I doubt I’d taken leave of my senses, in the kitchen I look at the toast cut in cubes and the filling I had tossed together. Thinking of her beautiful locs as I slide stuffing into bite-size sandwich. I drive a stick through four sandwiches when I’m done, arranging them on a plate with learnt precision. I grab a pinch of spring onions and scatter the vivid green over the plate. I look down, I’m pleased with what I see. I think of how happy she’d be, I worry the taste might come short, I taste a piece tossed to the side of the chopping board. It seems just fine.
A faint jerky tune fills the kitchen just as I leave for the bedroom, where she’s hunched over some work on her desk. Most of her days passed in this manner. I enter with a tray, the garlic sauce wobbles when I rest the tray on her desk. She picks up the little sauce, gives it a twirl and inhales deeply like one does tasting wine. It’s the first time I’ve really really made garlic sauce. My previous attempts resulted in a split sauce I couldn’t serve.
She examines the sandwich critically, raising it to her glasses. She takes a small bite, peers over the frame of her glasses and straight at me. I start to think all the things I could have done differently. She sighs, ‘Can I be honest with you?’ I nod. She gets off her seat, taps my shoulder lightly and says ‘You’re safe this week’.
I exaggerate relief, bringing my palms to my face in disbelieve, like i’d seen contestants on cooking shows do repeatedly. She jumps unto me, slamming us both in the bed and plants one too many kisses on my face. I smell the garlic on her breath and chuckle. Louis Armstrong’s heavy baritone escapes the kitchen ‘ce ci bon’
As we stand now before a faceless painting, I lean into her, she smells like red ginger roots and I know this because I heaped fistfuls of conditioner into her hair that morning in the shower. She had talked then about her aspirations and why leaving her current employment would facilitate that. Quite frankly, I had every intention of listening unbiased and delivering judgment on the matter but I was repeatedly faced with the fullness of her heaving bosom when she moved her hands up to reach soap or brush water off my cheek.
Lora WORDS 