boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

398 Anthony Boucher
But the entertainment value of a gourmet exhibitionist decreased as courtship
progressed logically into marriage, and being wined and dined gave place to the daily
problem of feeding the man. Quick freezing had, of course, made the bride’s problems
simple compared to those of earlier centuries. But George, completely in character,
insisted on a high percentage of personally prepared meals—and was shrewd enough
to spot any substitute makeshifts via the deep freeze and the electronic oven.
Not even the apartment on the very top level of Manhattan, where you could
still see the Hudson, not even the charge accounts at shops she’d never dared enter,
not even the wondrous fact that she loved George with an intensity which she had
always considered just an unlikely convention of the women’s minimags—none of
these could quite reconcile Kathy to life with a man who could down three bowls
of your best hand-made oyster stew without interrupting his speech on the glories
of authentic balj à la Venusberg, who could devour enough of a prime rib roast to
throw the whole week’s budget out of joint while expatiating on the absurdity of
the legend that Earth cooks in general, and the Anglo-Saxons in particular, did at
least understand beef.
Kathy toyed with the idea of hiring a cook, not so much to satisfy George as
to divert his inevitable reproaches to someone else. But aside from the fact that a
cook’s salary would turn her charge accounts anemic, Kathy knew that her mother,
both her grandmothers, and undoubtedly all four of her great- and all eight of her
great-great-grandmothers had fed their men and kept them happy. This was a matter
of family pride.
Then came the awful day when George brought José Lermontov home to dinner.
Kathy’s younger sister was also dining with them that night, and wrinkled her nose
after George’s face faded from the visiphone.
“These revolting Venus colonial diplomats,” said Linda. “He’ll have a swamp-
beard and a paunch and a wife and six children at home. Kathy, why doesn’t George
ever meet anybody newsworthy who’s—well, worthy?”
“He’s a very fine young man, I hear,” Kathy muttered distractedly. “Guerrilla
leader against the dictatorship, wrote a fine book about its overthrow. What worries
me is the paunch—and what I’m going to put into it.”
Five minutes after meeting the Venusian, Linda slipped into the kitchen to whisper,
“Sister … please … can I have that in my stocking for Christmas?” But even
this pleasing reversal did not divert Kathy from the task of preparing to fill the, as
it turned out, non-existent paunch.
Dinner, she thought a little later, was going surprisingly well, especially between
José and Linda. But then George, having speared and destroyed the last pork chop,
cleared his throat.
“You must make allowances, Lermontov. Mere pork to a man accustomed to
sokalj …”
“Mean swamphog?” José asked politely, with the usual clipped Venusian avoidance
of pronouns and articles.
“And,” George added commiseratingly, “this so-called ‘country gravy’—rather a
shock to a man from a planet where they think, thank God, not in terms of gravies,
but of sauces.”
“Very good gravy,” said José, mopping up the last of his with a slice of Kathy’s