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Chapter Fourteen

Sonnet

Candles burned on the table in the dining area, giving off the sweet scent of honeysuckle and vanilla as we sat down to eat.

My Mistress had ordered breadsticks, Caesar salad, shrimp and pesto bruschetta, buttery calamari, and baked manicotti in a creamy white sauce for our meal tonight and opened a fruity-smelling white wine to go with it.

Everything looked and smelled so delicious that my stomach started growling the moment I caught a whiff of it coming through the door.

Food was rapidly becoming part of our love language, something I deeply appreciated being a closet foodie.

Ever since she’d discovered that eating together meant I took the time to slow down and savor every bite, my Mistress had gone out of her way to see to it that we shared as many meals as our schedules would allow.

In fact, I’d come to suspect that she rearranged her own schedule just to be free to have meals with me, something that left me feeling cherished and appreciated.

She had no way of knowing that my uncle used to do the same thing, even if that meant later nights for him.

Through him, I’d learned that family meals had been a big part of his upbringing, though he’d admitted to falling out of practice in the kitchen the deeper he’d gotten into his bachelor years.

Still, he’d tried. With little patience for the sometimes long, drawn-out steps in cookbooks and a disdain for technology that left YouTube videos off the table, he developed a style of cooking that I came to call Dash and Hack.

No measurements, no real concept of what he was attempting to make, he just hacked up whatever vegetables happened to be lying around, chucked them in a pot with whatever meat was languishing in the freezer, threw in a couple dashes of his favorite seasonings, and plopped it on the plate with a grin and a flourish that never failed to make me giggle.

His concoctions were always hit and miss, with items like junk in a pot, chipped beef on toast that I came to learn was often called shit on a shingle, and everything pot pie among some of my favorites. Still, I hadn’t wanted to expose my Mistress to that brand of insanity just yet.

As I dished us up portions from each of the pans on the table, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the first meal my uncle had attempted to make when I’d gone to live with him.

A giggle slipped out, and as my Mistress stared quizzically at me, I just shook my head and finished plating things with a grin on my face, knowing he’d have a few colorful doozies to share with her when she asked about my exploits as a teen, and decided I’d get the jump on him, for once, and share one of my fondest memories of him.

“This meal reminds me of the first one I had at my uncle’s house,” I explained as my Mistress continued staring across the table at me as I snickered a little. “Only it looks way more appetizing and lacks the burnt bits clinging to the garlic bread.”

“Exactly how did the garlic bread get burnt?” she asked. “Did he have the oven up too high?”

“No, I think that was one of the few times he decided to put his glasses on so he could read the label. It said to open one end of the bag, place it on a baking sheet, and stick it in a preheated oven. He did all the things it said, and the bag caught on fire.”

She’d just taken a sip of her wine when she snorted and fumbled for a napkin to press to her lips.

“Oh, oh goodness,” she muttered, shaking her head, her eyes shimmering from how hard she was laughing behind the napkin.

“He yanked it out of there so fast the garlic bread flew off the pan and landed on the counter with flames shooting off the bag, but after he smothered them with a pot top and peeled the wrapper off, the bottom of the loaf was still edible. It was a good thing too, because his attempt to make spaghetti noodles went just as badly.”

“How!” She squeaked. “Just answer me that, please. It’s just noodles and water. Who can screw that up?”

“My uncle,” I explained. “He tried to cook a whole lot of noodles in a medium-sized pot, didn’t use nearly enough water, and wound up with a congealed mass of semi-cooked pasta.”

She sputtered, opening and then closing her mouth, but no words came out. “There are no words, none. I can’t even imagine what that looked like.”

“Stringy Play-Doh,” I explained, nibbling on the calamari, which practically melted in my mouth. “Ohh, that’s good.”

“As much as I enjoy a good, crispy calamari dunked in sriracha-lime sauce, buttered calamari offer such a beautifully simplistic flavor that elevates the taste for me.”

