You shuck oysters, separate herbs from their stems, brush dirt and scrape the gills from mushrooms. You dice onions, slice garlic, shave fennel, and the tip of your nail on the blade of a mandoline. Your fingers, calloused from the knife, dry from constant washing, oily from handling preserved olives and marbled meats, find his mouth when your shift is over. It is a feast. His tongue walks the length of your fingers, draws loose circles around your first, second, third knuckle. You are a feast.
He leaves your bed in the dull blue hour when dawn could be dusk. See your mattress recover from the impression of him, a sigh of sorts. Feel as murky as dishwater. Hear the hiss of his zipper and watch as he pulls on his shirt, his coat, his socks, his shoes. Gain the weight of him as he leans into your neck to place a kiss on your pulse. Lose it when he whispers his goodbye. He’ll lock the door on his way out, he says. You strain the silence for signs of him, even after his footsteps disappear past the hall and down the stairs. Go back to sleep. Try not to think about famine.
———
The city is blowing hot air the night you meet. Your arms, neck, upper lip are slick with sweat, your back a pond. It is mid-October, and already holiday decorations have made their way into the mall’s window displays: Santa wearing hibiscus printed shorts, plastic pine needles and chemical snow at the feet of tanned nutcrackers, all as if to say seasons were just another joke to Californians.
Find the fragrance counter and spritz your wrists with perfumes claiming hearts of bergamot, sea salt, ambrette, moss. He will appear out of nowhere, and later you will wonder exactly how he found you. Imagine the vetiver and grapefruit on your neck made him seek you out in some sort of instinctive primal sniffing ritual.
Take in his old Hollywood jaw and new Hollywood posture. Know that if he were in the movies your mother would nudge your arm and tell you this was the kind of man you should be with.
“What are your thoughts on this one? Kind of spicy?” He holds his wrist out towards you.
“Warm,” you say.
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know. Circumstance?”
Begin to forget the man who held his wrist to your nose as you wander the mall and its storefronts. Women with paper white teeth bite into shellacked apples to sell jewelry and images of veinless hands sell purses. Forget him completely until you find yourself in the same elevator. Take your post in the corner opposite him, exchange furtive glances, and offer a smile that says I was raised right, and I’m interested, and I won’t wait much longer.
Ask, “What do you do?”
“I work in film. I’m a producer,” he says.
“Produce-her? I hardly know her.”
You make him laugh. It is ridiculous. Downright stupid. You think about it all the way home. But it is the truth of how you meet.
———
He takes you to museums high above the city where you look beyond the thirsty lawns and charred branches to the crystalline pools dotting the hillside. Here he is warm, his hand resting in the spaces your body creates for him. You think him charming as he shares with you the distinctions between Baroque and Rococo, a distinction you already know but you like the way he classifies each as their own.
“One is church, and the other is play,” he says expertly.
On your third date he shows you the backlots of Burbank where his grandfather trained the horses John Wayne rode. He is funny, recalling stories of leading goats into the family kitchen when it rained to keep them warm against the oven, and the time his sisters sobbed their way into panic as the veterinarian dragged their stiff-legged horse, hooves up, along the side yard and into the pet ambulance.
At the movies he fills the blank space of your palm with circling caresses that turn into communication. J-U-N-E, he writes your name into your palm. Draw a question mark on his knee in response. M-O-V-I-E B-O-R-I-N-G E-A-T-?
Make two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that you eat together on the roof of your apartment building. Feel the Santa Ana winds blowing knots through your hair, watch as it scatters ash and pine needles over the windshields of the cars parked below. You apologize for not having much food in your fridge. Tell him that someday soon you’ll make him a proper meal with fancy herbs and foreign spices and three kinds of citrus. He will say it’s not necessary. Plan it anyway.
After the art lessons, a trip to the backlots, half a movie, and two very successful peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you bring him into your bedroom.
