J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

By now everyone was rapt, staring at Evangeline in awe and, quite possibly, admiration. She threw her spatula down on the surface, hard, at such an angle that it bounced up, flipped over once, then again, and tucked itself neatly into her apron belt, which she had been holding open with her fingers to admit it. Again, Philip had not seen this trick at the restaurant, and he joined in their guests’ shocked applause.

Now she brought out the onion half. Philip knew what was coming, he had seen it already, but he couldn’t help grinning at the prospect of watching Evangeline do it. She balanced the onion half on its edge, launched the butcher knife from her belt, spun it in the air before her, and brought it down on the onion once, twice, three, four times. She hollowed each ring with the knifetip, flicking the inner layers onto the rice pile, and she stacked the shell into a dome, with a tiny hole on top. She sheathed the knife, reached behind her for the oil, and squeezed it into the onion half. And then, with a motion so swift and subtle it was hard to be certain it had happened, she pulled a wooden match from a pocket, scraped it against the exhaust hood, and set the onion alight.

The looks on their faces! They couldn’t believe what they were seeing! A tower of steam and fire, gushing out of the onion! Poor Candace reared back as though Evangeline had released a mountain lion from a cage; she collapsed into her husband, burying her hatchet face into his meaty shoulder.

And it was a good thing, too, because it was at Bob’s big bald head that Evangeline launched the first flaming onion ring. It traced an arc of oily smoke across the living room and came to rest just above his left eye. He barely had time to flinch. The burning ring stuck there, and for a terrible moment flared up, singeing his combover and leaving what would obviously be a painful and unsightly scar. He screamed, smacked the onion ring onto the carpet, and gawped at Evangeline with the expression of a big, miserable child who has just been called fatty by his own mother.

By the time it registered on the faces of Roy and June that something bizarre had occurred, the missiles intended for them had already been launched. The first caught June in the breast, where an embroidered silk rose brooch likely spared her from injury; nevertheless she squealed as if stabbed. Roy took his ring on the cheek, though it bounced off, leaving only a greasy smear. He said, much as though he were reading it from a script, “Ouch!”

It was not clear why Candace was spared. Evangeline was poised to strike, with Candace’s burning ring perched on the end of the knife; and Bob, having stood up in shock, left his wife exposed and cowering in her chair. Perhaps it was some kind of solidarity between quiet women; perhaps it was nothing more than pity. In any event, the onion never flew. The knife clattered onto the grill. Evangeline’s venom was spent. She bent down, turned off the heat, and walked calmly out of the room.

Leaving Philip alone with their stunned and injured guests, his mind racing. “Let me get you a cold washcloth,” he said to Bob, whose soft hand was cupped underneath the wound, as if something, his mind perhaps, might fall out. But Bob held out the other hand to stop him, and without another word walked out the door, Candace following close behind.

“Roy, I’m sorry,” he said, turning, and in spite of everything Roy’s eyes still harbored a hint of humor. He would have a good laugh about this, sooner rather than later, but for now he put his arm around June (whose eyes betrayed nothing but hurt, and whose protecting hands concealed her charred rose) and led her out the door.

Alone in the living room, Philip set to cleaning up. He folded up the trays, put away the plates and silverware, maneuvering his chair with what he was beginning to realize was expertise. He wiped down the grill surface and threw away the ruined food. All of this took him a good twenty minutes, during which he strove not to think about what had transpired. When he was finished, he looked around for something else he could do in order to avoid going to Evangeline. But there was nothing. He took a deep breath, navigated around the hibachi, and rolled into the bedroom.

She was there, still in her apron and hat, lying supine on the bed. He wheeled over to his side, unbuckled his restraints, and hauled himself up beside her.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said.

“It’s all right.”

Her eyes were dry. She was looking at the ceiling. “We’re going to lose our jobs.”

After a moment’s thought, he said, “I’ll be able to keep mine. It’ll be enough.” It wouldn’t, of course — he worked under contract; she was the one with the salary, the benefits. And his medical bills remained high. But none of that seemed to matter.

“I was so angry,” she said, and he could hear the resignation, at long last, beginning to creep into her voice.

He was supposed to have been angry, too. He had gone to a psychiatrist after the accident, and she had told him, week after week, that the anger would come out eventually, in some form or other, and that he had to be ready for it. Over and over the woman told him this, but it just didn’t happen. And the psychiatrist seemed to lose enthusiasm for him, and eventually he stopped going to see her. Was it wrong to be able to absorb so heavy a blow with such perfect equanimity? Was it wrong to need no one but Evangeline, and to be glad for it, to be grateful for the excuse to renounce all others?

Philip took his wife’s hand. “Thank you,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

She turned to him and, as though she hadn’t heard, cried, “Please don’t leave me!”

“I will never leave you,” he replied, as if there was even the slightest chance he would do such a thing. “I will always be here.” He couldn’t go anywhere on his own, anyway. And that was fine with him. He didn’t need to walk to love her. He didn’t even need to make love to her. He didn’t need anything he didn’t have.

He was hungry, but they didn’t move. She slept through the night with her hat on.

They figured out how to bring people back to life — not everybody, just some people — and this is what happened to our friend Dan Larsen. He had died falling off a yacht, and six months later, there he was, driving around in his car, nodding, licking his pale, thin lips, wearing his artfully distressed sport jackets and brown leather shoes.

Dan’s revivification was his mother’s doing. Yes, it was his father, Nils Larsen, who greased the right palms to get him bumped up in the queue, but his mother, Ruth, was the one who had the idea and insisted it come to pass, the one who called each and every one of us — myself, Chloe, Rick, Matt, Jane, and Paul — to enlist our emotional support as friends and neighbors and decent, compassionate Americans. When Dan revived, she explained, he would need to rely upon the continuing attention and affection of his loved ones, and it was all of us — his old high school chums — whom he would need the most.

Of course we agreed, how could we not? Dan’s mother brought us all together in the living room of the Larsen penthouse — a place of burnished mahogany, French portraiture, and thick pink pile carpet, which none of us had ever imagined we’d see again — and told us what was about to happen. We stared, petits fours halfway to our gaping mouths, and nodded our stunned assent. A thin, bony, almost miniature woman of sixty with an enormous dyed-black hairdo like a cobra’s hood, Ruth Larsen gazed at each of us in turn, demanding our fealty with hungry gray eyes. The procedure would take several days, and then Dan would need a few weeks to recuperate — could we be counted on to sit at his bedside, keeping him company in regular shifts? Why yes, certainly we could! Were we aware just how important a part of the revivification process it was to remind the patient of his past, thus effecting the recovery of his memory? And did we know that, without immediate and constant effort, the patient’s memory might not be recovered at all? And so would we commit ourselves to assisting in this informal therapy by enveloping Dan in a constant fog of nostalgia for the entire month of March? Sure, you bet!