The New Happy

Karen is an excellent cook. She’s taken classes with names like La Technique and Pastry Arts and Alsatian Wine Pairing. As with most things that interest her, she’s done her homework and it shows. She knows her way around whisks and knives and all sorts of mysterious gadgets whose purposes Jim can’t begin to guess.

The dishes she makes usually have foreign names that roll impressively off her tongue - not that he’d know the difference, but it sounds right and who cares beyond that?  Cassoulet; Risotto alla Milanese; Galette aux something or other. They’re often complicated and take hours to prepare. He’s sent on missions to procure the prescribed ‘Super Tuscan’ or Riesling whose unpronounceable German name contains three too many syllables and a confounding ratio of consonants to vowels.

‘Better write it down,’ he warns when she specifies the bottle he’s supposed to find.

‘Well, duh,’ she chuckles indulgently, in that way that makes him feel something between grateful and irritated.

He makes a choice to go with the former.

‘I know who I’m dealing with,’ she winks, handing him his car keys and the printed out directions to a far off wine shop, his orders neatly written on the back.

Nothing is left to chance.

He’s never been a picky eater and he truly appreciates the effort she puts into making these dinners for him. For them. It’s usually just them; the one time he’d suggested inviting someone else over, she’d looked vaguely hurt, as if he was avoiding a romantic evening alone. Maybe she was right, he wasn’t sure, but he was sure he didn’t want to make her feel bad. He never brought it up again.

Anyway, she really didn’t have any friends in Scranton besides him. And frankly, he doesn’t have many left here either - just the guys he plays ball with; his old roommate Mark, though he doesn’t see him much these days; and one or two high school chums with whom he barely keeps up.

He had a best friend once.

He hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to introduce her around, but so far Karen hasn’t liked any of his friends she’s met. She’s never said anything, but he can tell. She’s easy to read, and for that he truly is grateful. Reading comprehension, he’s learned the hard way, is not his strength. He thinks she might like a couple of his friends’ girlfriends or wives, and fleetingly considers getting everyone together, having a potluck or something at his place. But that just doesn’t feel like the kind of thing he and Karen do.

Maybe it would be different if her friends lived nearby. He’s pretty sure she likes them, or at least she seems to when she describes their high-powered jobs and savvy real estate purchases and truffle hunting expeditions to Umbria.

‘Is that near where they make the official drink of Italian super heroes?’ he asks.

She rolls her eyes, but she still laughs. The next time she asks him come to New York to meet her friends at some restaurant where you need to know someone just to wait for your table at the bar for two hours, he resolves not to make lame excuses.

He adds that to the long list of things he should do.

‘What’s the best meal you ever had?’ Karen asks one night at her apartment, half way through a bottle of red wine that really is delicious, even if he can’t quite muster the reverence the price seems to demand.

‘Uh,’ he thinks a moment, then gestures to the meticulously prepared dish in front of him. ‘This?’

‘Right,’ she laughs warmly, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand.

Good answer, he thinks; she seems to appreciate him saying it, even though she obviously knows it’s not true.

‘No seriously,’ she presses, releasing his hand in favor of her wineglass. ‘You must have had one, somewhere, that was memorable.’

He thinks about burnt hot dogs and s’mores washed down with bug juice (flavor: red) at summer camp when he was a kid. He thinks about eating this insanely good Chinese noodle thing straight from the carton while sitting on his sofa watching a game, on the rare nights he gets to himself these days. Sometimes if there’s no new game on, he watches an old one on ESPN Classics. It’s a little crazy - despite already knowing the outcome, he actually finds himself hoping his team will win. Even when he knows how badly they’ve already lost.

He thinks about grilled cheese sandwiches on the roof.

‘Let’s see…’ he searches for another good reply. ‘I guess the dinner my mother always made for my birthday.’

He goes with that: neutral and not far from the truth.

‘Which was?’ she asks, her voice throaty and pleased.

