punch à la romaine

D. Federico Rasmussen left the 3rd Street Butcher Shop with parcels of brown-papered meat and a feeling of annihilation. Neither the meat nor the feeling was especially uncommon—the meat was saltmarsh lamb, though the 3rd Street Butcher Shop was exceptionally well stocked with all manner of flesh from both creatures of the field as well as the hunt.

Dinner at the Rasmussen manor was dinner in the Rasmussen manner—six guests, octagonal table, alternating sexes, a pasti apéritif pre and port digestif post, with a blessing by both a priest and poet (who were not usually the same person). Dinner at the Rasmussen manor was saltmarsh lamb dressed with mint sauce and accompanied by vegetable marrow farci and boiled rice parmentier. Dessert at the Rasmussen manor was supposed to be peaches in chartreuse jelly, a specialty of Mrs. Rasmussen’s—but it was never served because the fourth course (punch à la Romaine) was disrupted (and for that matter, so was the entirety of D. Federico’s adult life) by an innocent inquiry from guest number six.

“Fede darling, I saw you on 3rd today when I was walking Genevieve, you went in the butcher shop and I followed to say hello, but inside you were nowhere in sight. It’s a funny thing really, Delores has always maintained that that place is a front for prostitution. You weren’t rendezvousing with a lady of the night were you Fede? Fede?

the, nora ann gray (1972).