long hair so that it was not quite shoulder length, and he wasn’t wearing glasses, as he did in the store. “Was it good?”
“The most delicious meal I have ever eaten,” she told him honestly.
“A peach is not a meal.” He couldn’t help glancing at his oven and his knife drawer. Thinking of his grill on the deck and how he might roast chicken or lamb or even fish, along with pearl onions and vine-ripened tomatoes.
“It tasted like a meal.”
“That was hunger.”
“It’s the cookbooks,” she confessed.
“Occupational hazard.” He leaned back against the edge of the kitchen table. Her eyes were greener than he’d ever seen them. Her shirt button was broken, third from the top. “Are you still hungry?”
She thought of Leon.
“Let me cook you dinner.”
She shook her head.
“No?” George asked softly, as he took the kitchen towel from her hands.
He was wearing jeans and a faded blue T-shirt, and she saw the scar traveling from the back of his hand up the inside of his forearm. “Tell me what happened,” she said.
“Someone tried to fillet me.”
Forestalling her next question, he opened what she had assumed to be a bank of cabinets.
“Ohh.” She gazed inside a pristine refrigerator with glassy shelves and perfectly arranged vegetables, packages wrapped in white paper, fresh lemons lined up in a row.
“What can’t you eat?”
For just a moment, she could not remember. Then he closed the door.
“No meat, of course,” she began earnestly. “No poultry, no fish, no living creature of any kind, and no product of any living creature, so no milk, no cheese, no butter, no eggs, nothing dairy, and no refined sugar, no white flour, no white rice—nothing white …”
“How about white wine?”
He went to his butler’s pantry and brought back two glasses and a bottle, ever so slightly chilled. “This is a Kistler Chardonnay. See that?” He poured out what looked like liquid gold. “It’s known for its color.” He handed her a glass half full and watched her take the tiniest of sips. He could see she didn’t drink, and even the Chard was strong for her, and curious to her tongue. But she liked it, and quickly sipped again.
“Yum.”
“Yum?”
“It’s good,” she said.
“Do you taste citrus?” he asked her. “Mineral?”
“No,” she admitted cheerfully. The wine was light and tickling, not heavy or too sweet like others she had tried. Sun poured through the kitchen’s tall windows and played across the floor so that the room felt warmer. George himself seemed different, slimmer than she remembered, and more fluid in his movements. A fish in water, she thought, as he took out pans and tongs and a cutting board.
“All right, this is what I have. Dungeness crab. Fresh salmon—by which I mean, caught yesterday. And asparagus.”
“I guess I could have that,” she said.
“Crab and salmon and asparagus?”
“The asparagus.”
“Good, we’ll have asparagus—with salmon on the side.” He set a pan on the stove for the fish, and began washing and trimming the asparagus. He spread the stalks in a roasting pan, drizzled them with olive oil, and popped the pan in the oven. Then he unwrapped the pink salmon. “This is so fresh, you can almost eat it just like this. Sashimi.” He smiled to see Jess back away. “We’ll melt butter in the pan and sear the fish and then we’ll eat it with a squeeze of lemon—or at least I will. Did you finish that already?” He poured her more.
She’d drunk two glasses by the time they sat down at the kitchen table, and she felt springy, a little bouncy in her chair as she nibbled her emerald-green asparagus, and he served himself the salmon.
“I like this way of roasting,” she said.
“Just remember to sprinkle kosher salt when you take them out of the oven.”
“Show me.”
“Not while we’re eating!”
“Right.” He poured out the last of the wine.
“Have you noticed his thing for asparagus?”
“And cabbages,” said George.
“Yes! He’s got heads of cabbage and cross sections and there’s a drawing of this veined cabbage leaf. I think it must have been his botanical training.” Jess was talking faster than usual, but then, she never had a chance to discuss the cookbooks, and she was brimming with impressions. “He draws asparagus and cabbages, but he’s obsessed with artichokes. He draws them more than any other vegetable. Why artichokes?”
George drained his glass. “The artichoke is a sexy beast. Thorns to cut you, leaves to peel, lighter and lighter as you strip away the outer layers, until you reach the soft heart’s core.”
Jess laughed and finished her third glass.
“Try this.” George offered her a bit of salmon on his fork.
The laughter stopped. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t eat other creatures.”
“This creature is already dead. You’re not hurting him. Let’s say he died for me. I’ll take the blame. I bought him so I killed him. Now you can have a taste.”
She shook her head.
“But it’s so good.” George offered her the flaky pink fish on his fork. “It tastes so good.”
“I’m not eating that poor forked animal.”
“Just try,” George cajoled, scooting his chair around the corner to her side of the table. “Just one bite.” He held the fork almost to her lips.
“George,” she said, “don’t you have certain things you would never do—on principle?”
“Arbitrary rules?”
“Any rules. Not necessarily arbitrary ones.”
“I have beliefs,” he said. “I have values. I think rules are overrated.”
“Is that, like, a sixties thing?” She looked at him questioningly, as though she were gazing back at him through the mists of time.
“Someday you’ll get asked about the Reagan years,” he said.
“You should try rules,” she pressed. “Then your beliefs would have practical applications, and you wouldn’t have to drift from one meal to the next. Instead of being so ad hoc, you could rely on a consistent system. Instead of making up your life as you go along, you’d have a set path. You wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I think actually structure might be the key to oneness.”
“I think you’re a little drunk,” said George.
“I think you’re trying to impeach me.”
He laughed even as he protested. “That’s not true.”
“Well, I’m not drunk at all,” she warned him.
“And I’m not trying at all,” he retorted playfully.
“Hmm.” Her expression was both tender and reproachful. Her delicate hands rested on the table.
“Are you worried?” With his index finger George drew a question mark on her palm.
Almost imperceptibly she shook her head.
The light was shifting, the sky in the windows no longer bright, but watery, sea blue. They were close now,
