Mina Murray’s Journal

Holy mother Mary, Arthur is BESOTTED! He and Prof V just left and dinner was awesome. I was nervous beforehand because it can sometimes be so awkward to introduce a new person into an already established friend group. And…yeah, because Prof V is older and super different from us. And because Lucy and I had only talked to him online.

When they first got here, Lucy did her whole super charming HELLO I AM LUCY WESTENRA PLEASURE TO MEET YOU thing that she does when she meets new people and wants them to like her. But once she got comfortable she chilled out and was just her actually charming self. She showed up early to “help me cook” which obviously in Lucy means sticking her fingers in everything and telling me how good it is and distracting me brushing my hair back and kissing my neck…gah, so hot.

Arthur was all bravado at first, and every time he’d pull a SHOW OFF SHINY BOYFRIEND bit, VH would squeeze his knee or the back of his neck and his eyes would get all soft like he was just trying to get VH’s attention in the first place. I’ve never seen Arthur like that before. He was right about VH looking a little like Viggo Mortensen. He definitely has that rugged, competent thing going on, which is such a contrast to Arthur’s slick, I-get-my-hair-cut-to-look-tousled vibe.

VH is clearly super into Arthur, too, though he’s all subtle and stoic and stuff. He doesn’t really laugh, but he smiled at all of Arthur’s jokes. A different smile than he gave Lucy’s. The kind of private smile I have felt on my own face when I catch myself thinking about Lucy and no one’s around.

I went for a Mediterranean theme, and served grilled Halloumi on endive with lemon oil and a caper tapenade for the first course. I really like the new brand of Halloumi that Rouse’s had—the one from Whole Foods is ridiculously expensive and a little too squeaky in the mouth. But this one was great, and melted just a bit without falling apart.

Lucy definitely still feels guilty about not being aware right away that Harker was missing. You could totally see it in how she talked to VH, like maybe he’d be judging her for it. Oh, Lucy. She loves Hark; I know she does. She just has a tendency to forget things that aren’t right in front of her sometimes. And “in your face” is about the exact opposite of Harker. But she told VH about how, when we started at Tulane and realized Hark didn’t really…have much of a social life, Lucy tried to drag him to every party, concert, and club event. And how I’d tried to tell her he didn’t enjoy it; that he was just solitary by nature, which she fundamentally didn’t understand. I think it’s not understanding him that she can’t quite forgive herself for—even more than not noticing he was gone.

Lucy said that when Harker gets back and finds out about all this, he will “be totally mortified that his advisor is friends with his sister.” (Which…I think she’s trying a little too hard to be cheerful about Harker. I know she’s worried as hell.) And of course, because Lucy is Lucy, VH just smiled, like of course they were friends. We are, aren’t we? Friends with him? I really like VH. Something about him just puts me at ease. He’s so calm and thoughtful. And he does talk exactly how he writes in chat, but I was expecting it to sound stilted. Instead, it sounds totally normal for him. It helps that he has a faint accent, still, so everything sounds crisp—the opposite of Southern accents. To hear him and Arthur talk together is like salt and honey.

For the main, I did a yogurt-roasted lamb shank, thyme and rosemary new potatoes, and minted green beans. The lamb came out very well—the yogurt locks in the moisture of the meat and turns almost to a crust of cheese on the outside. I loved the new potatoes. They crisped up on the outside but stayed tender inside since I roasted them whole, and I used coarse salt on them for that extra bite at the end, to balance out the sweetness of the yogurt on the lamb. I’ll blanch the green beans next time so they don’t lose their snap.

I was really interested to hear about what it was like for VH coming to the U.S. from Amsterdam. I would forget, on chat, that he lived there until he was 19. He said that part of what got him interested in anthropology in the first place was the sense of being always an outsider, an observer, watching people as if he were not one of them. Then, when he arrived in the U.S., that feeling was amplified. He spoke English, came from a culture not terribly dissimilar, and was young enough to adapt, had he wanted to. And yet he found himself going in the other direction. Marking for himself the differences and similarities from a bit of a remove. It didn’t hurt, he said, that he felt he could be anyone here. He’d come to a new country, far from home and family, where no one knew him, where he could start over, start a new life. I told him it sounded to me like what people can do online, and he got this look…kind of contemplative but a little bit sad? Arthur noticed, and when he took VH’s hand, VH looked at him differently, like he was the one who needed to be calmed down.

Lemon sorbet and lavender granita for dessert. I think it came out really well! I was worried that the coarseness of the granita would interrupt the smooth texture of the sorbet, but since the flavor of the lemon is sharp and the flavor of lavender is soft, it was like they balanced each other out perfectly. I think next time I’ll try it with just the tiniest bit of chopped, crystallized ginger on top for just a bit of heat.

Lucy was epically sweet and helped me clean up the kitchen exactly how I like it. She usually doesn’t have the patience. I really appreciated it.