wrist (an overly ambitious snowboarding trip to Telluride for senior week), she had the luxury of thinking about her body in an entirely superficial way: She wished her breasts were rounder, her feet more delicate, her biceps more toned.
She tries to pinpoint the moment when it all flipped: Was there a Catcher in the Rye-esque coming-of-age moment when she crossed the threshold into adulthood, as if someone had handed her a pair of dark glasses and the world suddenly revealed lurking, perilous corners?
During her junior year in college she’d been invited as a research assistant on a trip to Botswana headed by her epidemiology professor, a mild-mannered yet brilliant man named David Clarke who had a handlebar mustache and a soft Dutch accent. Along with three post-doctoral fellows, they had traveled for three weeks through the rural villages edging the Okavango Delta documenting the progress of clinical trials of antiretroviral drugs as part of the AIDS initiative Dr. Clarke headed. After they wrapped their final day of work, they’d boarded a flight in Gaborone headed for the city of Windhoek. The airport was hot and dusty, the attendants at the gate lackluster and slow, as if the syrupy heat was enveloping them like molasses.
She’d never before felt nervous flying, but the seat covers were ripped and the outside of the plane indicated that it had sat in disrepair on some desert tarmac for years. When they landed safely, she bowed her head and thanked some nameless god, praying silently although she hadn’t said a prayer in earnest since the fifth grade when the Sunday school teacher at her Episcopal church sternly told her that she wouldn’t get chocolate in her Easter basket unless she did. (Cadbury mini eggs notwithstanding, she quickly determined that attending church was bearable because of the good cookies at the parish hall after services but that the practical necessity of faith was beyond comprehension.)
Windhoek turned out to be a disappointment: empty and bleak, like a movie set, with an off-putting German influence — gothic touches like pyramid spires and flared eaves stuck out against the desolate wind-swept landscape.
Dr. Clarke had taken them out for a celebratory dinner at a restaurant he liked (being a regular to this corner of the world, he knew the city well) which was packed and raucous, as if everyone in the city had RSVP’ed to the same party. Less of a restaurant and more of an assemblage of tiki-esque thatched cabanas with fire pits dotting every cluster, like a poolside resort in Cabo with an African twist, the restaurant was called — incongruously enough — Joe’s Beerhouse. Tucked into a table beside the crowded open-air bar, they’d allowed Dr. Clarke to order for them. When the food came, a willowy server leaned down and placed platters of family-style dishes in the center of the table, announcing the contents of each in melodious-accented English. Spiced potatoes sliced in fat wedges and deep-fried, sticky barbecue sauce-coated chicken wings, some sort of dal-like stew of spinach and coconut over couscous. Small dishes of mielepap, the ubiquitous African cornmeal porridge, spooned up with peri-peri sauce.
Dr. Clarke smiled blandly but widely as the server set down the final plate with a flourish, her silver bangles tinkling and clicking as she said, “crocodile fillet with feta cheese.”
“Go on,” he said, gesturing at the plate and then towards the rest of the table. “Try it. Tastes like…well, I won’t say it tastes like chicken because quite frankly it doesn’t. But it’s quite good.”
(It wasn’t, she thought, quite good. But it was mild enough and she chewed and swallowed gamely, washing it all down with a swig of beer.)
The next day, she met two of the fellows in the lobby of their hotel. They sipped paper cups of coffee silently, each wincing through their hangovers in the bright daylight. Several blocks away was an adventure travel shop where tourists could book day-long excursions to go sandboarding and ATV riding through the Namibian desert. A tanned, weathered-looking Dutch expat manned the desk — his blond hair curled behind his ears and his face crinkled into a grin when they entered. After a lengthy discussion and exchange of bills, they signed a liability release form and promised to meet his van in the late afternoon.
Hours later, he picked them up and drove for a few miles to a large empty field where a few small airplanes were parked. Her heart beat aggressively in her chest, as if her rib cage could barely hold it in, as she clambered into the back of the six-seater plane. Twenty minutes later, they were gliding above the golden swoops and ridges of the sand dunes below and the Dutchman was buckling her into her parachute.
Time went strange and elastic the moment she stepped out of the plane, as if everything was moving in slow motion and warp speed at the same time. The Skeleton Coast was spread out before her, the world cut into clean lines: the white-capped blue of the ocean against the reddish desert sand. Far off in the distance the sand was broken up by a circle of white: this was the famous clay pan of Sossusvlei with its eerie Dali-esque landscape of twisted dead trees.
Later, whenever she tells people she’s gone sky-diving — at parties or over cocktails — she wishes she could explain the simultaneous sensations of fear and freedom that flooded her body in those brief minutes. But instead she nods, “Yes! Such an experience,” and leaves it at that.
Did she use up all her fearlessness on that single jump — cast it somewhere into the hazy sandstorm of the Namib Desert, along with the shipwrecked remains of colonial schooners and the shiny scorpions that scuttled soundlessly along the dunes?