Lay there twisted in the top sheet letting time eat away at itself. He’ll tell you when you’re mostly relaxed, cooling but still too warm, that he’s married. Surprise yourself when you ask for her name; when you ask what she does for work. Nina. An actress committed to local theater productions until she lands something big and with a salary. But he really likes you, he says.
“Is this too weird for you?” he asks.
Don’t tell him to get out of your apartment or to go home to his wife, instead give him a tight-lipped smile and rest your chin on his chest. You want him to know you’re cool, down, nonchalant, a go-with-the-flow kind of girl.
“Only if it’s weird for you.”
———
When you are ten years old and trying on leotards for that year’s ballet recital, you overhear your mother tell your dance teacher that you look like a size two sausage stuffed in a size one casing. You are older now and understand the idea differently. You feel out of sorts. Unsure if you’ve been given the correct label. You walk differently knowing what you are, as though when you take your shoes off at the end of the day and give them a shake, the word – mistress – will land on the floor amid the sand and lint.
At work you take stock of the fridge and pantry: San Marzano tomatoes whole peeled and crushed, eggplant, parsnips, flat leaf parsley, marjoram, Aleppo pepper, mustard seed.
You like precision, repetition, and routine; the consistent, exacting, busy, aliveness of the kitchen. Here you make things better. You turn day-old sourdough into breadcrumbs. Still, you find yourself in the bathroom stall on your break folding into yourself like a hand makes a fist, the blush of your cheeks warming your naked thighs. Use your nail to spell it out on your skin:
M-I-S-T-R-. Don’t finish the word.
Take stock again: anchovies, rock shrimp, he has a wife, chicken fat, duck fat, red wine vinegar, buffalo ricotta, cauliflower, she’s an actress, pecorino romano, pine nuts, you are the other woman.
———
Meet for late lunches at diners closest to your apartment. There you share baskets of fries and sodas with maraschino cherries sliced to grip the rim of the glass. Laugh as he recounts stories from film sets. Listen courteously to the stories he shares of holidays spent with his in-laws. Even with grease at the corners of his mouth you want to reach your body over the table and kiss kiss kiss him. Don’t do this.
Instead swipe your thumb over the spot and watch him redden, both of you pleased and shining. Think often of the day when you can turn onto a crowded street together, him talking low into your hair and you smiling an entirely authentic smile, because you know the immediate and most natural assumption from any passerby would be that you were really together. Until then, you make plans in the time it takes to walk from the back booth to the front door.
“Can you come over tomorrow night?” you ask.
“Can’t. Nina needs me for something. How about the next night?”
“That’s fine.”
Leave the diner in separate directions. Run your tongue over your teeth and feel the syrupy sweetness of lunch go bitter in your mouth. Think of the falsity the maraschino cherries promise: to be ever sweet, every time.
———
When it’s late and you are alone, look up everything you can about Nina. Find her headshot. In it you see she is a pretty girl with a pretty smile. Soft jaw, neatly parted hair, laughably good posture, and visible collar bones. Below the photo are her credits, which are short and not of much substance: woman in cafe, juror number eight, TV reporter. She had been cast the year prior as a lead in a television show cancelled after two episodes, but nothing since.
Search her name in the casts of local theater productions. Be disappointed when she is listed as sister number three. You wish she were the star. You want her to be good. Maybe it would mean you were good too.
———
“What is Nina like?” you ask.
“She’s great. Talented. She can be a control freak sometimes.”
“She likes things to be done right.” You can understand the theater-like precision she must have. Imagine her in the wings, much like yourself in the kitchen, cool in the middle of chaos.
“You’d probably get along,” he says.
“I bet. I’m sure we have more than just you in common.”
———
In the stretch of days you don’t see him, feel as if you’ve stepped sideways and into a world where your lives run parallel to each other’s on tracks never meant to merge. Replace your lunches with him for lunches with your coworkers, Quin and Natalie. They’ll say you look happier, bouncier, glowier. They are not above the use of cliches, and you are not above accepting them as truths. Ask them over salads if they’ve ever had affairs.
