The Food Issue - Rungh

I tell my wife Greta that
she won my heart with
food. Mutual friends
introduced us over
bowls full of steaming
noodles, spring rolls
and Vıetnamese iced
coffee. I noticed Greta
ate quickly—her eating
wasn’t dignified but
urgent, like a quarterback
being rushed for
third down. Surprised
by my allergy to
cashews, she waved the
waiter over and said to
him, “Your menu doesn’t
say there are cashews in this dish. You’ve made
a terrible mistake. This man could have died.”
The waiter apologized, returning to our
table several times during the course of our
meal to ask Greta if everything was all right.
My friends drove me home, since I’d recently
stopped driving. My interest in the world was
shrinking—I sold Amway and would say
anything for testimonial effect: “Oh, I don’t
need a car anymore! I hold my weekly meeting
at home and sell the product right at my door!”
This so impressed the new guys at the bottom
of my pyramid, that I really did stop driving.
I willed myself back into the dark ages.
Mike and Anne asked me what I thought of
Greta Poon.
“She seems nice and direct. Actually, she’s
right. I could’ve died if she hadn’t spotted the
cashews.”
“What luck,” said Mike and Anne.
“It’s love, not luck,” I said, not knowing what
Hand
To
MOUTH
else to say. Instantly I imagined her face
up close to mine. Just the word
‘love’ conjured Greta’s face.
“She seems interested in
Amway anyway,” added.
“Everyone should sell
Amway,” Anne said.
Mike agreed. Anne
always said Amway
with reverence—a
longer breath, a deeper
intonation. Mike’s
pupils dilated right away,
I could see his posture
stiffen as if at attention.
His meandering flow of
thought also stiffened,
assuming a wild torrent of products and
contacts, lifeblood of the ‘Amway family.’
I called up Greta that night; the line was busy.
I jumped into the shower with this new bodyscrub
gel, which contained crushed bits of
walnut to exfoliate and revitalize the skin.
I scrubbed and scrubbed, thinking of Greta in
a generous frilled night-gown, gently parted to
engulf me in her delicate, almost palliative
caress. I called Greta while dripping wet, and
she said, “I’m making jello salad,” and I said, “I’d
really like to get together with you tonight,” and
she said, “Well come on over then.” I confessed
that I hadn’t the means to get there, so she
hung up and twenty minutes later she arrived at
my door with her jello salad sloshing around in
Tupperware.
“It won’t set properly now,” she said, letting
me take her coat. Naturally, she wore nothing
underneath.
26
“What’ll you do in the morning?” I asked her,
putting my arms around her softly rounded
back, “Don’t you work tomorrow?”
“I’m here to make us supper. I won’t need to
stay the night.”
She took control of my fridge, stove and
microwave. Before long she had cheesy
scalloped potatoes, broiled T-bone steak and
a caesar salad on the table. I fell into an urge
for candlelight, but Greta stopped me. She shut
off the kitchen and dining room lights, drew
open my window drapes, and let the traffic
lights on Bowness Road streak across our
dinner and conversation.
“If you’d eaten those cashews,” Greta said,
“Well, actually, I would’ve enjoyed seeing you
go into shock. I work in triage and honestly,
it’s a real high seeing people lose control. I’m
good—very good—at saving lives. Then you
would’ve owed me.”
“I’m not good at owing anybody anything,”
I said. “I take what’s mine and I leave.”
Greta sighed at that.
“The only men I can’t save,” she whispered,
“are the ones who leave.”
Because the food was great—the steak
medium, the salad garlicky with just the right
punch of anchovy paste—I felt that I had to tell
Greta the truth: that sex wasn’t the only means
of saving me. In fact, the explosive urge to grab
her breasts that sent waves of blood up my
cock, leaving me light-headed, now drained
back to the recesses of my stomach as I ate and
ate. It’s the smell of cooked blood I love most—
the oily brine oozing from juicy marrows.
Its knowing that our sole worth is portioned
out by the number of steaks we’ve eaten.