Their eyes meet across the table and maybe it’s the alcohol, but the veil of distrust he often sees there lifts slightly. For just a brief second, he feels almost happy. Or at least not unhappy. Maybe the absence of unhappiness is the new happy.

He thinks maybe he’s getting the swing of this.

‘A barbecue,’ he continues. ‘Ribs and this really good cornbread she makes, with some kind of cheese and stuff in it. And devil’s food cake.’

He kind of wishes that’s what he was eating right now, but he keeps that part to himself. She smiles, charmed.

‘Maybe I should call her for the recipe,’ she says brightly.

‘Oh…. no, I mean…it’s just this thing she…yeah,’ he stutters, forcing a weak grin to mask his sudden queasiness.

 The scrim descends across Karen’s eyes again, as she – barely perceptibly - deflates.  Relieved when she deftly changes the subject, he pours some more wine. He hopes it will quell the dull ache in his chest that has nothing to do with rich food.  

************

Karen is good in bed. Frequently, very. She knows a thing or two and isn’t shy about showing him.  She’s also vocal about what she wants him to do. It threw him off his game a bit the first couple of times they slept together, but he’s gotten used to it. In some ways likes it – she’s not pushy, just precise. It kind of takes the pressure off. There’s less guesswork involved.  Sometimes he feels like he just needs to show up and rise to the occasion, as it were. That’s a piece of cake; he’s a boy after all and she’s sexy as hell when she stares him in the eye without ambiguity.

‘Why don’t you stay over tonight,’ she says, already unbuttoning his shirt as the DVD ends.

Before he can answer, she’s up and walking towards the bedroom, pausing to step out of her jeans. Her panties are black lace. Things with Karen are only complicated when he thinks too much.  

It turns out, there are recipes to follow in bed too.  

One Saturday morning she’s already gone to the gym by the time he wakes up. She’s very disciplined about that. He thinks about going for a run. Maybe. Later. Or not. As he’s dragging himself out of bed, he notices a book on her nightstand with an artsy photo of an entangled man and woman on the cover: What Real Men Really Want. He sits back down and flips through it; he often has trouble understanding what they want too. The corners of several pages are turned down, which doesn’t surprise him - when Karen wants to do something well, she does her research. Knowing he’s no exception touches him, even if he’s not sure he deserves it.

The book has step-by-step how-to diagrams. One well-thumbed chapter in particular catches his attention, entitled His Secret Hot Spots. There, in anatomically correct illustrations, is that thing she did with her tongue the previous night. Apparently, it has a name.  Furthermore, the author notes that it’s a ‘no fail technique.’ He’s not crazy about the idea of sex as something you can ‘fail’ at, but he’s not going to get hung up on semantics. It worked, whatever it was. Still, he wishes he didn’t know it wasn’t an inspiration she’d had in the moment.

He tries hard not to think this way when he’s with Karen, but when he’s alone (after take-out Chinese and a basketball game with a foregone conclusion) he imagines long nights blurring into mornings, where it all just…happens. Where there’s impulse – messy and imperfect - instead of technique. He thinks of bodies colliding how they will and skin kissed or licked or stroked simply because resistance is futile. He thinks of someone he used to know, golden brown tendrils floating above him, soft luxurious breasts pressed against his chest as he pushes into her over and over and over again. Because it’s her and he just can’t stop. He thinks of abandon.

He thinks he’s an idiot.

He knows most guys would kill for what he has. Still, it’s weird that you can feel detached from someone while you’re literally inside her. Weird that you can feel lonely, then. He wonders if passion is just another childish idea he needs to get over.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Karen asks a few nights later, curling up next to him, afterwards.

‘Don’t waste your money,’ he answers a little more acerbically than he’d intended.

She raises her head and squints at him quizzically.

‘No…I’m just tired,’ he smiles apologetically, backtracking. ‘Not really thinking anything.’

He quickly kisses her forehead and reaches over to switch off the lamp, so she’ll lie down and go to sleep. Though he truly is exhausted, he’s unable to doze off. He lies motionless, trying not to think, for a long time, until his eyes almost adjust to the dark.

But not quite.

****