“I’ve been in the middle of multiple affairs. Cheated once too,” Natalie says. She likes you because you’re young and aim to please. Recall the time you unclogged the sink for her when it wasn’t draining properly and seemed only to marinate the dishes in a soup of warm water and food scraps. Quin said once you reminded her of a babysitter the way you’d help her finish tasks and take over cleaning duties. You can’t help it; you want to be liked.
“Why would you ever agree to be the other woman?” Quin asks.
“When you’re the other woman you know the ending. They don’t cheat to get out, they cheat to stay in. If you look at it the right way, there’s actually some satisfaction in it. You’ll always be right, because he’ll always go back to his wife,” Natalie says, turning to you. “So, who’s the guy you’re seeing?”
———
The afternoon light drapes itself along the tangled shape you make together between the musk and the sweat of the sheets. Him on his back, you on your stomach. Smooth his flighty eyebrows with the pad of your thumb. Move toward him, but not with him, as he slides out of your bed. Whisper, “Do you really have to go now?” Watch again as he pulls on his shirt, coat, socks, and shoes. Stretch your hands over the space he lay just seconds before.
“I have to go,” he says. “Nina’s theater company is doing a trivia night. She wants me to be around her friends more.”
“What, Hollywood trivia?” You know that it is, you saw it posted on the theater’s monthly calendar between slots for rehearsals and fittings.
“Yeah, quotes and stuff I guess.”
Lay there, naked, on your back as he pats his pockets for his keys. Hear the scrape and clatter when he takes them from your bedside table. See the smile stuck to his face – real and weak and guilty – as he bends to kiss your cheek in goodbye.
“You’re always coming and going, and going and coming,” you drawl.
“What?”
“It’s a movie quote. It might help you win.”
He will huff a laugh and offer a wave on his way out. He walks away easily, like a pen inks its way down paper. Study the ceiling so as to not watch him leave, trace the cracks and follow the blooming water stains. Listen as his footsteps give into the sound of the front door thudding into the jamb and the sound of gravel moving under tires. Imagine the collision of their embrace, the two sets of hands that glide over the surface of each other’s backs. You understand why he drops your hand. You’ve understood why for the past twelve weeks.
In the kitchen you decide you will forget the truth of him and his wife. Instead, it will be just you, your hands, and the artichoke thorns that need trimming. But the oats are the color of Nina’s hair and the bruised basil the color of her eyes. Out in the dining room, sitting at the bar, the booth, the high-top tables you think any woman could be her. Every woman is her.
———
Visit your parents for the holidays and spend the first two nights at home sitting, slouching and somewhat demoralized. Your Aunt Lynn suggests you get off your tush and walk around the block. Your mother suggests not inviting Aunt Lynn next year.
Fueled by what you decide to call boredom, you find the pilot of Nina’s show. In it she is animated, desperate, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakthrough. Notice the endless tucking of her hair behind her ear. You’re unsure if the tick is Nina’s or her character’s. Search and fail to find the next episode. Remain ignorant of what will happen to her next.
Soon you relax into the organized frenzy that is home. The plate of fudge from the neighbors wrapped in plastic and dropped off the night before, fig spread and grain crackers and chocolates with fruit centers sitting untouched in crinkle cut paper, Christmas cards from families you can no longer recognize. Dig your elbows through the clutter on the counter and cradle your head in your hands as you watch your mother and aunts slather this year’s rib roast with anchovy and rosemary and fresh cracked pepper.
“Have you met anyone worth your time, June?” your Aunt Marie asks.
“I think so.” And you can’t help it; you smile, you blush, you tuck your hair behind your ear. You feel suddenly shy in the company of your family.
“She must’ve found a good one, look at that face!” You are wrapped in your Aunt Jean’s plump arms, swaying back and forth in the fleshy jacket of her cuddle.
“Keep him June, the good ones are always taken.”
“Tell me about it,” you say.
