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SHORT
STORIES
Food for Thought
When John got out of his meeting and found the last ten years of his life stacked in the foyer of his upmarket Willis Street office, he was not amused.
By the time he'd stormed home, stirred his fury to boiling point by bellowing at me like an enraged hippo through the security door, and then assaulted the police as they escorted him off the property, I wasn't the only one who knew it; John had made his lack of amusement plain to the entire street.
Mrs Jackson next door came over with a plate of Chocolate Delight she'd whipped up while listening to his tirade through her open kitchen window. "Eighteen minutes those police took, dears," she said, disapprovingly. "I was able to make a second batch. If he hadn't broken the window I might have had time for the Banana Wonder."
"Tea, Mrs J?" Chelle asked. Chelle's been my best friend since the first day of kindergarten, when I bloodied her nose over sandpit rights and she blackened my eye over Maid Marian's gown from the dress up box. She'd helped me pack and deliver John's belongings while he was on his 'business trip.' Now she sat on a breakfast stool swinging her legs and holding down the 'on' switch of the kettle while steam shot out of the spout.
"Thank you, dear." Mrs Jackson plunked down on a kitchen chair. "Gina, what on earth's going on?"
"It's all my fault," I explained, removing the plastic wrap from the Chocolate Delight. "I'm no longer in the corporate wife category. I have an interesting - even pretty - face, but I'm not making the effort necessary to give him the physical and emotional support he feels he needs in his career."
Mrs Jackson stared at me before turning a bemused look to Chelle.
"What she means," Chelle said, "is that she'd be welcome in John's little fantasy if she'd go on a crash diet and have plastic surgery."
"He only suggested it as food for thought," I said.
Chelle hiked an eyebrow. "The same way you suggested he was a pretentious, pompous, narcissistic windbag with an inflated ego and a narrow mind?"
"Pretty much."
"Guess that's why he's been cheating on you with a younger, slimmer model."
"That'll teach me." I took one of the Chocolate Delights and bit into it. It tasted wonderful. "Apparently, an overweight, aging wife isn't good for his image."
Chelle snorted and poured tea into mugs. "Like he's an oil painting. Jerk."
Mrs Jackson's eyes grew wider. "Overweight? Maybe, a little. But you look thirty-five at the most!"
"I'm forty-four," I sighed. "That's fifteen years older than Karyn." I wasn't going to hazard a guess at the difference in our BMI.
Karyn, John's "boink-de-jour," was a blue-eyed, blonde, Barbie doll whose generous mammary glands and sleek body reduced every male within drooling distance to a brainless hormone. But she was no dumb bunny. Her Business Degree had a strong emphasis on accounting...and she certainly seemed to know how to capitalize on all her assets.
"Stuff Karyn," Chelle said.
"Who hasn't?" I muttered.
Mrs Jackson blushed. It's easy to forget she's over eighty years old. She's just one of the girls. "So what are you going to do about it?" she asked.
"I'm going to walk down to the lotto shop and get a ticket. Today's my lucky day." I brushed the chocolate crumbs off my hands onto the back of my jeans. "Then I'm going to plan the rest of my life." My new house keys glinted on the Pooh Bear key ring as I unclipped them from my handbag. "Anyone coming?"
In the end we all went, making a stop at Mrs Jackson's place to leave the biscuit plate and pick up her purse.
"What kind of plans?" Chelle asked, as we strode purposefully along. "Will you go back teaching?"
I shook my head. "I left last term because I needed a change. I still need a change."
"There's a vacancy for a counter assistant at the new Hot Bread Shop," Mrs Jackson suggested.
We all froze mid-stride. I don't know what Chelle and Mrs Jackson were thinking, but I was already inhaling the incense of buttery croissants, experiencing the granular texture of coconut, the fragrance of raspberry, the sensual yielding of the perfect lammington. I was floating as one with the Universe Of The Apple Puff, brimming with sweetness and bursting with cream …
I swallowed. Hard. "Food for thought," I said.
"Could be fun," Chelle agreed.
"Dreadful for the diet," Mrs Jackson sighed, but there was a hint of wistfulness in her voice.
We fell into step again, picking up the pace. Maybe I wasn't the only one who felt the need of exercise to offset the weight gain of the last few seconds.
The lotto shop was open and doing a roaring trade. We waited in line patiently as befitted potential millionaires and, like every other punter, purchased several days worth of dreams for the price of a latte and club sandwich.
"Stop it," Chelle muttered.
"Stop what?"
"Stop thinking about food."
"What makes you think I'm thinking about food," I demanded.
Chelle rolled her eyes heavenward. "I know you! You were thinking that you've just wasted the price of a sausage roll and a hot chocolate with marshmallows."
"No, she hasn't," Mrs Jackson said firmly. "The Hob Nob has a Seniors' Special on Mondays. She's only wasted the price of two corned-beef-and-pickle sandwiches, a slice of poppy seed cake and a pot of English Breakfast tea with free refills...which you need, to get all those poppy seeds out from under your teeth."
The latte at the Hob Nob was excellent, as was the club sandwich. When Mrs Jackson went up for her third free refill I excused myself to Chelle and slipped out.
By the time I returned she was thoroughly disgruntled. "Where have you been?" she snapped. "Getting another flaming lotto ticket?"
I couldn't blame her. I wasn't the one who'd been watching Mrs Jackson's teeth do the hula in her mouth for the last twenty minutes. "I've been getting a job," I said.
They stared back at me, incredulous.