The alarm of the oven rang right when it was
expect. Linda wiped her tears out of her face and turned from the window to the
oven. With her oven mints on, she took out a pretty big glass container in
which a very thick lasagna was still bubbling in. The cheese had melted
beautifully and the top was golden and just perfect. Through the glass, it was
easy to see that the lasagna was made of several layers of vegetables and
grinded beef and cheese. Linda was very proud of herself as she put the
container on a wooden surface in order to let it cool down a bit while she
served the rest of the dinner.
Her husband entered the kitchen in silence. It
was very obvious he didn’t know what to say. She didn’t really wanted to speak
so she focused her attention on two medium sized plates, where she served a
copious amount of salad made of a variety of green leaves, tomatoes, olives,
cheese cubes and other small elements. She put the two plates on the table in
front of the kitchen and her husband sat down immediately, without saying a
word. He didn’t started eating or anything, he just waited there, turning
around to see through the window every five seconds, as if he was afraid
someone would appear out of nowhere to steal his food or something.
Linda also turned around a lot while cooking,
but she seemed to be better at ignoring whatever it was they were ignoring. She
then started cutting the lasagna into pieces, placing two big squares on each
of their plates. She put those two plates on the table too and then paused for
a moment, to think what else she was supposed to do. It was her husband who
stood up and ran towards a cabinet to take out a bottle of wine some friend of
theirs had given them several months ago, after said person had returned from a
trip to France.
Linda remembered the bread. She took out of
the cupboard, sliced some pieces and grated a lot of garlic into each piece.
Then she put the bread in the microwave, as doing it in the oven would take
much too long and she was seriously hungry now. Her husband Matt poured the
wine into two glasses and put them on the table with the bottle, in case they
wanted to have a bit more with their food.
The sound of the microwave cooking the bread
was the only thing they heard for a while. Matt sat down again, looking very
tense. Linda looked at the floor as she waited for the sound. She just looked
at a very small ant that was crossing the floor and she the imagined the life
of that ant, all that that it had done in its short life. The microwave’s ring
brought her out of her imagination. Linda put down the bread on the table,
which smelled delicious, and finally sat down in front of her husband. They
finally looked at each other.
Both of their reactions were to cry. But they
didn’t do it loudly or anything, they just had tears coming down their faces
like a small river pouring out of their eyes. Their nose got congested and then
each one of them had to stand up and run to the nearest bathroom to get some
toilet paper. Once there, they just hugged. They hadn’t done that in a long
time but it felt really good to finally do it, to finally feel they were
together in this and that nothing could change that. They held hands and tried
to tell each other how they felt but words seemed to be lacking power in those
moments. Words were not important anymore.
They went back to the table and decided to eat
as if it was a normal dinner, although this one was much earlier. Outside, the
sun was bright and even some birds sang. There was not a soul in sight but that
was very understandable. Around there, only Linda and Matt had stayed behind in
order to have one last beautiful romantic dinner and they did try to make it
very nice and delicious. Actually, the first thing that Matt said when they
came back from the bathroom was that it all smelled delicious and it definitely
did.
The first course was the salad. It had every
single vegetable that they had left so there were pieces of onion, carrots,
pepper, cucumber and several others of which there were only small pieces in
the fridge. Linda had grabbed all those pieces and had cut them and put them
together on a big bowl. She then had put on them some salt, pepper, vinegar and
olive oil to make it taste even better. Matt said it was the best salad he had
ever eaten and maybe he was being honest because in all the years Linda had
known him, he had never eaten a salad, not even a piece of tomato.
As they ate, they remained in silence but it
was Matt, uncomfortably clearing his voice, who asked Linda if she liked fruit
in her salads. She thought it was a very strange question but the moment that
they were living was much too weird and particular to ignore any questions. So
she thought of her answer for a moment and then told her husband that she had
eaten some salad with fruits on it and that she had liked them but that not all
combinations worked. For example, she liked a Moroccan one that came with
couscous and raisins, which were basically sweet as fruit, and she had loved
that. But in a wedding when she was young, she was served a salad containing
lettuce and other such common things on a salad but with strawberries, mango
and apple. She almost vomited that salad.
Matt laughed hard at her anecdote, as he hated
salads with fruits on it too. So, while they ate their salads, they discussed
how disgusting it was too find something too sweet on a plate that wasn’t
supposed to be sweet. The ambiance got much more relaxed.
Then came the lasagna and they were surprised
to realize that they were very hungry. The two pieces Linda ad put on each
plate were just the beginning for each one of them as they cut and served even
more pieces as their conversation changed subjects once and again. They talked
about Italy too and how its food was probably the best in the world. Then they
chatted about spicy foods and how spicy they liked their food, if they actually
like to feel that burn in their mouths.
As they ate their pieces of lasagna, the
couple became more like the people they had used to be all those years ago when
they had first started dating. They were deeply in love but also very
interested in each other, so much so that they had every single kind of
question to make to the other person. It was so much like that that they
switched their conversation from food to their teenage years. Matt wanted to
know how young Linda was the first time she kissed a boy and she surprised him
by saying that the first person she had kissed had actually been a girl in her
class when she was around nine or ten years old. She explained that they were
really good friends and that it had seemed natural at the moment. No one ever
knew about it until then.
Matt was surprised and even toasted to that
anecdote as he found it very cute. He told his wife that his first kiss with a
boy had happened very late in life, in college. She was amazed to know that
because she had met him in college but he explained it had been in the first
few years in a party. He never saw the guy again because he retired or
something but he had kissed him out of a drunken stupor.
Linda also toasted to that, happy to know more
about her husband, even if at that moment that knowledge was going to be
useless. They finished the lasagna and decided not to clean the dishes and,
instead, they took the bottle of wine and one of champagne to the second floor
of the house, where they had a nice little deck overlooking the street and the
sunset. They drank the whole bottle of wine as they talked and talked and by
the time they opened the champagne, they were able to hear a far away alarm.
Then,
they saw it in the sky, as night had fallen. It could be seen clear and so
close, much closer than they had thought it would be. They poured they
champagne into their glasses and toasted to their life together and their love,
just as the ball of fire passed above them making a very loud sound. They drank
the whole glass and then kiss passionately for the first time in a very long
while. The ball of fire touched down several kilometers to the south but the
result of the impact was instantaneous: an very violent earthquake, a cloud of
smoke and dirt and then, nothing.
