So This is the Story

A Story by jim mckyo

Short Fiction

So this is the story.

This guy gets to his front door and he is completely covered in grocery bags. He has to do a circus act to get his keys out and open the front door. The groceries are up to his eyes, and everywhere else, piled high and heaping. He makes his way down this little hallway, does a gentle spin around a vanity table, kinda bumps into a picture frame but only enough to tilt it, and finally, successfully, makes it to the kitchen. He’s got paper bags and plastic bags and bags under his arms and his keys somehow in his mouth and he goes to put the load from his left arm down on the counter and there is, of course, a crash of broken glass.   And its something of his that he hadn’t planned on breaking.

Drink my beer.

So that’s the initial setup. Man with produce breaks expensive coffee pot. Admittedly, not a whole lot. So let me back fill. I tried to imply a little bit before, but let me break down what we know. We know the guy knows his hallway, he did it blind, encumbered unnaturally, and with no problem. He’s a guy, when he leaves a place, he knows how he left it. He knows if his cereal bowl is out on the coffee table, he knows what’s on the floor, he knows what’s on the walls. He knows when and where to spin.

He prides himself on this kin·es·thet·ic awareness of his space. But the coffee pot breaks so we know its not his space. Not his alone, anyhow. And the look on his face when he felt the broken glass bounce off his leg is one of pure animal. The crash lasts only that second, the sound is gone as soon as it registers, but there’s a wave of anger that flushes through the guy that lasts much longer. So much longer that, after he clears a swath of counter, moving pans and dishes and cutlery and spatulas and - everything else that somebody else left for him to find- he moves all that out of harms way so he can safely put his own groceries away. Still, after all that, he has a look that would make small children cry.

Beer.

To fill in the blanks, his roommate, she, made food, ate it, and left a huge mess.   The mess whose ramifications resulted in the broken coffee pot. His broken coffee pot. So he’s thinking about how he gets his money back for the broken thing but there’s no way to it. He broke it. All on his lonesome.   And of course there’s no blood. If the reverse happened no way is he paying out a dime. So that’s a dead end. F**k it if he’s gonna clean up her s**t, so cooking dinner is off the table as well. Nothing like walking in with a bunch of that day fresh product and leaving it all to sit. So, he goes up to his room, gets comfortable in front of some video games and smokes some pot. To hide from confrontation he has to hide from everything, get out of his own head. He drinks a glass of wine. He pwns some noobs. He calms down. He is no longer dangerous around quiet toddlers. He drinks two more glasses of wine and goes to sleep without setting an alarm.

Beer.

So that alarm business means its the weekend and there’s nothing in particular to wake up to. The sun comes up.   He takes a shower. He goes to have some breakfast and the rage bubbles up inside. But there is no human outlet. She never came home. She made the mess and left for real. Didn’t go around the corner. Didn’t pick up cigarettes. The mess has been percolating for 14 hours, minimum, it has its own smell. He doesn’t like the smell and he doesn’t like not being able to make coffee and gets his keys and drives to the Dunkin Donuts drivethrough and all the time is still in his underwear. He returns and the living room is clean, but the idea of the mess is too much to be held by the kitchen and it eats and eats at his nerves. He feels it.

So he starts to plan his argument, because you better believe there’s gonna be an argument, and he tries to figure which words in which order will get the maximum result.   How can he win. But again, you need to know more. Because, you see, there is way with argument. Its like arguing with a bee hive. She is immune to logic. All defensiveness and sting. Its like he doesn’t live with a thinking person, but with an energy force. An energy force Of twisted facts. Of forgotten grievances.   As thinly veiled as he is, as she is, as the circumstance is, I can tell you that no one, real or fictitious, can win an argument with her. Einstein said it defines insanity to repeat an experiment with the hope of changing a result. There is no way to winning, with words. None. And so he goes back to the drawing board.

Beer.

Well really, the cutting board, the molding and festering and contaminated cutting board. And he washes it. He uses soap and he uses bleach and he cleans everything. Everything she’s ever touched. He flips the toaster for crumbs and does the inside of the microwave and the underneath of the stovetop and the above the fridge and anything and everything. Indiscriminately, he cleans, and time goes by and it’s time for dinner but he doesn’t have the heart to cook after all that so he eats the rest of his pizza cold, finishes the bottle of wine, and checks to see that the dishwasher is running before he goes to bed. Maybe she’ll see what he’s done, take it as a peace offering, and empty the dishwasher when she gets home.

But that’s no way to climax a story and after all this buildup that doesn’t happen, and he never really thought it was going to happen like that so he’s okay to wake up and see no sign that she’s been home. The placental birth of the kitchen mess has moved from hours to days, but since its Sunday, and she’s been down the shore, there will have to be some kind of resolution when she gets home. And he decides how he wants everything to unfold.

Beer

Back to those grocery bags. They had butternut squash and bleeding beets. They had veal loin and port wine. They had garlic and shallots and all this other nice stuff. Stuff, most likely, he would have shared. After he got in and unloaded his groceries and didn’t break his all time favorite coffee pot. Just because the weekend wasn’t as relaxing as he wanted it to be doesn’t mean he’ll let all that good food go to waste. And because its a beach day and because he just knows he figures she’s gonna walk through the door at six.

He takes out the veal flank and lay it on the cutting board. He covers it in two layers of plastic wrap. The mallet, he grips tightly, but this is not the time to take out any frustrations. He relaxes his fingers and is careful that each impact is playful, delicate. Like he’s exploring boundaries with a new lover. The veal is fragile, and he pounds it just as he should, until it rewards him with its paper thinness. The pan, that she had used just three days ago, has been reincarnated, purified through soap and water. It is beautiful now. It holds molten butter, olive oil, smashed garlic, and fresh thyme.   The shallots are dancing as they, too, sun themselves a golden brown. He places the veal in the pan. Lets it kiss the aromatics. It sings.

He waits just a minute, and looks at the tongs on the counter. Too clumsy for the job, he flips the veal by hand, only just barely not burning his fingertips. Wiping the heat onto his apron, he cranks up the burner. Full blast, a moment longer, and he plates the paillard. Waiting there, these concentric circles of squash and beet puree. He used the back of a wooden spoon and cuts through the circles so now they look like a target board, through a haze, and there’s this meat in the middle of it all. Meat that promises tender.

He adds port to de-glaze the pan. The sauce reduces and he drizzles it over the plate. It looks like honey, dark gluttonous honey.   Then - right there at the kitchen counter - he disturbs the symmetry of the arrangement. He uses the side of his fork to separate a mouthful.   He takes a big swig out of a stemless wine glass. He gets excited and his pace quickens but then he remembers its about the journey, and he pauses. When step away for just a second, you come back to those flavors and you can taste every single thing that you put into it. He tastes everything and he is satisfied only after licking the plate and using some bread to clean the sauce pan. He is a cloud of locusts and he devours everything in sight.

She walks in, and he is already upstairs, hiding. He can hear her footsteps calumping on the old wood.   She smells it. He knows she smells it because he smells it and he’s been in the middle of it all day. And it smells good, so naturally, the steps trail to the kitchen. They slow down. They are expectant footsteps. There is nothing there. No trace. Nothing edible, anyhow. But there are pots. And there are pans. And there are vegetable scraps and mixing bowls and empty cans and splashes of oil and butter melting in its wrapper and on scenting the disarray, there are scout ants greedily returning to the nest with their fortunate news.