The main course was almost over when Donner Price’s heart burst from his chest onto the roast duck confit over garlic mashed potatoes, corn casserole and stemmed asparagus (underseasoned) made by the distinguished host’s wife. It was right in the middle of that exclusive dinner party with four or five of the most distinguished business executives (and their wives) from that prestigious, mid-sized software company, which had been arranged to celebrate a likely more-than-successful Q2. They’d nearly made it to the cheesecake with the cookie crumble before things turned south for Donner Price, tall and freckled with thin glasses and thinning red hair, sitting at the far end of the table draped with the fancy lace cloth that the host’s wife spent all day ironing, so that the host had to crane his head around the dual candelabras in order to see his face—not that the host cared to see Donner’s face, the man who often interrupted his workday to announce issues with the code no one but Donner understood. Why couldn’t he just fix it without barging into the office and loudly proclaiming, Crisis Averted! A crisis that could be averted was no crisis at all thought the host who also was the CEO of the prestigious mid-sized software company with strong Q2 sales numbers.
Before the whole heart thing ruined the momentum of the evening’s festivities, a night with real potential for further conversation and connection, revelry and celebration, Donner had been sitting quietly taking in the stories from the distinguished CEO and his wife about how the new French restaurant in town didn’t quite meet the mark, and how their trip to Hawaii had been delightful,just the thing they needed to escape the harsh winter of their midwestern city. If you ever went they said you have to go to Maui, you absolutely had to stay at Kapalua and drive up Mount Haleakala for the sunrise. The other business executives and their wives mumbled in agreement and talked about the bests: the best vineyard in Napa (Screaming Eagle), the best house rental in Nantucket (anything off Cliff Road), the best island in the Caribbean (Turks and Caicos), the best three-star Michelin restaurant in the world (Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy), and the best city in Europe (tie between Paris and Florence).
While the others talked politely, Donner slowly devoured the duck confit dipped in creamy mashed potatoes. And when finished, he wiped his mouth removing the fat sauce from his red chin commenting on the deliciousness of the distinguished CEO’s wife’s cooking. He thought he needed to say more, to participate. He’d learned from dinner parties over the years that it is impolite to talk too much business or to sit in silence, so he fumbled his way into a story of his own, but he hadn’t been to any of these places or ever traveled very far. Despite the pile of wealth he’d accumulated by the ripe age of forty, he still lived with his mother, and played video games in front of his flat-screen (typically RPG or single-shooter), and licked pizza cheese off the plate when it fell off the slice, while listening to heavy metal rock in too-tight band t-shirts, but here he was—Donner Price—at the opposite head of the table to the distinguished CEO in his best khaki slacks and half-wrinkled, plaid button-up tucked into his pants over a pair of New Balance sneakers. He’d never found life both this unsatisfying and yet ripe with opportunity at the same time until this moment with absolutely nothing to add, so he stumbled and mumbled and leaned into it—the conversation—with reckless abandon.
Did you know that there are no actual sharks in Shark Bay? Only dolphins. The dolphins scared the sharks away. It is a popular tourist attraction somewhere (possibly Australia). Yes, Australia would do. He swam with the wild dolphins. They were much better than the caged dolphins found in that highly-rated resort in the Bahamas. And feeling lucky, he went onto another story of the South African safari where he’d barely escaped the elephant stampede in the middle of the night. He described the dedicated table in kitchen at the most exclusive restaurant in Copenhagen, the red-eye to Vancouver sitting next to Kurt Vonnegut, the disappointment at the relatively small scale of the Mona Lisa up-close and in-person, and the older woman he fell in love with in Sardinia one summer.
The first one, about the dolphins was a lie (and so were the rest), but the dolphin one was the only one that felt unreal in the way that lies do. He felt the pang of guilt in the back of his throat tingle, but the more he spoke, the more the other lies became less lie-like, not real-real but not completely lies either, operating in that place of the great unknown—the grey area of the embellishments of stories told at dinner parties like these, so he continued. There was the time he ate the poisonous puffer fish raw in Beijing, the neighbor with the poodle that got eaten by a coyote, the charity golf paring with one of the distant Kennedy’s, the presidential suite he’d gotten upgraded to at the St. Regis in Venice where he’d also taken a ride from the oldest gondolier still working. Guess what his name is? How would you? It’s Enzo, and he’s got the most beautifully sad voice.
You’ve been to Venice? The distinguished CEO’s wife said.
