Her Kitchen
“We should get some dinner. I think I heard someone wiser than me say it’s hard to survive on love,” I say. I kiss Katherine on the forehead and stand up from her bed.
I’m starting to pull on my pants, when she intervenes. “Why bother? No one else is here. What would you like for dinner?”
“Should we cook something or just eat some leftovers?”
“Let’s see if any leftovers look good. We can make something if nothing else appeals. I work a full day in the kitchen seven days a week. I don’t mind a break from cooking.”
“I can cook, too, you know.”
“You know I know that. Dinner two nights ago was delicious, but …” She pauses, seemingly unwilling to say what she wants to say.
“But what? What aren’t you saying? Until two nights ago, you’ve always been very open with me, unless you were setting me up for a meatloaf joke. Two nights ago was a big problem. Fortunately, you’re not sitting here sobbing, so I don’t think it’s another game changer like that.”
“It’s my kitchen. In my entire awareness, only my grandfather and I have ever cooked in that kitchen. It sounds funny, but it’s much easier for me to share my body with you than to share my kitchen. My fantasies when you would swoop in and rescue me from my loneliness always included sex. They never included you cooking in my kitchen.”
I frown. I don’t like where this is going.
She continues anyway. “Maybe it’s the strong associations it has for me with my grandfather. That first summer I was here, he’d cook in the kitchen and I’d wait on the customers. Even after all these years, I sometimes half expect to see him standing in there cooking when I come back with an order. Or maybe because the kitchen has become my refuge. If a customer got me angry, I’d stay in there and pretend to say the things I couldn’t really say to them. Or just hide, like when you made me cry yesterday.”
“But I thought I’d cook dinners here some nights. And help you out in the kitchen. I’m not just going to sit in the dining room while you work.”
“I know, and opening for dinners a few nights a week is a great idea. But it’s going to take time for me to loosen up about it. It won’t be easy. In the mean time, you get my body, or most of it at least, until you get back tomorrow with the condoms.”
“I’ll manage to live with that for now. But I want to share all of your life, not just your bed.”
“I think it’s our bed now.”
We hug, then walk down the steps to the kitchen. We end up choosing some leftover meatloaf, the end of the mashed potatoes and the last two slices of the blueberry pie. We heat up the meatloaf and the potatoes, then take our food out to a table in the dining room. We sit there, both stark naked, more feeding each other than ourselves, giggling regularly. I sporadically look at the windows, expecting to see someone peeping in at us.
Finally, Katherine says, “This isn’t Manhattan. There’s not going to be anyone out there, except maybe a lone soul down on the beach. They won’t be able to see much below our heads. And if they do, maybe we just gave somebody a thrill.”
I shake my head. This is going to take some getting used to for me.
After we’ve eaten our fill, we clean the dishes, before going up for a shared shower. We had each managed to drip blueberry filling down the other’s front. I did lick the big drop off of Katherine’s breast, but she still did have a somewhat sticky purple smear across her.
To be honest, her shower is too small for sharing, but we managed. Back in bed, we kiss and snuggle for a while before falling asleep. Nothing more sexual than that.
We kiss briefly when Katherine wakes up and gets dressed. I start to get dressed with her, but she says I should stay here; she’s not sure she wants to paint in front of me. While she’s gone, I go across to my cabin and change into clean clothes and bring another change of clothes back with me. I don’t think I want to move all my stuff over yet without talking to her about it first.
I’m sitting in the dining room waiting for her when I hear the door rattle. I go over and help her carry in her painting paraphernalia.
“Did you get the coffee started?”
“No, I was waiting for you.”
“Why not? I want you to carry your weight around here. As much as I’m looking forward to our sex tonight, I need more than that from you if you’re going to live here.” She’s definitely snapping at me.
“After being told last night I wasn’t welcome in the kitchen, I hadn’t even considered doing it. And I don’t know where you keep the coffee and if there’s a specific coffee I should be using or any of a million other things I’d probably have screwed up. Right now, I feel like I’m going to get my head bit off if I try to do something just as much as if I don’t. I’m giving up my life to come here to be with you, but other than in your bed, I’m not feeling very welcomed.”
“I’m sorry, Jaren. In my fantasy, you know exactly what to do, when I want you to do something and when I don’t. That isn’t fair to expect of you. The fantasy lives in my head, the fantasy you knows all of my wants and all of my needs. But you don’t. I haven’t really talked to many real people, other than customers in a decade. I can paste a smile on my face for them, then go in my kitchen and curse them out. I don’t want to do that with you. So you’ll need to be patient with me as I remember how to be social. As a start, let me show you how to make the coffee.”