“It’s so soft. I’ve never had it this way before,” I admitted. “I love fried calamari too, but you’re right, having it this way lets the sweetness of the meat shine through.”

“Exactly,” she replied. “So, tell me, Kitten, what did you guys’ wind up eating for supper that night?”

“Well, my uncle had purchased a container of meatballs in sauce from the deli that he heated in a pot with a dash of garlic powder and Italian seasonings, and those turned out beautifully, so he cut the garlic bread he’d salvaged and layered the meatballs and some parmesan cheese on top.

It was really good and gave us something to laugh about, not like that was the only culinary disaster that resulted from his attempts to follow the directions on the package.

He grabbed a box of frozen fried chicken one night and potato salad from the same deli as the meatballs.

Needless to say, we wound up just having potato salad for supper after the chicken caught fire in the oven and charred.

When he tried to scrape the burnt bits off, he discovered that it was still frozen on the inside and pitched the mess in the trash. ”

“Dare I even ask?”

“Probably not, since I wouldn’t be able to tell you how he managed that, but smoke started rolling out of the oven and the chicken was in flames when he opened the door.”

“I see why you opted for us to go out.”

“Right.”

“He got better when he stopped trying to follow directions and just did things his own way, but those first few weeks were an adventure, let me tell you,” I said.

“But he was hell-bent on being the one to cook for us. He said it didn’t feel right to have me do the cooking when I’d already had a long day at school and the after-school art workshops he helped me sign up for. ”

“I bet those were fun,” she remarked, the food on our plates slowly diminishing.

“They really were. Having somewhere constructive to go after school where I could explore the things I loved helped me settle in a little better, and it meant that I wasn’t sitting around the apartment waiting for him to come home from work.”

“You don’t do well when you don’t have something to occupy your time, do you?” she asked.

“Not in the slightest. I get fidgety, and then I start looking for things to get into,” I explained.

“This one day I decided to try my hand at paper maché, only I used too much water and couldn’t get my newspaper strips to adhere to the balloon I was attempting to wrap them around.

It was a hot mess. Eventually, I figured out the right flour-to-water ratio to create paste, but he never fussed at me for artistic disasters.

He’d just step into the room, groan, and help me clean the place up so he could wreck it again cooking. ”

I loved when she laughed. Deep and throaty, her upper body shaking as she pressed a hand to her face, snickering at my stories.

I was beginning to understand why my uncle had clung so tightly to his memories of family mealtimes.

Sharing moments like this with her rapidly became the highlight of my day.

“I’m curious about something,” she said as she set her wine glass down, her expression having turned serious so suddenly that I found myself squirming beneath her gaze.

“What’s that, Mistress?” I said.

“When you texted to tell me you were headed back and that Sunday night would work for your uncle, you mentioned that your meeting with your client had been weird ,” she said. “I’d like you to elaborate on that. Weird how? Was he inappropriate?”

Trust my Mistress not to miss anything, even something I was still conflicted about.

“Not exactly,” I hedged. “There was just something about him and his request that made me uncomfortable. I told him I’d have to think about it before accepting the commission, and he seemed a bit put off by that for a moment before nodding and telling me to take all the time I needed.”

“When you say that he seemed put off by your response, what do you mean?”

“Just that his face got all pinched up and his eyes narrowed into this sneer that was, well, not exactly creepy but definitely uncomfortable to look at,” I explained.

“Then he smiled, though I could tell it was forced. I don’t know if I really want to work for him even if he does own one of the biggest art galleries in the city.

I know it would mean a big boost for my career, but my uncle always told me to go with what my gut told me and not to waste time questioning it, because our first reactions to someone or something were rarely wrong. ”

“I have to agree with your uncle there,” my Mistress replied. “If something about him bothered you, then tell him no. If he’s got a problem with you refusing him, you tell him he can just come have a conversation with me and I’ll set him straight.”