Cookies and Suicide

I am sitting here in my friend's kitchen, scrutinizing the grains in the counter top while I carefully measure out the ingredients. It's easily 80 degrees in the room–the heat coming from the oven comforts me, though. I schlepped my overnight bag 5 city blocks through the snow to get here--The bluish tint of my skin is finally retreating in the face of my returning blood. Julian isn't home yet (I let myself in with the key that stays under his welcome mat), so I'm making myself comfortable-- I started a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies, thinking it will be a nice way to thank him for letting me stay with him while my roommate deals with her issues.

After I put in the first dozen, I tidy a little, and put on the kettle for tea. I have never gotten over tea since my study abroad in England two years ago. I was a consummate coffee drinker before that... but now something about that beverage seems crude to me. I open J's fridge to make sure he has half and half... if he doesn't, the whole tea venture will be pointless. But I can always depend on him to have what I need... there's the demi pint on the first shelf, tucked in the back left corner.

I love the sound of boiling water– the way it pushes forth as steam, turning angrily on itself... hot beverages restore my soul. I am almost lost in a reverie of Victorian proportions when the oven timer thrusts me back to the present day. The first ones are a bit rough around the edges (isn't that always the way? J's oven is so catch as catch can, anyhow...)

I walk over to the cd rack and browse for something wintry when my eyes stop on Chasing Furies's 'December Despair.' Sounds promising. I pop it in and am overwhelmed by a cello in mourning. If this moment were a poem it would be called Cookies and Suicide.

The steaming brew transmits steady heat from the mug into the dead center of my palm. The house smells wholesome and sweet. It almost feels like I'm a young wife waiting to recount a thousand anecdotes to a husband who will come through the door at any moment. But I'm no one's wife– I make my peace with that truth everyday–by not thinking about it (much). J's New York Times is on the table, so I half-heartedly thumb through it. I read my horoscope in the Entertainment section.

Aries
"mercury is in retrograde for the next thirty days, so communication at home and at the office is impossible. Jupiter is moving in to stay for quite a while in your 9th house (romance), so forget about making headway with that adorable Pisces you can't take your eyes off of...."

J, as it turns out, is a Virgo. I don't give this stuff much credence, but it's been pretty on the money about one thing: Earth and Fire do not mix. I'm fire; J's earth– and he is just a little too grounded for true love. He thinks it's sloppy and messy, which he despises, so we settled for being pals a long time ago. It was never an actual conversation– just like one of those unspoken communications–and that was fine with me. I never wanted to hear "Susan, it's just not ever going to happen for us..." That remark preempts friendship, I can tell you for a fact, because, whoever says that will always be one up. The other schmuck will spend the rest of the time trying to regain that lost ground....

So no sexual tension to look forward to in this vignette. Sorry.

I hear Julian's keys turning in the door–just as I take out another round of cookies.

"Yum. Smell's like Oatmeal raisin," he says.

I know he's smiling even though I can't see his face yet.

"Can I have one now?"

I extend a plate of the cooled ones to him. He takes two. His hair is a little tousled, his shirt totally wrinkled.

"You look like you just got out of bed."

"If only that were true... I'm exhausted, Susan."

J only ever calls me by my given name. He thinks it's demeaning, somehow to shorten or "cuten up" someone's character moniker, or whatever he calls it. I don't call him J to be mean, or to frustrate him. I'm just not stuck up about random things the way he is. We've reached an unspoken agreement about this, too.

"So what's your roommate's deal?" he asks with his mouth full.

"She needs some space. She feels 'crowded by life' and there's just too much going on in her world to beinteracting with another person in such small quarters."

"Did she actually say that?" J looks incredulous.

"Do you think I would make this up?"

"So, how long do you need to stay here– like a week?"

"She needs the month to get her head together. I only brought one overnight bag– I figure I'll make little forays between here and there. Can you put up with me that long?"

"That's not the issue, Susan. It just seems unfair to you...."

"She's paying the full month's rent in exchange for me making myself scarce."

"Right. Listen, stay here as long as you need to... It'll be fun.... Just don't have any sleep over dates. That would make me uncomfortable."

"Gosh, J. I feel like a slut all of a sudden... I wonder why...." I'm not wounded, per se, by his comment, but something in it stings the tiniest little bit.

"I didn't mean it like that."

I don't want this turn into something cumbersome and asinine (which my "tiffs" with Julian almost always are), so I take out the last batch of cookies, set them on a cooling rack, and excuse myself to the gazebo outside to enjoy a Marlboro light 200.

J's remark vexes me the whole time I sit beneath the darkening sky puffing all my wicked longings into the Milky Way. The clouds look like they're in a meeting–all gathered and conferring about something or other. I can see him putzing about in the kitchen, washing up the cookie pans, wiping down the counter. At that moment, all those actions seem like a judgement of me, my lifestyle, my very existence.

Maybe I should stay in a hotel. Maybe I should just get another apartment and leave Amanda to her own devices.... I smoke my cigarette down to a butt I can barely hold, and plan my silent escape tomorrow morning. Maybe another day here would tax my too tenuous relationship with this man I've struggled to love in the right way for all these years. I nearly have my Modus Operandi locked down when I hear his footsteps crunching toward me in the indigo night.

"Come inside," he says.

I know this will be the happiest month of my life.