“What a nice coincidence,” Debra forced herself into a smile, “I’m so glad. I know what a wonderful cook you are.” She seemed different somehow, much more self-confident than she looked back in the reading group. “Would you mind if we start working right away, time is running and nothing is ready yet.”
She led Alegre to an indigo kitchen, wall-to-wall stuffed with packets, boxes, tins and cans of food, food, and more food. The guests, she told, would show up after seven o’clock, and would presumably be very hungry by eight thirty. In total, there were twenty-two people expected to come. “And we are two in the house. That makes twenty-four mouths to feed. What do you think? Can we manage it?”
But as it’d soon be revealed, there was no “we”. There was only Alegre. Never in her cooking history had she been in the position to cook so much food in so little time for so many people. Yet, this culinary dependability must have had a calming effect on her nerves, for she felt fully capable of the task, at ease here. While she stood inspecting her materials and ingredients, Debra Ellen Thompson had time to inspect her. Somehow Alegre looked different now, much less timorous than she was in the reading group.
She did, indeed, feel sure of herself and would even be more so when Debra left her alone, finally running to the help of a constantly complaining female voice on the other side of the kitchen door, a voice that sounded like somebody there was trying to make the living room nice & ready for the evening but did not really want to do this, did not even care. When alone in the kitchen, Alegre felt no curiosity as to what was going on in the living room, just like she wasn’t interested in the rest of the house or what were the guests going to turn out like. She was where she needed to be: the kitchen. Even if it belonged to someone else, this was her kitchen now. All she wanted to learn was what precisely she was expected to cook. But nobody turned up to clarify that matter for her. Instead a chubby, smoke-gray cat with a flat, funny nose and an extremely long, thick coat walked in imperiously, and right after it, another cat of the same breed, only this one tabby and perhaps less bumptious, came in to check what she was up to. Bored of waiting for the hosts to be accountable enough to give her a clue as to what would be the menu like, bored of watching the cats, Alegre decided that she alone was the captain of this culinary boat, and as such, the choices fell upon her.
There was goat cheese in the fridge, which she crumbled on pita rounds. She found lots of canned tuna in the cupboards and turned them into lots of tuna noodle fettuccine. The meat in the freezer was quick to develop into meatballs; the cabbage on the counter became coleslaw salad with red beans; some of the leftover corns evolved into pudding, and the rest into corn & zucchini sauté. Potatoes, as always, were an exceptional help. Alegre boiled and baked and oven-roasted and mashed them with different sauces and spices. The remaining, she stuffed with bacon and cheese. She made chicken burritos, though none of the taco sauces she found in the cupboards were among her favorites. She prepared peanut dipping sauce, and chicken liver pate. She made the usual appetizers –shrimp with garlic sauce, crudités, and cheeses. There were two huge bowls of Caesar salad with walnuts, and in case somebody was still hungry, she had in store twenty-four turkey club sandwiches. The remaining eggs and lemon juice she used for a lemon meringue tart. She was planning to make a banana split pie with the oodles of bananas she encountered in the fridge, but had to give up and sit down for a while, utterly wiped out.
None of this food she desired to eat, not even to taste. She took out the red grapefruits she had her bag full of, and started to count as she gnawed and gnawed: 11 red grapefruits, 70 calories each, 910 calories in total.
“Look at you, I can’t believe this!” Debra Ellen Thompson screeched when she finally stepped back into the kitchen after being absent for more than two hours. She halted reverentially in front of every single dish on the counter as if saluting them one by one. “God, I don’t know what to say. You’ve done a marvelous job. This is gorgeous! gorgeous!”
But she herself didn’t look “gorgeous! gorgeous!” not even “gorgeous!”. Instead, she looked as if she’d been crying for hours.
“Are you OK?” asked Alegre in a flash hiding the pile of grapefruit peelings.
“Yes… actually no… my housemate was in the doldrums lately and you know what I did to cheer her up… I painted the kitchen indigo, that’s her favorite color… it didn’t help much though, then I thought it’d be a good idea to throw a party but now I see what a fool I’ve been… this crowd won't do her any good.”
Alegre wanted to ask her why was it so important to make her housemate happy, but she suddenly felt that would sound too much Connie-like. Besides this was really not a time to chat. The guests had already begun to arrive.
After all the trays and plates were carried to the living room, Alegre was once again left alone in the kitchen. She’d promised Debra she would come inside to meet the people and eat with them, but this she knew, she would not do. Instead, she tidied up the kitchen, cleaned the counters, kicked out the trash, and scrubbed a few pans. And then ate three more grapefruits, 210 more calories, listening to the voices inside multiply into a mélange of serene music, jovial chitchat, tentative jokes, blithe guffaws; but also now and then nervous sneers, and hoarse snipes. Then somehow, somewhere started the drumbeats and the music went into hyperspeed. The house began to quake as if everyone had at the same time decided to mistake dancing with cavorting and cavorting with bucking & vaulting.
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