xanana ventura en la red

afritada / late night dinner

This short story has a fragmented history. - xanana


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Ingredients/ 1 kilo chopped chicken. 2 cans tomato sauce. 3 potatoes, sliced. 3 carrots, sliced. 2 green bell peppers, sliced. 1 cup oil. 2 tsp sugar. 1 bulb onion. 1 clove garlic. Salt and pepper to taste.

Red is a nice color, don’t you think? I love the way it livens up my kitchen tiles. Oops, I forgot. Our kitchen tiles. It’s been three years since we had this house to ourselves. I remember kissing you in all places uncovered with articles of clothing. You were only in a soiled white tank and house shorts torn at the crotch lines then. In any case, you looked hot. Putting your presence side by side with this house, you’d have 10,000 pogi points to your name. Of course, now, I only know the nearness of you through these red tiles. Fiery red. Shock-rock red. Slut red. Scarlet red. Warms me up any way. Too warm, perhaps, with this boiling oil on my skin.
My potatoes and carrots run from my torn plastic bag to the aluminum sink. I take hold of what I could catch, two potatoes and a carrot. Suddenly I remember how you made me so proud of my pineapples then, back in my father’s farm. Too bad I couldn’t add pineapples here. Even tomatoes had to be squashed. But I don’t mind. This is for you anyway. I’ll have my pineapples and lanzoneses as you make love to the bed.
My hair ruffles with the smoke of now-burning oil, but I don’t care. My skin cooks itself in oiled sweat in the process, to hell with it. This has to be perfect. In any way possible. I slice the potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers like I always do. Thick, and haphazardly elongated. With the utmost care. You wouldn’t want to eat just the sauce, would you?

Step one/ Sauté garlic and onion in hot oil.

I crack open this garlic clove, peel the skins with my French-tipped nails, and use the marble mortar to grind them up. I know it would make my hands smelly and you wouldn’t want to kiss and lick its tips like you used to, but I know I’d make up for it with a perfect dinner. I know you won’t mind. You’ll even want to lick my hands over and over. Garlic is pungent; but admit it, you’d eat it even if it would kill you, right? Garlic is even an aphrodisiac, right? Right.
Now with the onions; I take out a bulb, peel it with my nails, again. And chop it up nice and slow. I’m not cooking anything else, just our dinner. I need nicely minced onions. Then I tear up. But I guess I need it, my face has been dehydrated for so long anyway. Hell if I could bottle your saliva, I would’ve done it long ago.
My oil is burning. Smoke blurs my vision. I open the windows and stash the garlic and onion in the wok. Kitchen clears up quite dramatically. I look at my nails. I stare at the floor for a second. Then I decide to wear gloves.

Step two/ Add chicken. Add salt and pepper. Simmer for 5 minutes.

I take out the chicken from the plastic wrapper, and realize I had the butcher chop it three hours before. I take the largest breast, redolent with its own juice, take off my gloves in one hand, and begin to stroke the skin. Hard. Then I touch my nape. My hand moves to my neck, until it reaches my collarbone, finally stopping at my cleavage, redolent with sweat.
Suddenly realizing the mess I made to my body, I dump every piece of chicken onto the wok, wooden spatula coercing the group to socialize with the garlic and onion duet. I shower the batch with salt (2 pinches) and pepper (half pinch). Spatula swims with group one more time. Stop. Cover wok. I set my cellphone’s alarm to 5 minutes. I turn on the radio. Annie Lennox’s ‘No more I Love Yous’ playing. Language is leaving me in silence, changes are shifting outside something, she says. I stroke my breasts once more and do back-up caterwauling, while looking at the dogs from my window. Mimi is fucking another son of a bitch, again.

Step three/ Add tomato sauce and ½ cup water.

I get back to the blue-and-predominantly-yellow supermarket bag to find the can of tomato sauce I expertly chose from all the dented-and-bent others in the aisle. From the drawers I produce a semi-rusted can opener and push the sharp pointed end against the top of the can. Takes me a while to get the opener to travel around the can, but I stop as three-quarters of the tin gets ripped. I try to lift the torn lid, but apparently I’m in no good terms with tin tonight as I rip the skin of my index finger, blood building up. By instinct, I suck my finger. Red has a nice taste. Mellow, yet penetrating.
By the finger’s instinct, I no longer feel the sting. I now feel in my mind, your lips pressing in my fingers with mine. I’m used to opening cans of tomato sauce every night, but surprisingly, I hurt myself just now. Language is leaving me, again. I can’t explain. I just have to finish the routine. The same nightly routine, no fail. Dump every drop of tomato sauce onto the wok. Don’t leave anything hanging. Good. Take a cup. Half-fill with water. Dump it in. I wonder if I had my blood mixed in somewhere.

