Ich hab ja diese Kurzgeschichte schon seit längerer Zeit in meinem Besitz und wollte heute mal vergleichen ob es stimmt, dass man die Geschichte in dem 52. Kapitel des Roman's Small Vices wiederfindet.
Ich konnte es nicht von Anfang an nicht glauben und hatte Recht. Die Kurzgeschichte kann man mit dem Kapitel zwar vergleichen, da dort auch Susan für Spenser ein Gericht kocht, aber unterscheidet sich schon sehr von dieser Stelle im Roman.
Hier mal die komplette Kurzgeschichte:
Susan insisted that she cook for me on my birthday. Normally I try to deflect her on such things, but this year she included a blatantly carnal item that would have been churlish to decline.
"Will we be doing that before, after, or during the meal?" I asked.
"All three are possible," Susan said.
I was sitting at the counter drinking a Blue Moon Belgian White Ale in a glass that Susan had chilled in the freezer. The only other thing in the freezer was a half-empty ice cube tray.
"Bon appetit," I said.
"Do you like the chilled glass?" Susan asked.
"I do," I said. "But I would have said you didn't know where the freezer was."
"I kept a Lean Cuisine lemon chicken in there once," she said.
"Once again," I said, "I've misjudged you."
Susan had worn a small black dress in honor of my birthday and an apron that displayed a picture of a guy in a big chef's hat and the words Bar-B-Q in fire-trimmed red script. In front of her on the counter was a big, obviously brand-new cookbook, propped open on a big, obviously brand-new cookbook holder.
"First," she said, "we'll get the cake baking."
She took a big glass bowl out of the cupboard and measured in a bunch of ingredients. Considerable flour accumulated on the counter. She broke some eggs into the bowl, dropped the shells onto the counter, put her hands into the bowl, and began to mush the cake batter around.
I knew better, but I couldn't help myself.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm mixing the batter."
"With your hands?" I said.
Still mushing, she nodded at the brand new cookbook.
"It says right there, stir and mix by hand."
Still knowing better and still unable to stop, I said, "I think that means with a spoon as opposed to, say, an electric mixer."
She gave me a laserlike stare for a moment and continued to squish the batter around.
"Well," she said, "if that's what they meant, why didn't they say so?"
I came to my senses. "I don't know," I said. "It's very misleading."
She finished stirring and mixing, rinsed off her hands, poured the batter into a cake pan, put the cake pan into the oven, and set the timer. Then she drank some white wine and pushed the mixing bowl out of the way, along with the broken egg shells and the new cookbook, still on its rack. "Now," she said, "the entree."
I got another beer out of the refrigerator and, when she wasn't looking, popped off the top and drank from the bottle. Susan placed a page torn from a magazine in the open space she'd made on the counter. Reading from the recipe she'd clipped, she began to set out ingredients.
John Coltrane and McCoy Tyner were on the stereo. In the big living/dining room there was a fire in the fireplace, and the table was set for two with gold-rimmed maroon chargers. Tall candles rested in golden candlesticks, linen napkins snaked through napkin rings decorated with a bronze silk flower. There were cut-crystal wineglasses and real silver flatware. Susan could set the ass off a dining room table.
"What is the entree?" I asked.
"Feijoada," she read off the torn recipe page, "a Brazilian meat stew with black beans."
She pronounced feijoada right.
"Oh my," I said.
I used to eat feijoada a long time ago at a place in New York called The Brazilian Pavilion. I had never cooked it myself, because a guy I once met, who was a chef in Sao Paulo, told me that it needed to cook overnight. It seemed a long time to wait. I decided to keep my mouth shut on the timing. I almost never get into trouble keeping my mouth shut.
Susan opened a brown paper sack and measured out some dried black beans in a pot. Then she looked at the recipe again. "Eeek," she said.
"Eeek?"
"It says boil the beans for two minutes and set aside for an hour."
"A perfect pause," I said. "For one of those carnal interludes you mentioned."
Susan was looking at the recipe page some more.
"Ohmigod," she said.
I nodded. I was trying to look encouraging. She read the recipe through carefully. Then she handed it to me.
"Does this mean that I have to soak the beans for an hour and then boil them for an hour and a half and then add the meat and cook it for another 45 minutes?" I scanned the recipe page, which was stained with egg and flour from the counter.
"It does," I said carefully.
"I know I am math-challenged," Susan said, "but isn't that 3 hours and 15 minutes?"
"That would be my guess," I said.
Susan stared at me for a moment. "There's a reason I don't cook," she said.
I nodded. Her eyes had a fallen-angel glitter, which is a very promising sign. She stepped on the foot pad of her trash compactor, and when the drawer slid open, she picked up everything on the counter and tossed it in. Food, measuring cup, spoons, glass bowl, paper towels, everything. Then she closed the door and pushed the button.
"What about the cake?" I said.
The compactor was noisy as it integrated the feijoada. When it stopped, Susan reached over and shut off the oven. "The hell with the cake," she said, "let's get right to the carnal interlude."
Quite a bit later, we went over to 9 Park and had dinner . . . which I paid for.
Hier könnt ihr sie nochmal auf der Seite nachlesen:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030411054716/http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2003/0316/parker.htm
Und hier die ersten Zeilen aus dem 52. Kapitel von Small Vices (das komplette Kapitel möchte ich lieber nicht posten, aus Copyright-Gründen):
SUSAN AND I were making dinner together at my place. The sublet tenant had finally departed. Pearl was demonstrating why she is known as the Wonder Dog by managing to sleep soundly while lying flat on her back on my sofa with all four paws in the air. I had bought a Jenn Air stove a couple of years back and it had a rotisserie unit on which I was roasting a boneless leg of lamb, which I had seasoned with olive oil and fresh rosemary. After it's seasoned and put on the spit there isn't a great deal demanded of the guy that's cooking it, so I stood at the counter while the roast turned slowly and watched Susan as she made beet risotto.
"I saw a woman on the Today show make this," she said.
"And you loved it because it was such a pretty red color," I said.
"Yes. Does this rice look opaque to you?"
I looked and said that it did. Susan ladled some broth into the rice and began to stir it carefully. While she stirred, she looked in the pot and then at the rice.
"Do you think I have to put this broth in a little at a time, the way the recipe says?"
I said that I did. She stirred some more.
"It has to all absorb before I put in more?" she said.
"When you see the bottom of the pan as you stir, add some more broth," I said.
Wieder ein Rätsel gelöst.
Robert Urich Biographie - An Extraordinary Life - ab 30.08.2019
