Umami by Laia Jufresa Page A

cooks’ sweat; how they’d pick their teeth with their index fingers and then, without a second thought, work the meat with their hands, blood and fat on their apron pockets. On the street the relentless Xalapan drizzle, and in the kitchen the tiled floor growing steadily more filthy as the day went on, making the soles of their shoes squeak against the accumulated footprints that marked the senselessness of it all. And that senselessness played out from one day to the next, but – she’d often felt this in the kitchen – merely repeating itself. In her growing collection of stylish pillows she sees the thousand layers of mascara on the provincial middle-class women who would flock to the restaurant desperate for a ‘girls’ night out’, which always seemed to Marina too hysterical, too high-pitched to signal any kind of real friendship. They called each other ‘girl’, because youth was their holy grail. The rejuvenation cult never fails to disconcert Marina who, no matter what age she turns, always wishes she were older.
    The women would call her over, ‘Pst! Hey! Señorita! Miss, another pitcher of sangria.’ Perfect teeth, too much perfume, never a morsel left on their plates. Some of them would shamelessly click their fingers at her, then slip her an extra tip because she knew their daughters.
    â€˜An Italian restaurant!’ Marina explained to her therapist, with a floating exclamation mark. But he doesn’t get the irony. He is incapable of visualizing the Italy of the Mexican provinces: Venice – its eternally vanilla sky – depicted in shoddy frescoes on the walls, and the pasta routinely, even purposely overcooked. Mr. Therapist is too worldly to even begin to imagine the stale cosmopolitanism of those who hop over the border for some retail therapy in McAllen, Texas, but don’t dare venture to Mexico City. And he is far too optimistic to see how everything she owns is linked to the restaurant, to her father’s temper, to the damp walls, and a social class she can despise all she wants, but which still pays her bills.
    Although, in truth, this revulsion she feels toward her belongings has only developed over the last few months, since she left the hospital.
    â€˜If there are two million cushions, and a rug, and a sofa,’ she asks in her session, ‘how am I ever going to get out of here?’
    â€˜Where would you like to go?’ Mr. Therapist asks.
    But she doesn’t want to go anywhere. Quite the opposite, she’d like to spend more time in her house. She wants to be home when the whomise lights up her wall. She’s twenty years old, is that so much to ask? She opens the fridge. Beer, pickles, two tomatoes, mustard. A couple of yogurts, a collection of jellies and jams that Chihuahua buys and then dishes out sparingly as if they contained gold dust. There isn’t any blue cheese in the fridge. There is, however, an egg. Also a set of Tupperware containers that have been there for ages and which she doesn’t dare open. There’s a bottle of ketchup with so much dried sauce around the hole that the top won’t close, like those people who talk so much a thin layer of crust grows in the corner of their mouth. Some carrots she bought weeks ago fester in the tray at the bottom. She used one to masturbate with, then threw it away. The rest are still there. She never worked up the energy to peel them. Fuck, she’d bought them in curative mode. Linda always has a Tupperware full of crudités. Whenever Marina is over there she takes one every time she passes the fridge. Why can’t she be more like Linda: seemingly laidback, but an impeccable master of juliennes?
    â€˜Popcorn. That’s it. Yes,’ she thinks.
    It’s a tiny sign, no saliva or taste-pore activation or anything, but she finds some popcorn in the sideboard and quickly pops the bag in the microwave. While it cooks, she takes the