In The Kitchen

It’s when I’m using a knife. Cutting something up on the counter and then my eye itches. I’ve noticed I do this. I’ve caught myself doing this. You’ve caught yourself about to stab yourself in your own eye? Jake asked. It’s not that the knife has ever gotten so close to my eyeball that I’m, like, fuck, that was close. But I’ll be holding it and then I’ll use the back of the same hand that is holding it to itch my eye, or face somewhere, and think one of these days I’m going to stab my eye and it’s going to ooze like in that dog movie from the 20s. Oh, Jake said. Never heard of it.

Charlie was standing at the counter with his back to Jake, filling a pot with water. Jake sat at the kitchen table watching Charlie’s back as he talked about his knife-to-eye fears and imagined what his face looked like in that moment. The kitchen existed in a small, dilapidated house on a street in southeast Michigan. They’d been splitting the rent there for exactly one month. It was Charlie’s idea that they should make a big dinner with lots of wine to celebrate the occasion. I never would have thought we’d still be here a month ago, Charlie said.

They didn’t really have anything in terms of cooking appliances. They had the range and the oven. They had a frying pan. They had a deep pot, like the one Jake’s mother had always used for stews. Big and stained with past use. They had a small pot and a glass baking dish for things like casseroles.

The kitchen was bathed in a sickly orange glow from the light fixture hanging from the ceiling. Through the glass shade could be seen the inert bodies of lost flies; a dark film of dust, muting the light of the bulbs. I prefer these bulbs to those new spiral ones, Jake said. The energy efficient ones? he said. I don’t like those. I don’t like the light they put out. What happens, Charlie said, when all the pollution blots out the sun and we can’t see anything at all? He was arranging bottles of spices along the side of the range. What happens then?

This sort of thing makes me feel like my parents, Charlie said. All this cooking and booze and celebrating. They loved this kind of stuff. Until they didn’t, he said. I never really thought I’d be doing this. I always thought, he said, that I’d be in jail. He laughed but Jake knew he really believed that. Charlie always thought he was worse than he actually was. Jake knew Charlie, knew him better than Charlie would ever be comfortable with.

Jake opened a bottle of cheap red wine and filled two short glasses with worn insignia to the brim. This, Jake said steadily handing Charlie one glass, is what I call a house pour. The wine was spilling over the rim of the glasses as they gently clinked them together. Jake watched Charlie take his sip and then took one himself. I guess that’s to us not fucking this up yet, said Charlie.

Charlie opened the oven and smoke started billowing out but the smoke alarms didn’t go off because there weren’t any and he and Jake ran around opening windows to allow it to escape. The winter air invaded quickly and just as they had run around opening windows, they went to closing them. It’s okay, Charlie said, nothing ruined in here. Jake didn’t care if the food was burnt or not. He’d had a couple house pours and was feeling good. This must be what a cloud feels like, he said looking at the ceiling, arms crossed in front of him, eyelids heavy. What? Charlie said. I’m like a cloud, Jake said. I’ve thought that about you, Charlie said.

Jake watched Charlie and felt like he wasn’t actually there. Or, rather, that Charlie had forgotten he was there. He didn’t take this personally. He could see that Charlie was somewhere else, moving around the kitchen quickly and without self-consciousness. Jake watched as Charlie would stir the big stained pot. Watched as he washed dishes as soon as he was finished and use them again for some new task. He thought that maybe Charlie had always been in this room with its old cabinetry and refrigerator and stove and yellow lighting. He saw Charlie moving elegantly through this kitchen for all eternity. Where do you think you’ll be in five years? Dead, Charlie said. Always so grim, Jake said. When Charlie didn’t respond, Jake said he wanted to be in the Keys. Florida? Are you kidding me? I just want to get warm, Jake said. The coasts are fucked, Charlie said.

After dinner they sat at the small kitchen table drinking full glasses of wine. The dishes and pots and other cooking utensils piled up in the sink. How much of this do we have left? Charlie asked, looking at his glass. More than we can drink in a night, Jake said. Seems like a challenge, Charlie said. It would be, Jake holding up three large bottles. What do they call those? Magnums, Jake said. Yeah I guess that’s a lot, Charlie said. Let’s try anyway.

