Chapter 27: Food. Drink
If you transported Cork to northern Italy, everyone would be happy. The Italians would welcome another friendly, easy-going body of citizens and the Irish would have the climate their city below the hills deserved. Streets here, especially north of the river, rose steeply towards the clouds, creating a terraced effect like you see in Siena, say. Unlike the cheerful red brick of Italy, houses here were typically built of grey stone, but seeing as their doors and windows were often painted in bright colours, Cork felt like a cheerful city, despite the rain.
At the bottom of the basin formed by the hills around the city was the centre, where the Vikings had settled and where today the usual multi-national chains hunched up tight together in the narrow streets that came off one wide thoroughfare, the pedestrianised Patrick Street.
In a restaurant on Hanover Street simply called Restaurant were a group of four men in grey suits at the window table; a mother and teenager at the next, the latter looking uncomfortable in her velvet dress, the former with ostentatious, branded accessories; and there was a table further inside, deep in the shadows, with three people: a handsome, fit man in his thirties, a beautiful, shapely blonde in deceptively casual olive blazar, black shirt and trousers, and a petite red-head whose eyes probably blazed as though the energy of a star was pouring out of them. Niall Watson, Kate Wheelan, and Cyn Sweetwater.
An elderly waiter brought over three menus and I sensed some complicity between him and my friends. Some knowing secret. The other two did not even open theirs. Were they such regulars here that the waiter already knew their orders? Restaurant had a Michelin star and was expensive, even for Niall and Kate. Unfolding the menu, I saw two words: Food; Drink. Old Cyn might have been annoyed at this and made a somewhat aggressive remark. New Cyn didn’t care. Let them have their joke.
After studying the menu for comedic effect, I looked over the top of the red, leather-bound page and caught the waiter’s eye. ‘I’ll need a minute.’
‘Of course.’ He backed away.
‘You need a minute?’ Niall chuckled.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘We get whatever the chef has made and like it or lump it.’
‘Exactly,’ he answered. ‘There will be several courses.’
Kate touched my arm. ‘To be fair, I’ve always found them delicious and if there is a dish I don’t like, there will certainly be two or three that I love.’
‘Interesting concept. I like it.’
Having nodded to the waiter, I offered him my menu. ‘I’ll have Food. And Drink.’
‘Very good.’
When the waiter had gone, Niall said, ‘They choose the wine to match the meal.’
‘It must cost a fortune.’
‘Oh it does.’
‘We wanted to give you a treat, after that terrible experience,’ added Kate.
Again, I recognised an invitation to talk about my time in the DreamAds headquarters and again I told the story, perhaps exaggerating a little – although it was a subject matter hard to exaggerate – the nightmarish atmosphere of the room in which the worker had died. It occurred to me as I spoke that the victim – Kirsten – might not have been a stranger to me. She might have been one of the DreamAds operatives who had entered my dreams and I said as much.
‘I find it such an invasion of privacy, the idea that someone else can be in my dreams. I could be dreaming of anything!’ Kate was horrified and also enthralled, I could tell.
‘If you mean sex, that’s what Neo was trying to experience. He was secretly using the technology to go into the dreams of women on the pilot, trying to see their inner sex fantasies.’
‘Eww.’ There was water on the table and Kate took a deep drink, as though it could wash away the image I’d given her.
‘What I’m about to say could be misconstrued,’ Niall checked in on us both before continuing, ‘but as I’m among friends I’ll chance it. Of course anything without consent is completely wrong. It occurs to me, though, there are interesting possibilities here. What if we agreed to meet up, in Cyn’s dream say? Won’t it be a bit like online sex, only better because dreams are fully immersive?’
‘Fair. And Daniel’s hoping to try…’ I paused my response as our first course had arrived already and the subject of orgies was not one I wanted the waiter to listen in on.
‘Spring canapés,’ announced the waiter, lifting a plate from his arm to put it in front of me. Two small circles of toasted bread held what looked like a rose and an orange-centred flower among greens. ‘Bellota prosciutto and Coratina olive tapenade.’
The rose was, in fact, designed out of a very thin slice of ham. You wouldn’t want to be a vegetarian for this experience of chef-led dishes to work.
With appreciative murmurs we ate these starters and I returned to Niall’s thought. ‘I’ve a friend, a whistleblower from DreamAds, who is going to make what you’re saying possible. With her software, you will be able to use Explorer caps to choose the dream you want and enter each other’s dreams.’
‘Amazing!’ exclaimed Niall.
‘How awful,’ said Kate at the same time.
‘So, let’s suppose I wanted to dream about climbing Mount Everest,’ Niall was clearly excited by the idea, moving his hands vigorously, ‘and I wanted a dozen friends to share the dream. Would we all have the one point of view? Somehow be jostling inside the mind of the dreamer?’
‘If it’s like my experiences with the hood, then no. It’s your dream and they will come into it as independent outsiders.’
‘Like an X Box? I pick the game and my friends log in?’
