Grist Mill Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

a side of pommes de Sahara with that?
    Potatoes have a completely different molecular structure, Sean. You’d need something like one-eighty-three. You could use a hot spring, perhaps.
    Something like one-eighty-three? Total nerd! OK then, how about a little creamed spinach Kalahari, bro?
    A week later Patrick had invited Sean and Beth to their house for dinner, even printed up a fake menu. He made themTournedos à la Death Valley but he crisped the potatoes at four-sixty and called them Pommes de Venus. Sean licked his plate clean and admitted the meat was maybe the best he’d ever eaten.
    Remembering all of this gives him an idea. Patrick finds his computer, brings it to the kitchen table and pours another coffee.
    Meat loaf sous vide, Patrick types into the document labeled Blog Recipe Ideas and then drags his hands down his face. You’re thirty-eight years old, he says. Thirty-eight and you write a blog. Isn’t it time to grow up?
    It’s temporary, Patch. Until you find another job.
    He clicks through to the webpage. Red Moose Barn. His blog has a concept.
    Yeah, let’s hear it for the big ideas, Paddyboy.
    The posts he writes for Red Moose Barn work through the development of one dish at a time, the gradual invention of a restaurant menu, plate by plate. The blog is his test kitchen, his yays and his nays, a test kitchen for a nonexistent restaurant, the kind of place Patrick dreams of opening one day. Red Moose Barn, not a restaurant in the city but somewhere upstate among the apple orchards. Only he isn’t trained, he knows cooking but he doesn’t know restaurants, the business. So he writes fantasy menus on his fantasy blog. Creates fantasy dishes and cooks them for Hannah. Shoots them, eats them, posts them.
    On his blog.
    Blog . God, the word sounds so ugly, a word that should be a slang term for one of the less glamorous bodily functions.
    He glances over to see the time on the stove, his appointment with Dr. Rosenstock not until three this afternoon, five hours away. He has been seeing Dr. Rosenstock since the incident several weeks ago, although he’s still not sure he sees the point.
    You forgot how to breathe, Patch. Don’t you think it’s been good for you, finding someone to talk to?
    Four weeks earlier, he and Hannah had been in the backseat of a taxi, on their way to meet friends for brunch, the driver with the radio on, a report about how America was in danger of suffering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Patrick had sent his r é sum é to only three places right after losing his job, thinking perhaps he could be picky in his search for new work. Not one of those places had called him in for an interview. Not even a preliminary round.
    Â  … the Dow Jones has tumbled over a thousand points in less than two months, with experts warning this is just the beginning   …
    He remembers trying to swallow in the back of the taxi. Nothing. And then he had tried to breathe in. Nothing. And then nothing had followed nothing, more nothing and more.
    Patrick had felt so stupid, struggling for air while Hannah checked messages on her phone, unaware that her husband couldn’t remember how to swallow, the world turning too fast beyond the taxicab windows. Breathing, one of the most basic human functions. How could anyone forget how to breathe?
    And so a week later he started seeing Dr. Rosenstock, every Thursday afternoon at three. At first they spoke about his job, how he had been fired, and then they spoke about how he felt about losing his job, how he felt now.
    A tightness in the chest.
    That’s where the feeling is, Patrick?
    Yes.
    Does the feeling have a color?
    No.
    Does the feeling have a shape?
    He would have felt rude saying, Of course it fucking doesn’t.
    Now Patrick has started to wonder if he is the only person in the world whose feelings come in shapeless monochrome.
    After a few weeks, the sessions had moved