Cooking Salmon for Your Lover
Shiver with a flutter of anticipation, or is it dread, that your lover is coming to dinner. Your lover who swoops in when he’s in town, if he has a moment. And part of you wants to tell him to shove it because you want to talk about what’s going on and he never has time and you’re in a constant state of frustration and anger. And another part of you is ecstatic that he’s coming, and you curse this weakness but know you’ll get laid and that’s worth something and so you will make his favorite dinner.
Stand in front of the fish counter knowing you must buy the $27-a-pound wild salmon, instead of the $9-a-pound farm-raised because he’ll know. He’ll look at it and see that the flesh of the farm-raised salmon is pale pink not deep red, and he’ll give you shit and say you’re trying to poison him, and he can’t eat it and so you ask the guy to wrap up a pound of the wild salmon, calculating all the ways this lover has cost you.
Buy the other things he loves: Baby arugula, French Goat Cheese, ripe figs. Buy some zinnias and sunflowers because they cheer you up and make you feel like you have a beautiful life, one that he’s a fleeting part of, so that when he breezes in and then breezes back out, they’ll still be there to fill the empty space.
While you’re preparing dinner, re-read his text “Be there at 7, Cherie. Don’t bathe.”
Know he’ll be here at 8 or 9 and that you’ll be starving when he gets here, trying to wait for dinner when you normally eat earlier and that you’ll be tipsy from sipping Chardonnay. And that he has a running joke about your hygiene, how he told you Napoleon wrote to Josephine telling her not to bathe before he came home from the wars because he liked her pungent, unwashed fragrance and he thinks this is sexy but it’s annoying. And you know later he will suck on your toes, and you hate that and wish he’d start with the other parts of your body that you’ve asked for time and time again and he may or may not do that.
You’ll cook the salmon the way he taught you. When you lived in that little vineyard cottage and he arrived unexpectedly, and you just happened to have a piece of salmon in the fridge. How he stood behind you as you put the sauté pan on the stove, drizzled in some oil, turned it on to medium high. How when the oil was shimmering, he instructed you to put in the piece of salmon, flesh side down, and then watch until you could see the line of flesh in the pan changing color. He made you look closely so you could see just when it was time to put the lid on the pan and turn the heat down to medium and then wait.
And while you waited, he wrapped his hands around your waist and kissed your hair, your ear, your cheek, whispering that he wanted you. You trembled when he pressed his body against you and when you leaned into his chest, he barked Check the salmon.
So, you lifted the lid and the steam rose in a cloud and you could see that the flesh was now pale pink and he made you touch the side of the salmon to see if it was done and it yielded to your finger and you said Yes and he said Are you sure and you said Yes, and he said You better be right.
Then he sliced some bread, slid the slices into the toaster and pressed the button. You went to the garden for some tomatoes and basil. When you returned, he laid the toast on the cutting board, rubbed it with a clove of garlic and drizzled olive oil over it. He cut the tomatoes into fat chunks, piled them on top of the toast then scattered it all with torn pieces of basil. Turning to face you, he fed you the toast, now dripping with tomato juice and oil, his fingers lingering on your lips.
He untied your apron, he unbuttoned your blouse, he kiss-walked you to the sofa, his lips slippery with olive oil, his breath smelling of garlic and basil, everything mingling together, desire, anxiety, basil, tomatoes, and the salmon sitting on the stove, so perfectly cooked, now growing cold.