Your mother will worry about you and your words. She gives you sidelong glances across the counter, over the steaming mound of rib roast between you. Don’t look her in the eye. She will know. She always knows when your wheels start to wobble. Her eyes will go watery, and her chin will quiver the same as yours did when you were a little girl caught doing something you shouldn’t.
“Cut the fat,” your mother says. Wonder for a moment what she means by this, then follow her knife. Say nothing else. Get to work.
———
He calls the week after Christmas to tell you he misses you; that he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the middle of the night because he couldn’t stop thinking about you.
“Is that true? Or did you just wake up from a nightmare?” you ask.
“Both, actually. I woke up from this dream with a jerk and I was all sweaty. And then, I started thinking about you.”
“I hate waking up with sweaty jerks.”
He laughs and you wonder in that moment, when the words you speak make his mouth tender, if it is all worth it.
“I told my father I met someone. No real details, only that you’re a producer. But he didn’t like that. He said that makes you a manufacturer, a fabricator, and a phony.”
“I hope you said it wasn’t true.”
“I told him everything he needed to know.”
“That you like me.”
“That, unfortunately, I really like you.”
———
When you return to California your life, once again, moves parallel to his. He leaves messages to say he can’t meet for lunch. He says he’ll try to make it to your apartment at night, but it’s rare he does. So many nights you spend washing the stench of steamed vegetables from your hair, applying lotions to the calluses on your hands, coating yourself in creams and powders like you’re sixteen again, all to sit in a scratchy chemise and wait. But even when you were sixteen you didn’t have to wait like this. Wonder why it feels like every time you jump into the water, you end up swimming against the flow. Maybe this really is who you are now. You really have become an other woman.
Get angry. Win the fights against him in your head. You can be so tough when you’re alone. Get sad. Sit in front of the window that separates you from the hum of the city, from life itself. You are kept company by your dread. Get bitter. Search the theater company’s website for upcoming events. Buy yourself a ticket to their fundraiser collecting money for new set pieces.
———
He will call twice between the time you bought the tickets and the day of the fundraiser to say he’s so sorry, he’s just been so busy lately. He will list all the indelicate things he plans for you the next time you meet. Remain indifferent. Return each proposition with a “sure,” “yeah,” or “uh-huh.”
At the fundraiser you walk around the room of couples dressed smart, talking, and gesticulating with their forks. Move like a slug. Be unremarkable. You want to catch a glimpse of him and Nina together. You want to know whether his hands ever hesitate at her waist, if she melts like honey into his shoulder.
“Could you tell me if Nina is here?” you ask the woman at the check-in table after multiple loops with no success.
“Usually she’d be here, but she just had the baby.”
Feel like a blender suddenly unplugged. The motor cooling. The blades, once whirring, slow their spinning. All that was being tossed around inside you stills.
———
Ignore his calls from then on, but still find yourself listening to the voicemails.
“I’m not sure what happened,” he says.
“Did I do something to upset you?” he asks. With time his calls will become less frequent, taking on the tone of old friends rather than of old lovers. Picture the memories he has of your tangled limbs dissolving like salt in vinegar.
“Just wanted to know that you’re doing okay,” he says.
———
On the days you walk to work you pass the diner where you shared fries and wine and kisses. You see him sitting in the window on your way home one time, and then never again. He raises his hand in a weak wave, and you think back to when you were eight and your father told you, you do not have to wave at people just because they wave at you. Restraint has never been easy, but for a moment it was. Start driving to work regularly. Remind yourself that nobody walks in LA.
———
You dice onions, slice garlic, skim the scum that bubbles to the top of the broth pot. With tweezers you remove feather-fine bones from slabs of salmon, make reductions from concord grapes and shallots and thyme. You take stock. The sink isn’t draining properly, the water is rising warm and thick with scraps again. Reach your hand down the drain to scoop out the mess.
Watch as the water moves through the mush. This has happened before, and it will happen again.
Claire Tafoya is a writer from Southern California. She holds an MFA from Columbia Univeristy where she was named a De Alba fellow. Her work appears in Plain China, and is forthcoming from The Iowa Review.