Step four/ Add potatoes, carrots, and bell pepper.

No matter what I do, even with different brands of tomato sauce, I still can’t get the color of my slut-red tiles in my afritada sauce. You won’t mind, right? Oh, you don’t know. Good. Better that way. I distract this fault instead with color. I dump the potatoes in. I smile. I dump the carrots in. I smile wider. I dump the green bell pepper in. I look up the ceiling, then to the quaint crucifix somewhere above the curtain fixture. I see my eyes somewhere in that bronzy sculpture, smiling with distress. But I distract myself anyway, with my wok getting colorful. Remember that art class before where we first met? You were so in love with color, you won me over? I was always the black leather type, but something in your mismatched rainbows scraped the leather off me. I always loved your portraits of me, with my candlelight-blue hair, orange skin, and pink eyes. But you never do that anymore. I always wonder when you’ll paint me a portrait of my afritada. You won’t even need a mismatched rainbow palette for that anyway. You won’t even have to think; it’s all laid out for you.
I keep my portraits too, you know. This is the only masterpiece I’ve got, in several repetitions. But unlike yours, I never had to just look. It’s something more than that to bring it to life. Lips dripping with it, fast forward to a smile is worth more to me than an expensive frame or a high-profile exhibit, with lips dripping with sallow bubbly. But you don’t know that. So I look at that crucifix again. And look away. And cover my wok. And head upstairs and bathe.

Step five/ Let stand for 15 minutes

Dripping wet from the shower, I open my closet. And pull out a little black silk dress, gleaming against the fluorescent light. I finish the ensemble with a pair of black stilettos. I spray on the perfume you gave me three weeks ago. With no note, no wrapper, nothing. But I’ve been okay with it. It’s like telling me I smell like vanilla, and I should forever smell that way. Sweet. I appreciate your quiet honesty. I know for a fact I can only open your mouth and hear your voice in bed. But even that I now barely remember.
I fasten my damp, wavy locks with a pair of black chopsticks. I guess I can now look like a geisha without even trying. I finish with a swipe of lip gloss. Plum. Sweet. Then I walk down the stairs, imagining my first prom night with you. Except now only time can fetch me and tell me I look radiant, for you’re not around anyway. I head to the kitchen, and turn off the stove.

Step six/ Serve.

I am now on the verge of making love to this chair. I may have to use this red wine bottleneck in place of you shoving happiness in me. The candles are melting. The thin lights are losing their dimness. I must have stared at them for too long.
Beep. Beep. Doorbells are music.
I walk to the door. I clutch my breast, hard. I fear what might happen next. But my silk dress might ruffle. As a matter of fact, it already is. So I grab the doorknob instead. But I don’t see you. I don’t see any semblance of you. I now stand face-to-face with a stranger masked in black pantyhose. With a gun. Hard and loaded. I know it because it clicks. Loudly. I walk back, my stilettos in silent opposition. I stumble backwards. Unzipping his jeans, he takes off the pantyhose. Gun still pointed at me, slightly crossing the creases of my dress, imperial silk still gleaming against the thin lights. And then Gun slowly climbs to my chest. To my neck. To my chin. In slow succession, at the expense of my speeding heartbeat, Gun now smothers my face, skirts my powdered cheeks, stains my plum lips. And it stops there.
My lips must have dropped; Gun makes its way to my tongue. Slowly. Playfully. My mascara-filled eyelashes curtsy back; I see a semblance of your face, with your potato complexion, your carrot nose, and mismatched rainbows all over your head. I could’ve stopped and looked. Yours has those rough edges like most movie stars I adored with a bottleneck. But I couldn’t. Gun pulls me back, playfully teasing my plum lips. Holding it hostage, Gun shoos language away. I lean back.
As if I have any choice. I’m held at gunpoint.
My afritada is getting cold. But if it’s any consolation, I now see red tiles covering the carpeted floor both of us are enveloped against. Must be peripheral vision, but I can’t stop to verify. I don’t want to stop and verify. They look so red. Scarlet red. Slut-red, if you may. Red is a nice color, don’t you think? Like my kitchen tiles. Oops, I forgot. Our kitchen tiles.

posted by xanana ventura @ 2:43 a. m.