Free Recipe for Disaster by Stacey Ballis Page A

this little pantry gilding is really the kind of thing I would usually do at the very end. But for some reason I just couldn’t face the idea of starting one of the bigger projects that hang over my head, knowing how little time I will have for this house.
    Grant’s words from the other night ring in my ears. “
What if you did it full-time?
” I can’t even begin to imagine how glorious that would be. But I push it out of my head, take a last look at the work I was able to do today, and know that it will get finished. Eventually.

4

    W hat’s new in the land of nipples?” Caroline asks, putting a forkful of flaky sea bass in her mouth. She’s outdone herself tonight; the fish is seared crispy, with a soy-miso-butter sauce, duck-fat-roasted baby potatoes, and green beans with lemon-chive oil. Everything is absolutely delicious. Not to mention the twenty-year-old Riesling Carl left for us, a razor’s edge of sweet and acid and the perfect foil for the salt and richness of the food. He’s out for the evening at what he calls his “poker night,” a BYOB dinner with his best wine-collector pals. They pick a price range out of a hat at each dinner to guide the next. Apparently this is the most challenging annual 7/11 night. As in, wines cannot cost less than seven or more than eleven dollars a bottle. It’s Carl’s favorite. He can find the most delicious things in that range; you could drink them at the finest restaurants and never know. Plonk is not an option for Carl.
    “Must you?” Hedy says, picking up a green bean in her elegant fingers and dropping it neatly in her mouth. Hedy never gets anything on her shirt. It’s maddening. I’ve already had not one, but two potato chunks land in my lap, and my turtleneck sweater is speckled with miso sauce and chive oil. “Do you have to use the clinical term? Can’t you just ask her how work is going?”
    Marie laughs her throaty chuckle. “It’s just a word, Hedy.” She turns to Caroline. “All is pretty good in the land of nipples, thank you.”
    Marie is a tattoo artist who exclusively works with breast cancer patients. She specializes in faux three-dimensional nipples for reconstruction patients who have lost theirs, giving them small works of art that when seen from the front are indistinguishable from the real thing. The 3-D effect she can get with shading and color is beyond remarkable. I’ve seen photos of women who have had surgery on just one breast, and you cannot distinguish between the real nipple on one and the tattoo on the other. She also does some work on patients who chose not to have reconstruction, and just want something pretty either masking or highlighting their scars, giving them flowering vines or flocks of tiny birds, rushing water teeming with fish, or a fire-flocked phoenix. But mostly, she does nipples. And she does them better than anyone else. People fly her all over the country to get nipples. She once did a pair for a superfamous movie star, and no one ever says the name Angelina out loud, but we have our suspicions. She can neither confirm nor deny; all those medical privacy laws are in place, damn them. “I did one this week with a faux nipple ring in it.”
    “I. Am. Eating,” Hedy says, waving a potato at the end of her fork at Marie.
    “Relax. She isn’t tattooing people’s labia or sphincters for chrissakes. THAT wouldn’t be dinner conversation.” Caroline is our resident homemaker and mother hen, and seven years older than the rest of us. She was an incredibly successful Gold Coast Realtor when she met Carl six years ago, twelve years her senior and a venture capitalist. They fell in love, got married, and then two of the tech start-ups he had funded merged and did a very successful IPO and he declared them both retired. They moved out of their condo downtown to a gorgeous Victorian house in Evanston on a corner triple lot with a wraparound porch and an amazing backyard. They travel, do good works, and—what I