For my daughter, who is leaving on Tuesday and who asked me, over the phone, in a voice that was trying very hard not to crack, how to make a city feel like home.
Ingredients (prepare with unwashed hands — the city must smell you before it trusts you): — One apartment, rented, with a window that faces the wrong direction. You will learn to call this direction "yours." — Fourteen months of mornings. Accumulate slowly. They should smell of coffee and bread and damp streets drying in sunlight. The smell will enter the apartment before you open the curtains. Let it. Do not rush the mornings; they are the only part of the recipe that cannot be substituted. — One café. It does not matter which café. What matters is that the waiter begins to pour before you speak. This takes approximately six weeks. Note: the six weeks cannot be shortened. Trust is a slow ingredient. — Three friendships, initiated by proximity. The woman in 4B who leaves her shoes outside her door. The man at the kiosk who calls you "professor" though you are not one. The cat. There is always a cat. — Seventeen walks taken without destination. On at least four of these walks, you will become lost. On at least one, you will find a street you cannot find again. This street is essential. Do not attempt to document it. It exists only when you are not looking for it. — One night of noise so complete that it becomes silence. Sirens, neighbours, the argument three floors up, the television through the wall. You will lie in bed and listen and at some point the noise will fold into itself and you will hear, underneath it, the actual sound of the city: a hum, low and constant, like a machine that has been running for centuries and has forgotten it can stop. — A departure date. Set it when you arrive. This is not pessimism. It is seasoning. It burns. That is how you know it is working. Everything you taste will be improved by the knowledge that you will stop tasting it.
Method: Combine ingredients in any order. Your hands will smell of the city before you notice. That is the method working. The recipe is forgiving. It is not, however, reversible.
Serve at room temperature. Do not reheat.
Let it cool. Not in the refrigerator — on the counter, where the kitchen air can finish it. Some dishes are completed by the room, not by the cook.
Yield: one memory, approximate, good for a lifetime, best consumed alone, in a different city, years later, when the waiter pours without being asked and you realize that trust, which you thought was an ingredient, was actually the dish.