Dinner

She claimed that she was hungry. Whether she said that to rile or appease me, I wasn’t sure. About fifteen minutes had passed since we sat down, and her generous bowl was teetering on the table's edge. An outburst or even a soft sigh might be enough to knock it over, staining the white tiles with black bean paste. The way she was sitting—back pressed against a side wall, feet propped carelessly on a stool—I couldn’t quite see her face. She wasn’t looking at me at all and I wished desperately that she would. At least when I had something to say. I wished she would just eat her damn food instead of praying it’d come alive and eat her. Even like this, on a quiet night with no burdens to bear, her actions could only be described as . . . helpless. If eating weren’t a biological obligation, she’d undoubtedly prepare meals for the sole purpose of recycling human motions, nevermind eating itself. Some sort of self-induced penance, one might say. 

Although I’d made jajangmyeon that night because she once mentioned her liking chunjang, I couldn’t feel the least bit offended. If only because every now and then she would turn to me, mouth full and cheeks flushed, as if remembering her ability to taste. On second thought, maybe she was reminiscing about the good things, whatever the “good things” were. Either way, I wish she’d stop thinking so much.

Beneath our old light, the yellow of the pickled radish seemed gaudy. A little sensual. She kept probing these vegetables with her chopsticks, flipping them over in wary inspection. They were, in fact, old, and she had a habit of conducting postmortems on anything from papers to strays on the side of the road. Eventually, pushing her bowl aside, she turned her agitation to the drinks. There were two for us to share: a bottle of banana milk and a glass of whiskey. A real exciting combination of chemical atrocity. She went straight for the whiskey. Taking a long sip, she held the liquid in her mouth before swallowing with a full-body shudder. Her lips, painted in shade like sangria, contorted in a grimace. I pushed the milk forward.

There was a great and unresolved thought in her. A quilt of thoughts mismatched and full of loose threads, but beautiful both up close and afar. A few times I considered discarding this craft of hers, but instead, I kept it close and let it warm whatever was raw and frozen inside me. But sometimes it loomed over the table, chilled our food and conversation, and today made its presence known the moment we sat down. She had raised her fork like a hunting knife, stabbing and twisting into rice cakes. It was a fight with her, always, with practically anything she did. She created conflicts in pockets of peace and prayed for calm in chaos. Even now she brought her fork down like an axe—hard, angry, and full of senseless resentment until finally, I stood up.

I was washing the dishes when she approached in apology, raising a thumb to my lips and rubbing away whatever had lingered. Catching her hand, I felt unbearably sad then. But the sadness flickered, waned, and eventually her image pulsed warmly in my mind. She promised to make dinner tomorrow and I agreed, smiling. I was sure it’d be good. She sat down on a sofa, relighting a cigarette, and we watched silently as smoke rose and mingled softly, maybe a little sinfully, with steam from the running water.