An hour and one bottle later and the table was covered in droplets of drying wine. And so we’d had sex and I’d gone to the bathroom, Charlie said. I get in there and the sink, around the sink, is all this make-up. And I stare at it and register that maybe, he laughs, maybe she isn’t who she seems. But who is? he said. I have to pee and I start going and I finish and reach for the handle to flush but lose my balance because I’m so drunk and start to fall into the shower and grab the curtain and bring that and the rod down with me into the tub. I’m not so drunk to not realize this is bad. So I quickly put rod and curtain back and go to wash my hands, only I hadn’t closed the lid on the toilet and then knock all her make-up and brushes into the bowl. I grab all of it out and try and shake the water from it. But really, I don’t care and I think about how I’ll never see her again. So I put it all back, wash my hands, and then go back to her room and jump in bed. She asks what happened and I say oh nothing and we have sex again. I can’t imagine that being the last time something like that happens to me. Really? Jake asked. Well, who knows, Charlie said, laughing into his wine.

I know I’m doomed, Jake said, if she’s beautiful with dark eyes and dark hair. How unique, Charlie said. I know, Jake said. But I’ve always been ruined when it comes to that. I’m perpetually heartbroken when it comes to that. You like when someone looks like you, Charlie said. I think it’s the same for all of us, Jake said. I don’t want anyone like me, Charlie said. Not like you, just physically similar to you. No, Charlie said. Do you think, do you really think someone wants this? You think you’re unattractive? Jake asked. I’m not going to win any awards, Charlie said. Jake refilled their glasses and sat back.

Nothing gets me hotter than when someone doesn’t want me. I don’t even have to want them all that badly, but if I get a sense that they don’t want me at all, boy. Charlie was looking at the full sink smiling. It’s like the worse their body language, the more into them I am. I’m like a dog in those moments. Just looking up at them with hopeful eyes, waiting for my fears to be dispelled. God, I love it. I love the certainty of being crushed. What if, Jake said, you like that because it keeps you from getting in too deep with someone? Charlie blinked a couple times and his smile faded. That’s not it, he said. I really do want them and am heartbroken afterward, after they’ve gone and I’m still looking. What happens when someone does want you? Jake asked. He searched Charlie’s face for some indication but his eyes were glazed over, thinking specifically of someone who had never reciprocated. What? Charlie said. What if, Jake said, you want someone who you believe doesn’t want you back but then it turns out they do? Then, Charlie said, I’m even more miserable because I know I will inevitably leave them in more pain than I’ll ever feel.

There was more wine. Jake felt himself coming in and out of reality; stretches of time, maybe only brief moments, passing by without him noticing. Charlie was playing Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ through his phone on repeat. This song doesn’t make me think about anyone, he said when he first put it on. No one at all. But Jake knew he was lying. He knew no one played a song like that without having someone in mind. I love the part, he said, when he talks about the flowers in the back yard dying. He was laughing as he spoke. It’s like the set up to a great joke. All the flowers that you planted, momma, in the backyard, he sang, laughing, not moving onto the next line.

Charlie got up and started to dance in the middle of the kitchen. He held his arms out like he was holding someone, taking his steps. Even with all he’d drank he was graceful; moving deliberately, freely. He sang some lines and left others to Prince. The ones he didn’t sing seemed to affect him more than the ones he did. He kept his eyes closed and moved as if Jake wasn’t there at all. Jake watched and thought through the haze about Charlie and the memories they shared, the experiences they had together. He thought about all the trouble they’ve been in and gotten out of. The fights and the women each had in their lives at one point or another. He thought about Charlie’s parents and the tragedy. He thought about driving down country roads in the summer. He thought about cigarettes left burning in ashtrays on porches. He thought about wandering stoned through desolate Detroit streets. He thought about everything that ever happened to him, and how much Charlie was part of it.

The song playing for the third or fourth time, Charlie still dancing. Jake got up and moved toward him, Charlie’s eyes still closed. He reached out but the song ended and Charlie opened his eyes and looked at Jake as though he were an apparition. Jake stopped and looked back and saw fear. I think, Jake said, I’m going to go to bed. Bed? Charlie said. Isn’t there more? There is, Jake said. Well, then, I have work to do. Jake walked to the threshold of the kitchen and the hallway leading to their bedrooms and turned around. Charlie had started the song again and was twisting off the cap of a new bottle. Cut in two by shadow, Jake watched as Charlie served himself another house pour.