Please?”
She shrugged, pale face in the lamplight, and took the first small bite. Kenny poured the eggs into the pan, adjusted the flame, waited.
“This is good,” Junie said.
“I’m glad you like it,” Kenny said. A vision, then: the two of them married, in a house like this, a future. Wouldn’t it be nice? Then realized that he was quoting from, reliving, a Beach Boys song. How much of this life belonged to him? Still it was a pleasant fantasy. More than that: a strange kind of certainty, as long as he didn’t think about it.
Took his plate, identical to hers, and sat across from her in the booth. Glass on three sides, the rain ticking down outside. “Would you like my parsley?” she asked. “I don’t think I can finish it.”
“There is an example,” Kenny said.
“Of what?”
“I’ve always wondered about parsley. I mean, it comes on your plate, you never eat it, they take it back to the kitchen and throw it away.”
“Or put it on somebody else’s plate.”
“Well, yeah, of course. That one-head-of-parsley-per-restaurant-per-week theory. But even if they use
new
parsley for every diner, you know, it still doesn’t make any sense to me. What’s it there for? It’s there to
not eat
.”
“It’s a garnish,” Junie said; like the word itself was enough to make it make sense.
Garnish
.
“And now I am trying to impress you, by cooking you dinner.”
“And succeeding.”
“Thank you. And in order to impress you I put this
garnish
on the side of your plate, even though this has never made any sense to me, in fact seems like pretty much of a waste, you know? I mean there are farms in California where they don’t grow anything but parsley, I bet.”
“And children are starving in India.”
“Well, they are.”
“I know they are,” she said. “All kinds of hellish things are going on in the world. People are getting shot, starving, they’re burning the rain forest down in Brazil. I know it’s not exactly news but that doesn’t mean it stopped happening.” She took a sip of the white wine, like she was testing it, examining. Looked at her glass. “While we sit here, smothered in comfort,” she said. “Getting high, getting drunk, watching TV, picking fights with each other over nothing.”
Kenny was nearly done. The food was good, rich, extravagant; he took a final bite, tasting the salt sharpness of the salmon, the rich sour cream, butter, and eggs. Top of the world, Ma; top of the food chain, anyway. I like it here on top of the food chain.
“Smothered in comfort,” Kenny said. He didn’t feel that way exactly. These moments of comfort, moments of quiet, did not come often for him; they were like rest stops, a place to catch a breather before he headed back into the pointless noise of his life. He didn’t want this one to go away. “What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “You live the life you’re given.”
“My father would say, the life you make,” she said. “I don’tknow, I don’t mean to be a drag. It just doesn’t seem like enough to me, to live your life for pleasure. Everything’s a pleasure, right? Food and sex and movies. Everybody’s happy, and when you stop being happy you move on, you get divorced, find a better restaurant.”
She spoke with the true voice of depression, Kenny thought: the commonplace becoming too heavy to lift, the senselessness overtaking. The cow’s life, the pig’s life worth more than her own. Still, the soft light; the way that small things mattered, the two of them bound in the light of the flames, the cold world outside.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what else there is.”
“That’s why I brought you here,” she said. “To tell me.”
She smiled at him gravely, apologies again: for the weather, the state of the world. “This has got to stop,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Come here.”
She looked at him, grave, skeptical. Kenny found himself not breathing again.
She shrugged, pale face in the lamplight, and took the first small bite. Kenny poured the eggs into the pan, adjusted the flame, waited.
“This is good,” Junie said.
“I’m glad you like it,” Kenny said. A vision, then: the two of them married, in a house like this, a future. Wouldn’t it be nice? Then realized that he was quoting from, reliving, a Beach Boys song. How much of this life belonged to him? Still it was a pleasant fantasy. More than that: a strange kind of certainty, as long as he didn’t think about it.
Took his plate, identical to hers, and sat across from her in the booth. Glass on three sides, the rain ticking down outside. “Would you like my parsley?” she asked. “I don’t think I can finish it.”
“There is an example,” Kenny said.
“Of what?”
“I’ve always wondered about parsley. I mean, it comes on your plate, you never eat it, they take it back to the kitchen and throw it away.”
“Or put it on somebody else’s plate.”
“Well, yeah, of course. That one-head-of-parsley-per-restaurant-per-week theory. But even if they use
new
parsley for every diner, you know, it still doesn’t make any sense to me. What’s it there for? It’s there to
not eat
.”
“It’s a garnish,” Junie said; like the word itself was enough to make it make sense.
Garnish
.
“And now I am trying to impress you, by cooking you dinner.”
“And succeeding.”
“Thank you. And in order to impress you I put this
garnish
on the side of your plate, even though this has never made any sense to me, in fact seems like pretty much of a waste, you know? I mean there are farms in California where they don’t grow anything but parsley, I bet.”
“And children are starving in India.”
“Well, they are.”
“I know they are,” she said. “All kinds of hellish things are going on in the world. People are getting shot, starving, they’re burning the rain forest down in Brazil. I know it’s not exactly news but that doesn’t mean it stopped happening.” She took a sip of the white wine, like she was testing it, examining. Looked at her glass. “While we sit here, smothered in comfort,” she said. “Getting high, getting drunk, watching TV, picking fights with each other over nothing.”
Kenny was nearly done. The food was good, rich, extravagant; he took a final bite, tasting the salt sharpness of the salmon, the rich sour cream, butter, and eggs. Top of the world, Ma; top of the food chain, anyway. I like it here on top of the food chain.
“Smothered in comfort,” Kenny said. He didn’t feel that way exactly. These moments of comfort, moments of quiet, did not come often for him; they were like rest stops, a place to catch a breather before he headed back into the pointless noise of his life. He didn’t want this one to go away. “What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “You live the life you’re given.”
“My father would say, the life you make,” she said. “I don’tknow, I don’t mean to be a drag. It just doesn’t seem like enough to me, to live your life for pleasure. Everything’s a pleasure, right? Food and sex and movies. Everybody’s happy, and when you stop being happy you move on, you get divorced, find a better restaurant.”
She spoke with the true voice of depression, Kenny thought: the commonplace becoming too heavy to lift, the senselessness overtaking. The cow’s life, the pig’s life worth more than her own. Still, the soft light; the way that small things mattered, the two of them bound in the light of the flames, the cold world outside.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what else there is.”
“That’s why I brought you here,” she said. “To tell me.”
She smiled at him gravely, apologies again: for the weather, the state of the world. “This has got to stop,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Come here.”
She looked at him, grave, skeptical. Kenny found himself not breathing again.
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