Of course. Donner said. Sure, he’d read enough about Venice he was confident he could list off streets and canals like San Marco Square or the Rialto Bridge over the Grand Canal, but he worried he’d gotten the city mixed up with the streets of Florence (which he’d also read about), so before they could interrogate any further, he shifted. He needed to keep going or he’d stutter. So he continued. Faster. Allegro. There were the backstage passes to the Rolling Stones concert and the surreal feeling of hearing Paint it Black in the front row. The opening night of The Book of Mormon. The original cast of Wicked. Test driving Formula 1 cars in Monte Carlo. The beaches with topless women in Nice. The house he rented in Tuscany with the private live-in chef. The other house he rented in Barcelona, and the other one in Park City he rented formerly owned by Bonnie Raitt. The time he floated in the Black Sea. The dogsledding trip to Alaska. The Four Seasons in Bora Bora. The spas of Karlovy Vary. Ultra Music festival. Burning Man. Bonnaroo. Cabin in Bangor Maine. Flamenco dancing lessons in Buenos Aires. Karaoke in Tokyo. Wave-runners in Miami. Hot-air balloons in the Hudson Valley. Hot chocolate in Vienna. Invite-only resort in Cancun. The sound of music tour in Salzburg. Peeing next to Brad Pitt at O’Hare. Sailing the Greek Isles. Off-roading in New Zealand. Submarine rides off Catalina Island. And…. and… he was running out of steam (and they were getting obvious), but none of the distinguished businessmen had listened beyond the South African safari where he’d almost been stampeded by a herd of elephants or the red-eye next to Kurt Vonnegut, tuning him out the way they did in meetings, except for the Chief Finance Officer’s wife, who wasn’t listening at all instead thinking about whether her nails were the right color—Was red too bold of a choice? But they did not interrupt, because he could program better than anyone they’d ever met or solve a technical problem they didn’t even know how to talk about let alone fix, so they stuffed their faces with more duck.
Well, these dolphins in Shark Bay they swam with people, cute, playful, and majestic in their wildness unlike the cheap caged dolphins at fancy resorts. These were wild dolphins not tamed by humans but fascinated by them, coming to see what these humans might do today. They swam and dipped and watched the legs of children and parents, tourists running in, new and fresh to catch a glimpse, but their favorite game was to… Donner was repeating himself, and he realized no one cared to say anything, so he kept going, talking about dolphins, while trying to find the next story to jump to, but the rest of the table seemed resigned to let him sink in his spiraling pit of quicksand, his unending lists and rants, and so it was in some malfunction that he got stuck on a rather simple syllable, maybe it was Bordeaux or Bonnie Raitt or Paint it Black or dolphin or swim trunks, and that’s when Donner Price’s heart exploded out of his chest, spraying viscous, burgundy fluid all over the table.
The wife of the CEO gasped, horrified that her weeks of planning would be ruined, or worse the table cloth would be unsalvageable by the dry cleaner (the best in town next to that Italian grocer), but the Chief Financial Officer’s wife saved the day. She picked at the chucks of heart that landed on her plate. With the grace of years of cotillion she lifted the flesh with the correct fork for eating human heart, and took a tiny bite, only the proper sized bite for a piece of red meat. The host’s wife joined too by using the red gunk as gravy on her duck thinking all of the years Donner spent playing video games and eating fast food had turned the tough meat of the heart tender and fat as filet magnon. And the rest joined in, one dipping the right ventricle (or what was left) into the mashed potatoes and unseasoned asparagus others mixed the duck and heart into the corn casserole, not worried about their prestigious software company or their technical problems. They had a solid Q2 and could sell it soon by Q4, so that whatever code problems they had would soon be someone else’s. And the table turned from an uneasy quiet into the slurping and teeth gnawing on pieces of fleshy heart meat sharing the tender parts with each other. They began telling stories ones they’d forgotten the source of. Did you know you can eat poisonous puffer fish? Did you hear about the that poor woman with the poodle and the coyote? You ever swim with wild dolphins? We should book tickets to see the Rolling Stones before they die. Do you know the oldest gondolier in Venice? Guess his name? It’s Enzo, and he’s got the most beautifully sad voice.
And it was only then after the dish was perfectly tied together with a surprise infusion of salty flavor that one of the guests dared to mention the simple fact that the asparagus was underseasoned, a point which they were all in agreement including the distinguished CEO’s wife, who apologized, and said that in the face of such overwhelming agreement she could not bear to disagree.
