Page 33 of Menotte avec toi

“Oh, oh goodness,” she muttered, shaking her head, her eyes shimmering from how hard she was laughing behind the napkin.

“He yanked it out of there so fast the garlic bread flew off the pan and landed on the counter with flames shooting off the bag, but after he smothered them with a pot top and peeled the wrapper off, the bottom of the loaf was still edible. It was a good thing too, because his attempt to make spaghetti noodles went just as badly.”

“How!” She squeaked. “Just answer me that, please. It’s just noodles and water. Who can screw that up?”

“My uncle,” I explained. “He tried to cook a whole lot of noodles in a medium-sized pot, didn’t use nearly enough water, and wound up with a congealed mass of semi-cooked pasta.”

She sputtered, opening and then closing her mouth, but no words came out. “There are no words, none. I can’t even imagine what that looked like.”

“Stringy Play-Doh,” I explained, nibbling on the calamari, which practically melted in my mouth. “Ohh, that’s good.”

“As much as I enjoy a good, crispy calamari dunked in sriracha-lime sauce, buttered calamari offer such a beautifully simplistic flavor that elevates the taste for me.”

“It’s so soft. I’ve never had it this way before,” I admitted. “I love fried calamari too, but you’re right, having it this way lets the sweetness of the meat shine through.”

“Exactly,” she replied. “So, tell me, Kitten, what did you guys’ wind up eating for supper that night?”

“Well, my uncle had purchased a container of meatballs in sauce from the deli that he heated in a pot with a dash of garlic powder and Italian seasonings, and those turned out beautifully, so he cut the garlic bread he’d salvaged and layered the meatballs and some parmesan cheese on top. It was really good and gave us something to laugh about, not like that was the only culinary disaster that resulted from his attempts to follow the directions on the package. He grabbed a box of frozen fried chicken one night and potato salad from the same deli as the meatballs. Needless to say, we wound up just having potato salad for supper after the chicken caught fire in the oven and charred. When he tried to scrape the burnt bits off, he discovered that it was still frozen on the inside and pitched the mess in the trash.”

“Dare I even ask?”

“Probably not, since I wouldn’t be able to tell you how he managed that, but smoke started rolling out of the oven and the chicken was in flames when he opened the door.”

“I see why you opted for us to go out.”

“Right.”

“He got better when he stopped trying to follow directions and just did things his own way, but those first few weeks were an adventure, let me tell you,” I said. “But he was hell-bent on being the one to cook for us. He said it didn’t feel right to have me do the cooking when I’d already had a long day at school and the after-school art workshops he helped me sign up for.”

“I bet those were fun,” she remarked, the food on our plates slowly diminishing.

“They really were. Having somewhere constructive to go after school where I could explore the things I loved helped me settle in a little better, and it meant that I wasn’t sitting around the apartment waiting for him to come home from work.”

“You don’t do well when you don’t have something to occupy your time, do you?” she asked.

“Not in the slightest. I get fidgety, and then I start looking for things to get into,” I explained. “This one day I decided to try my hand at paper mâché, only I used too much water and couldn’t get my newspaper strips to adhere to the balloon I was attempting to wrap them around. It was a hot mess. Eventually, I figured out the right flour-to-water ratio to create paste, but he never fussed at me for artistic disasters. He’d just step into the room, groan, and help me clean the place up so he could wreck it again cooking.”

I loved when she laughed. Deep and throaty, her upper body shaking as she pressed a hand to her face, snickering at my stories. I was beginning to understand why my uncle had clung so tightly to his memories of family mealtimes. Sharing moments like this with her rapidly became the highlight of my day.

“I’m curious about something,” she said as she set her wine glass down, her expression having turned serious so suddenly that I found myself squirming beneath her gaze.

“What’s that, Mistress?” I said.

“When you texted to tell me you were headed back and that Sunday night would work for your uncle, you mentioned that your meeting with your client had beenweird,” she said. “I’d like you to elaborate on that. Weird how? Was he inappropriate?”

Trust my Mistress not to miss anything, even something I was still conflicted about.

“Not exactly,” I hedged. “There was just something about him and his request that made me uncomfortable. I told him I’dhave to think about it before accepting the commission, and he seemed a bit put off by that for a moment before nodding and telling me to take all the time I needed.”

“When you say that he seemed put off by your response, what do you mean?”

“Just that his face got all pinched up and his eyes narrowed into this sneer that was, well, not exactly creepy but definitely uncomfortable to look at,” I explained. “Then he smiled, though I could tell it was forced. I don’t know if I really want to work for him even if he does own one of the biggest art galleries in the city. I know it would mean a big boost for my career, but my uncle always told me to go with what my gut told me and not to waste time questioning it, because our first reactions to someone or something were rarely wrong.”

“I have to agree with your uncle there,” my Mistress replied. “If something about him bothered you, then tell him no. If he’s got a problem with you refusing him, you tell him he can just come have a conversation with me and I’ll set him straight.”

I giggled at that, because I could almost picture how that conversation would go. I doubted the man would appreciate the words my Mistress would have for him, though I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I’d seen, all too well, how a person in a position of power could derail someone’s career. One of the few friends I’d made in art school had left the city after an encounter with a potential patron that had left his reputation in tatters. Between the vicious lies the man had spread and the way so many others had jumped on the bandwagon when he’d called for my friend’s work to be shunned and him to essentially be ‘canceled’ from the art community, had been a horrible lesson to learn, even while watching it from outside of the situation.

“Exactly what do you find funny about that?” My Mistress asked.

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