Or was it upon returning home, to an existence so solidly safe and placid — verdant green suburbia with its picnic tables and cookouts and soccer games and soft pretzels at the mall — that made her suddenly and acutely afraid? Is the anticipation of danger worse than danger itself? Do you worry about loss only when comfortably in possession of something you might lose?
Ping! comes a loud noise and she looks up, startled out of her reverie. A man two chairs over frowns down at his phone as it continues to chime in an angry sort of way. He runs a hand over his maroon tie, which even at a distance she can tell is made of a silk so sumptuous it screams money, set off by his tailored navy suit and crisp white shirt. Partner at a private equity firm, she thinks. Two children…no, three. Two boys, one girl. Graduate of Exeter and Brown (the choice of matriculation at the latter being his single meek attempt at rebellion against his patrician, Yale legacy family). A fixture on the squash courts at the Union Club.
Drawing his character sketch in her mind is comforting, like watching a romantic comedy where one plus one reliably equals two — in the real world, no single person is so cleanly and simply defined. Messy, she thinks. Gray area, and she looks out again at the gathering clouds.
Two nurses are motioning to her through the glass partition and she leaps up, eager to be finished with this entire event and eager to be heading home, towards a shower and the quiet, anticipatory ritual of evening ablutions: finding something pretty to wear, like dark jeans and that pink cashmere sweater that drapes open down her back, exposing the delicate arc of her spine, and a gold necklace so fine it’s almost invisible save for the tiny diamond that winks against the soft skin of her collarbone, dewy with the Chanel tuberose lotion she wears every time she sees him.
Tonight the snow will be coming down in a thick curtain, impossible to distinguish from the growing darkness except where the streetlamps cast their amber light like haloes, illuminating the snowflakes as they rush dizzily to the ground like so much confetti. The bright disks of lamplight will look like golden coins against the night; she will imagine gathering them up and slipping them into her pocket, feeling their heft and cool weight, hearing them clink together.
If not for him, she’d stay home, curled on the couch underneath a blanket with a bowl of ramen ordered in from Amateras near South Station. Her inclement weather order never changes: the yuzu shio ramen with roasted seaweed, the springy noodles buoyant in the lightly salted broth lashed with citrus, and a side of edamame; she’d be looking forward to pouring herself some of the wine Hadley had left for her. (Hadley had opened a bottle of a Pinot Gris last night and only drank a glass and a half before falling asleep midway through an episode of Downton Abbey with a bowl of popcorn half-eaten next to her.)
The wine is very, very good and shouldn’t be wasted — it’s a perk of Hadley’s latest love interest. Hadley has very little space for dating (she would say none), and rather than pursue relationships she engages in a series of quick-lived romances that result in third dates, at most. These brief affairs burn hotly then flame out as soon as any effort is required on her part. “I am actually saving lives,” she jokes. “I really don’t have time to talk about feelings.”
Her latest infatuation is with the bartender at a wine bar downtown that specializes in tinned fish, small production wines, and — apparently — cute Australian employees. Mack is blond and muscled; his looks, paired with his accent, would put him more at home at a surf shop than behind a polished wooden bar pontificating on the debate over sulfur derivative additives.
She wonders if Mack might have some staying power, unlike any of Hadley’s other suitors. Little indications of Hadley’s interest keep cropping up: Hadley slips Mack’s name into conversation unnecessarily, saying things like, “Mack likes the slices at Ducali better” when she suggested they pick up pizza at Regina for dinner. Last week, she walked behind Hadley’s open laptop and noticed that she had a search page open to “carbonic maceration and natural wine” — Hadley had never, to her knowledge, made any effort to learn about a boyfriend’s interests (and she hasn’t used the word boyfriend since Schuyler Philip, a rower from Connecticut who cheated on her during junior year of college at a Caddyshack-themed fraternity party: a low point in so many ways). Men were interested in her, not the other way around. Whatever was happening with Mack was new.
But tonight there will be no ramen and no white wine on the couch, because of him.
He’s in town for a conference on academic leadership. His meetings ended at 4 PM, after which he was required to do the requisite glad-handing of colleagues and sampling of the wine and cheese these sorts of events always served. (She teased him last night about his love for a good Carr’s water cracker with Brie. “It’s very very blue-blooded of you. Have you ever tried a Triscuit topped with St. Andre?”)
Tomorrow they have plans to meet his friend Adam to cross-country ski, weather permitting. Adam’s wife Catherine owns a small bakery in Somerville; after skiing, they’ll go back to their cozy townhouse and drink bourbon-spiked hot cocoa (the bakery is famous for their cocoa which is incredibly rich and has an indefinably nutty, savory note; Catherine once got drunk off martinis and whispered the secret ingredient to her, “tahini!” but swore her to absolute secrecy).
“Too much snow?” she’d texted him earlier, hoping it would be just the right amount for tucking themselves into a brightly lit restaurant and still being able to make it home safely.
He wrote back just an address and a time. 505 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, 6:45.
