Free Joy For Beginners by Erica Bauermeister Page A

here?” Daria asked.
    “Yeah; I met him because he’s always the first customer at the bakery in the morning, and he insists on meeting all the new bakers. He owns the building.”
    Daria looked over at William, at his whirlwind of uncut hair, the frayed edges of his cargo pants.
    “Software,” Henry explained. “Retired.”
    “So, is he a chef now?”
    “No; that’s the chef.” Henry pointed to a small, thin man pacing the kitchen area. Henry named a restaurant that Daria had only read about in magazines, a place with eight tables and two seatings per night, no menus. “He works there, but he likes to experiment on his nights off, so William convinced him to do a dinner here. This is the first time it’s been at William’s loft; the idea is his baby, but it’s almost never in the same place twice. Right before I moved here they had an evening in an old warehouse that was going to be torn down. They invited poets and wrote on the walls and ate everything with their hands.”
    Daria looked over at Henry appraisingly. “Really?”
    “I mean, sure, why not?”
    William held up a small brass cowbell and its mellow clang summoned the group to the tables.
     
    IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT. The tables were cluttered with napkins and used silverware, tablecloths rumpled like bedsheets. The diners reclined in their chairs, hands drifting leisurely back and forth between espresso cups and the last sips of port. Tips of fingers caressed the surface of white plates, snaring the last flakes of chocolate left from cinnamondusted truffles. Smells lingered in the air, sliding across bare shoulders, nestling into the curls of hair—risotto and chanterelle mushrooms, sweet and rich and buttery, the bite of Parmesan, the rosemary and white wine and garlic of a slow-cooked pork roast. And bread, of course, the long loaves having been passed hand to hand, chunks pulled off, dipped in small white dishes of green olive oil with dark, molten drops of balsamic vinegar floating in its midst. Wine bottles had long ago lost their ownership, traveling up and down the tables like porters on a train. Artists had met book dealers had met plumbers had met research scientists, people getting up between courses and changing places. Over in the corner, a couple was forming, their heads bending slowly toward each other like candles melting.
    Henry was sitting next to Daria on the couch, their shoulders barely touching.
    “So, is this how you live?” Daria asked lightly, her hand motioning out across the room, encompassing the scene before them.
    “Whenever I can.”
    Henry paused, looking over at Daria. “I wasn’t always that way. I remember being really scared when I started traveling. I acted like it was no big deal, but I was terrified.”
    “So what happened?”
    “I was in Venice one time; I’d been traveling for about five months at that point. It was late November and I got there after dark; it was kind of like here, all foggy and freezing. I remember the cold of the stones coming right up through the soles of my shoes. There was nobody outside, just this strange music that seemed to be coming from everywhere. And then the doors of the churches opened and people came flooding out, all dressed in black. They were all going in the same direction and I just got dragged in with them. I had no idea what was going to happen.
    “Finally, we got to the Grand Canal and I saw the church of Santa Maria della Salute on the other side, all lit up. The crowd went across the bridge in front of us—and when I was right in the middle I looked back up the canal and I saw the bridge we should have been on, the last one before the Grand Canal opens up to the lagoon. The bridge I was on wasn’t supposed to be there.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Somebody told me later that the city has a Plague Festival and every year they build a bridge across the canal that goes to Santa Maria della Salute. Then a couple days later, they take it down.”
    Henry