Nicola Griffith - Always

We began with salad: greens and sprouts and grated carrots and sunflower seeds. “Try both dressings,” she said. “This one is tofu and basil.” It was astonishing—creamy and smooth and clean. “The vinaigrette’s flaxseed oil and balsamic.” Totally different, warm and aromatic, as subtle and rich as cello music.

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t have to. Her cheeks pinked with pleasure.

“Now for the hummus.” It didn’t smell like any hummus I’d ever encountered: toasty, almost sweet, but also tangy, with the familiar sting of lemon and garlic. She slathered it on black bread and handed it to me. “Here.”

I bit into it. It was coarse and hearty, much rougher than any hummus I’d ever had before.

“And here—” She crossed in three light steps to the fridge, brought back a bowl and a jar of mayonnaise, and went back to the cupboard for two dishes. Her hips were round and tight with sheathed muscle.

“Homemade cole slaw,” she said, and mixed up the shredded vegetables with mayonnaise in her dish. “Put it on the hummus.” She heaped it on the bread-and-hummus mixture. “Here. Try it.” I tipped and mixed and heaped. “Just pick it up. It’s messy, but that can’t be helped. At least you’re not wearing that nice dress.”

I bit into the bread and hummus and cole slaw.

“I thought you’d enjoy the different textures.”

I did. I didn’t know how she’d known that I would. The cole slaw fell off, smearing over my hand and plopping onto my plate. I picked it up with my fingers, finished it, made myself another slice.

“How much weight have you lost?” she said.

“I don’t know.” I chewed a few more times, swallowed. I wanted to stuff the world in my mouth.

“You like food.”

“Yes.”

“It must have been hard.”

"Yes.” I hadn’t realized just how hungry I’d been. Still was. “Thank you.”

She nodded. “When you were talking on the set, I thought: It sounds like what happens to people’s tastes when they have chemo. And I know what to do about that. It’s partly a saturated-fat thing. Stick with things like olive oil and flaxseed oil. Avoid your dairy and your eggs and your beef, especially aged beef.”

“And broccoli.”

“Yeah, well, I said partly. The rest… I don’t know. But have you ever noticed that broccoli sometimes smells sort of fishy?”

I nodded, surprised.

“Whatever makes it smell like that is one of the things that your taste buds, or what’s left of them, won’t like. Very, very fresh seafood should taste okay. Oysters, for example.” She grinned. “Hold on.”

She disappeared into the living room. The music stopped and restarted with Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter…. oysters down in Oyster Bay do it.

“The taste buds,” I said, when she returned. “Chemo destroys them?”

“Yep.” She settled back on her chair. “Though I’ve never heard of it happening so fast, or after just one dose.”

“And does it come back, the taste?”

“Most likely. Might take a while, though. Months. Even a year or two.”

A year or two… Let’s do it, let’s…

“Until then, distract them with other tastes, anything aromatic is good. Ginger. Garlic. Lemon. Vinegar. Tomato. Thai, Indian, Greek, northern Italian. And texture. I guessed that you’d like things that contrasted, that were unexpected: cold and crunchy cole slaw with room-temperature tangy hummus, unrefined bread. Also something you could build, literally. You like being in charge.”

“An arrogant toad?”

“Well, no. But you looked like you might be, that first time. And then you came hammering on my door—but you seemed so, I don’t know, reduced. I wanted to make you feel better, but I couldn’t even feed you. Though the crack about how awful I looked made me worry less about that.”

“Yes.” The gift of tongues.

“Is it true you’re paying everyone’s hospital expenses?”

Rusen. I shook my head.

“It’s not true?”

“No. It is true.” I just didn’t want everyone to know.

“And then I saw how you dealt with that rent-a-cop. And you, I don’t know, you looked different in a dress.” She poked at a shred of cabbage on her plate.

“You look different in shoes.” Inane. She seemed to bring it out in me. But she didn’t look up from toying with the cabbage and I understood that what mattered here wasn’t the words. I poured the last of the champagne. “I have more in the car. If you like.”

Now she looked up. “What, you always drive around with a six-pack of bubbly in the backseat?”

“Not always.” I stood, waited. She nodded.

Outside, I could still hear the hum of pub music from Murphy’s. Judging by the smell, someone across the street was getting high. I felt every stir of light Seattle air on my forehead and cheeks. The food was pleasantly present in my stomach, but did nothing to blunt the other, growing hunger.

I went back in. Definitely lamb. “It smells like Catalonia at Easter.”

“Never been there,” she said. “Been just about everywhere else, but never Spain. Or France.”

I put one bottle in the fridge and opened the other. I would have to buy her a champagne bucket. “Can you cook French food, too?”

“I can cook anything.”

I can cook anything. I studied her, one bare foot tucked underneath her, the other swinging back and forth, and remembered the scent of sleepy, naked woman.

She flushed. “It’s my job.”

“Yes,” I said.

“At least it is, now.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you come?”

I gestured at the food, but she shook her head.

“No. The first time. At three in the morning. Why did you come?”

Because she had stained her white coat and I wanted to know if anyone would wash it for her. Because she needed someone to bring her tea when she was tired, hold her when she saw her career falling about her in ruins.

And that wasn’t me. Couldn’t be me.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know. I got the flowers.” She leaned forward. In the slanting light the tops of her breasts looked as if they had been dusted with gold. “But why did you come?”

She leaned closer, tucked her hair behind her ears. She missed a strand. I reached out and tucked it back for her. It felt as slippery as a satin camisole.

“Tell me why.”

I tucked hair back behind her other ear. “I was angry.” I reached for her hand. She tensed slightly, then let me lift it to my mouth. Her knuckles smelled of garlic and, faintly, that naked, sleepy, buttery-toast scent my back brain was already beginning to recognize. I turned her hand over. Blood bloomed under the skin of her breast and throat. I kissed the center of her palm. Her head fell back, and I caught it. The back of her skull felt as small and hard as a cat’s. I lifted her hand again, and this time kissed the inside of her wrist. All those nerves. She made an unconscious pushing motion with her feet on the floor. Her hips lifted slightly. I bent until my lips were inches from hers. Her breath pistoned in and out. Her eyes were black.

I kissed her. It was like opening my mouth to a waterfall; it fisted through me. I pushed the table to one side, picked her up, and laid her on the rug.

“God,” she said hoarsely. “God.”

TWO HOURSlater I found myself kneeling on the floor next to the rug. The CD player had turned itself off. The wooden floor was cool on my shins. Kick was on her back, naked.

“God,” she said. She sat up. There was a carpet burn on her chin. She shivered.

“You’re cold.” I handed her a random assortment of clothes, hers and mine. She stared at them blindly. “Here.” I sorted through the heap, found her T-shirt. It was inside out. I pulled the sleeves carefully back through the shoulder holes. “Lift your arms.” Dazed, she did, and I slipped the T-shirt over her head. Her face emerged, blinking and puzzled, then frowning.