“Can I carry your stuff upstairs or something for you at least first?”
“Just put it by the bottom of the stairs and I’ll deal with it later. Some of it goes up, some of it stays down and you’d never know where to put it. I think some of this friction is because we just had the fastest romance in history. A week ago, you were a fantasy figure for me and you’d forgotten who I was and had never heard of this island. And twelve hours ago, you’d never seen beyond the dining room here. You knew nothing at all of my real life.”
“Well, to be pedantic, I’d seen into your bedroom three nights ago.”
She smiles. “You did like watching me, didn’t you. Did you have no idea that your outline stood out strongly against the moonlit waves behind you?”
“I had assumed it was dark enough that you wouldn’t be able to see me. The first night was completely accidental. Did you do that intentionally?”
“Yeah, I was sitting on the porch watching you walk up the beach. I wasn’t sure you were going to stay to watch. Or if you actually had. I couldn’t risk peeking out the window. But when I saw you coming down the next night, I was sure I had you hooked.”
“I was hooked all right. Any possibility that I’d leave this island without you disappeared after that first night. I wanted your mind already. After that night, I wanted your body, too. More than any woman ever. I just didn’t know I already had your heart. But you were quickly stealing mine.”
She’s beaming now, ready to deal with the more mundane issues at hand. “Okay, the coffee is in the cabinet here. New filter, three of these scoops and a full pot of water into it. Got that?”
“Yeah, how long after you go should I start it?”
“Probably twenty five minutes or so. It’s mostly for me. You are the rarity that was here waiting for me.”
“Once I know the setup, should I open up while you are gone, in case any of the rest of us mainlanders are early risers?”
“That’s not a terrible idea. We have a very long offseason still in front of us to get you used to the way everything works. It’s very slow here right now. Without you coming in, I bet we only get ten parties all day. Certainly Tom and Sally for lunch and I think the honeymooners are still here. Josh and Betty stop by most Friday afternoons and have some pie. Speaking of which, I need to make another pie this morning since we finished the blueberry last night. Apple I think now. It feels like an apple pie kind of day out there.”
“What makes it an apple pie day?”
“Apples, and to a lesser extent blueberries, are a fall fruit. I guess pumpkin too, but that’s more late fall, into early winter. Cherries and peaches are summer fruits. As is rhubarb, although I don’t make rhubarb pie very often; it’s largely a lost flavor. Minced meat and pecan pies are winter pies. Lemon meringue is good in the spring. Strawberries for late spring.”
“Who made these rules?”
“They’re mostly based on when things are harvested. They became deeply rooted before we could properly refrigerate foods. You can preserve the fruits as a compote obviously, but the pies taste better made from fresh fruit. So people just associate the flavors with the season. Had you never noticed that?”
“I guess that’s from never getting out of the city — season’s are something to complain about. I don’t really associate them with food. That just comes from somewhere else. It could be a factory as far as I’m concerned. You grew up in Manhattan. How come you get this?”
“I hated Manhattan, remember? Still do.”
“I thought you hated Manhattanites. Especially rich ones.”
“Still do.”
We laugh together then she hugs me and we kiss.
“How do we want to work eating during the day?” I ask. “It seems a bit crowded in here for both of us to eat, but I would really like to eat with you.”
“The last person I worked with was my grandfather and we ate serially, so one of us could cover the front while the other ate. But I understand your desire to eat together; there is a real bonding in doing it.”
“Unless one of us breaks out crying and runs away…”
“We already discussed that. I would prefer not to dwell on it,” she says icily.
Ouch, I hit a touchy spot. Stay far away from that, Jaren.
“It was just me every morning so far. How about if you try eating out here with me. If someone comes, you can carry your plate in and finish it back there. Lunch may be better serially. And hopefully we can find a rhythm for eating dinners together.”
“It can probably work for the short term. During the busy season, we’ll probably need to eat serially in the kitchen. It can get pretty intense. I’ll really appreciate your help then. So we have about six months to get you to understand the whole business.”
“Why don’t I watch you cook our breakfast this morning, so I can see how you do things. Tomorrow, I can be it, both cooking and heading back into the kitchen if anyone shows up.”
“I know we’ve established that you think you’re smart, but I don’t think even you, at your most brilliant, can figure out how I cook bacon from watching me cook eggs. Give it a few more days. I can mind the store for a while longer.”
I watch her cook our breakfasts and she explains a lot more about her organization than just how to cook the eggs. It will take me a while to master all of this. There’s a lot more going on in a commercial kitchen than my kitchen at home.