She resists the urge to look up the restaurant in advance, as surprises are one of his fortes and a pleasure which she prefers to savor, rather than unwrap.
Later, the waiter will have to come back three times to ask if they’re ready to order, because he’s holding her hand over the menu and doing colorful imitations of the stodgier professors in attendance that day (“I was awash in a sea of tweed and herringbone,” he intoned woefully and she almost snorted with laughter into her ginger mezcal cocktail) and everything else blurs into the background.
But for now, she has the shimmering anticipation of what lies ahead. She doesn’t know yet that after she tells him about her snow day ramen ritual, he’ll order the cacio e pepe ramen to share — thick homemade noodles in a black pepper broth hidden under a drift of grated Pecorino — or that upon ordering a side of warm Parker House rolls with lemon poppyseed butter spiced with cardamom, he’ll tell her about getting in trouble as a little boy when his grandmother — a fearsome force of a woman — taught him to make the same rolls and he pinched off a chunk of soft dough when she turned her back and smooshed it onto his baby sister’s cheek.
Or that the next day after skiing, Catherine will make them toast — griddled in olive oil until golden and crisp — out of a bread so impossibly light, it puts ciabatta to shame. Each slice is riddled with large holes. When she holds a piece up to her face, the interior is so gossamer-thin and translucent that she can see through it.
“Pan de cristal,” Catherine says matter-of-factly, licking oil off of her fingers. “I discovered it when we were in Spain two years ago and I’ve spent all these months learning to perfect it. It’s pretty much all I want.”
At those last words, she glances up and sees him looking at her. He winks, and mouths the words just like you.
Notes: If you don’t have bread flour, all-purpose flour will work here. The essential thing is to preserve the hydration ratio, so use a scale instead of measuring by volume (measuring cups). You want equal parts water and flour by weight. The dough is very, very wet at first—as you let it sit, and fold it, it will start to gain structure and you’ll notice the difference in the feel of the dough under your hands. In this way, it’s one of the more fun and education breads to bake, as it teaches you through experience how gluten develops as time works its magic.
Pan de Cristal
Adapted from Martin Philip + King Arthur; makes 4 medium loaves
500g water
500g unbleached bread flour (see note above)
2.5g (3/4 teaspoon) instant yeast
10g salt
15g olive oil, for the pan
In a large bowl, mix together the water, flour, yeast, and salt. The dough temperature is important here, so check the temperature of your water and adjust it according to the temperature of your kitchen. You want the dough temperature, once mixed, to be around 75 degrees F, so if your kitchen is very warm, use cooler water, and vice versa. You can make this without a digital thermometer, but precision is your friend and I highly recommend you get one and use it here.
Pour the oil into a 2-quart pan (or 8” or 9” square pan works) and rub it all around.
Pour the dough into the oiled pan and check the temperature of the dough. If it’s lower than 75 degrees, you can leave the dough in a warm spot as it rests — I usually just heat up a cup of water in the microwave for a minute or two, then take out the water and put the covered pan of dough into the microwave which will retain the heat and moisture of the water.
Cover the pan and let it rest for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, uncover the dough and perform 4 coil folds (here’s a video of how to do them properly, thanks to the brilliant baker Martin Philip who taught me to make this bread with great patience!).
Cover the dough again and let rest for another 20 minutes, then perform another series of coil folds.
Cover and rest for 20 minutes, then coil fold again. Repeat this two more times—as the dough gets stronger, you’ll feel it tighten under your hands and you may need only one or two coil folds instead of four.
After the last fold, cover the dough and let it rest for about an hour, or slightly more. It should look puffy and have large visible bubbles on the surface.
Heavily flour a work surface and flip the dough out, very gently, onto the surface and sprinkle some flour on top. Using a bench knife or other large sharp knife, cut the dough into four equal pieces (try to press down directly instead of dragging the knife through the dough). I like to oil my bench knife before cutting the dough which helps to prevent it from sticking.
Carefully transfer the dough, trying to preserve the square shape of each piece, onto a parchment-lined baking sheet (there’s no need to flour the parchment even though the dough will feel sticky). It’s best to fit only two pieces of dough onto a single sheet, so you’ll need two parchment-lined baking sheets.
Let the dough pieces rest, uncovered, at room temperature for 2 hours. Towards the end of that time, preheat the oven to 475 degrees F with a baking stone or steel inside on the middle or bottom rack.
After 2 hours, very carefully slide the two pieces of the dough onto the baking stone or steel. It can be hard to transfer both pieces at once, so I like to cut the parchment in half and load one loaf at a time. (Let the other two loaves continue to rest while you bake the first two, it won’t hurt them.)
Bake for 15 minutes, then carefully transfer the two loaves onto the top rack of the oven (place them directly onto the oven rack, no baking sheet or stone needed). Continue baking for 15 or 20 more minutes, or until the loaves are a very deep, dark golden brown.
Repeat with the remaining dough.
Be sure to cool the bread fully before slicing, or the interior can be a bit gummy.