‘I suppose. But remember these are dreams; they aren’t stable like a game. They spin and flip and fall apart. And also, I’m sceptical that it will work at all. Your unconscious mind, your id, might not want your friends along.’ I was thinking of Celine. She really didn’t care for intruders to her realm. ‘That’s why the DreamAds pilot was already in trouble, even before my video. I heard that most of the participants were able to throw out the operatives. Although getting rid of the messaging was harder.’
‘Wild king scallops and horseradish.’ Our next dish was a small plate with four scallops, on top of each was a drop of a red sauce sprinkled with horseradish. It was delicious, sweet and fiery. Yet I found myself resisting saying so. There was something about the way that Niall and Kate were praising the food that was performative. The middle class came here to be impressed and impressed they were, as much by presentation as taste.
‘I watched a recording of your auction on YouTube,’ said Kate when the plates had been removed. ‘You looked stunning.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Even though I knew the outcome, I still found the video exciting. Two hundred thousand is unheard of for a living artist. You’re a celebrity. If you wanted, you could be all over the media. I’m sure the Late Late Show would love to have you. I can help you with brand Sweetwater if you like.’
‘Cyn doesn’t like the limelight,’ murmured Niall.
‘Oh of course, I understand that. We’re all discreet here. Cyn can hide away with us as long as she likes. It’s just that sometimes the best way to deal with the attention is to control it, change it from a free-for-all to a structured diary of select events where we set the agenda and make it clear you are only available via your PR company and not via direct contact.’
Inside me, Celine looked at Kate as she sailed away from Charybdis into the arms of Scylla. Lovely blonde hair, ringlets. Blue eyes, almost a match for Niall’s but a little paler and with dark flecks. Fleshy nose and cheeks and forehead, so that the sharp newsreader look that she aspired to wasn’t quite achieved: Kate was more the celebrity chef or friendly reader of children’s stories on a digital channel. Looking at her now, I could see I was quite mistaken in thinking Kate would make a suitable girlfriend for Daniel. He needed to touch a woman and feel an electric shock. As much as possible, he wanted to escape capitalism, not succumb to it.
The courses continued to arrive, each accompanied by a half glass of wine. While Celine was loving the visuals, the textures, the tastes and a growing alcoholic warmth, she was not enjoying my friends. Contrary to popular understanding, Epicurus believed good company at a meal was far more important than the food itself. For that reason, I could not describe the food as the best I had ever tasted. Was I condemned to finding the people around me wanted something from me, now that I was considered successful?
A distant thump, a bass drum, started keeping time in the background. Kate looked up at Niall, who shook his head.
‘The Secret Garden,’ he said. ‘Bane of our lives.’
‘One of the disadvantages to living in town is when the crowds come out of the nightclubs,’ Kate explained. ‘We have to wear earplugs to get any sleep at the weekends.’
Niall quickly added, ‘Or Wednesday nights because of The Pav. That crowd are even worse. They’re on the streets for hours. And it’s amazing how much noise even three or four people can make.’
‘I came down for a gig in The Pav once. Years ago, I was eighteen or nineteen. DJ Bone.’
While they expressed unenthusiastic interest in that information, Celine reminded me of that time we danced in the crowded, red-lit venue. We were pressed up so close to the DJ that I could have reached over the low rail and turned a dial on his mixing desk. Come on! Come on! That was the refrain of a big lad up the front, waving his fist in a circle above his head. It had all seemed very exciting at the time, but the two Mitsubishis I’d consumed would have made any repetitive sound feel good.
After all the due courses, which included several miniature desserts that I liked a lot, Niall paid the bill and we left Restaurant for a cold, damp night. Their home was not far, a recently built town house beside the river. On showing me around earlier in the day, they had been quick to mention the faults of the place, but I could tell they were very proud of their home and I had praised the modern design, desirable location, and splendid views of the swift flowing, dark waters of the Lee.
I didn’t want any more drink, despite the offer of Middleton whiskey, and rather than take a seat apologetically said that I’d rather go to bed.
‘You can have Niall for the night if you want,’ offered Kate. ‘He’s started snoring recently, frankly, it would be doing me a favour.’
They both laughed.
‘Thanks but I’m super tired.’
‘Of course. Are you all right Cyn?’ Niall asked. ‘You’ve been a bit quiet.’
‘It’s the strain of my situation. All I want to do is paint. Even here, though, I don’t think I’m going to be able to.’
‘I understand,’ he stepped close and gave me a hug. ‘Sleep well Cyn, it’s good to have you with us.’
‘Goodnight Cyn,’ said Kate with an earnest smile.
That night I dreamed I was sitting with my dad at the same table in The Restaurant when I was surprised by a pale bird like a dove fluttering overhead. Don’t move, whispered dad, don’t even speak. The dove landed on the table, claws scrabbling for purchase and when it settled, it gave us both a careful look before transforming into mum. She said to me, Only in the hour before midnight can I become human, when Hades is busy with the newly arrived dead.
I woke with a resolution to see dad. Just what in the dream had created that compulsion, I couldn’t say. Within me, the dream had reflected a tremendous animation and a belief that his voice, shitty and mean-spirited as it often was, would be a refreshing contact with reality compared to living with Niall and Kate.