Page 16 of The Spirit of Love
“Usually, I add a drizzle of honey to my highballs, but I must have just run out. Are you hungry?”
I wave him off. “I had some soup earlier—”
“Not what I asked,” he says, moving toward the back of the kitchen, where I notice a slow cooker is plugged in. When he lifts the lid, an exquisite aroma seizes my senses. It’s garlic and wine and tomatoes and thyme, all tangled together.
“I can cook exactly two dishes,” Sam says, placing a steaming bowl in front of me.
“I hope this is one of them,” I say.
“Boeuf bourguignon,” Sam says, making a bowl for himself. “Bon appétit.”
We carry our bowls into the main room. He flops onto an old knit plaid recliner with its stuffing bursting out. I sit on a supple leather couch, sinking into the deep brown cushion with an audible exhale. I place my highball on his clearly homemade coffee table, on a coaster resting on top of a Pelican Shakespeare copy ofThe Tempest.
“Good script,” I say. “Are you reading it?”
Sam nods. “Living here, it makes a different kind of sense.”
“ ‘I must eat my dinner,’ ” I say in a low voice, quoting Caliban from the play. When I taste the stew, I moan. It’s rich and savory with meat so tender it melts on contact. A second bite brings the exotic umami pop of wild mushrooms.
Sam closes his eyes, lifts his spoon, and picks up later in Caliban’s monologue: “ ‘And here you sty me, in this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me the rest o’ th’ island.’ ” His eyes pop open. “I never imagined I’d find the right audience to show that off.” He winks at me. “How’s the stew?”
“Truly delicious,” I say, trying not to make a big thing about the fact that he’s just casually quoted Shakespeare back at me.
“All in the spirit of Search and Rescue,” he says. “You thought you didn’t need it.”
I nod, acquiescing. “I can admit when I’m wrong. It’s funny, I had beef stew tonight for dinner at my campsite. The canned version. I thought it was fancy because I got it at Gelson’s and it had Wolfgang Puck’s face on the label, but after tasting this, I’m going to proclaim him disqualified from making stew.”
“No! This is his recipe!” Sam says, laughing, using his spoonto point. “My mom sent it to me when I moved here. Along with an apron, which I caught on fire the first time I tried to cook it.” He shrugs. “Finally figured it out.”
“Yeah, you did. What’s the other dish in your repertoire, Wolfgang? Duck à l’orange?”
Sam shakes his head, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “It’s a very simple grilled fish—there’s not even a recipe. Just salt and lemon. But I do prepare it over an open fire, and the trick is knowing how to get the flame just right, and then there’s a whole scaling process…I’m boring you.”
“Not at all,” I insist, but Sam is perceptive enough to notice the shift in me. It wasn’t boredom; it was something closer to regret. Because I’d like to experience his grilled fish, but tomorrow, once this storm blows over, we’ll go our separate ways. We’re only here tonight because of the most bizarre series of events.
“But yeah,” Sam continues, “everything else in the kitchen, I’m hopeless at. I burn toast, wreck mac and cheese. I’m also somehow terrible at making tea, so it’s a good thing you wanted something stronger.”
He has a way of saying things so earnestly they sound like sarcasm, but I’m starting to see that they’re not. I’ve never met anyone so naturally open. It’s like he doesn’t know another way to be. I think of myself as someone who tells the truth when I speak. But so often, I choose not to speak, to keep the things I mean inside.
Sam doesn’t seem to have that reflex. We’re definitely from two very different worlds. I wonder if working in Hollywood has made it harder for me to speak the truth to others.
Sam raises a mug toward mine.
“Cheers,” he says.
“What’s in your glass?” I ask.
“It’s called a Phoebe Snow,” Sam says. “Dubonnet, brandy, and absinthe, strained over cracked ice.”
“Someone needs to get you your own HGTV show.”
“I don’t know what that is,” he says, shaking his head.
“No one does.”
“Tell me, Fenny,” Sam says. “What were you so busy working on at the beach that you didn’t want me to save your life?”
By way of answering, I deliverZombie Hospitalcharacter Dr. Josslyn Munro’s world-famous tagline: “The Hippocratic oath applies to zombies, too.”
