Page 108 of Our Last Resort
“Anyway,” she said, and got up, clapping her hands, “time for s’mores.”
She went back inside the house and returned with Gabriel.
“Now, here’s how you do it,” she said, stabbing a marshmallow onto a stick. “I like mine burned, so I put it into the fire and let it—”
She demonstrated as she spoke, thrusting her marshmallow into the flames. Then she pulled it out, still burning, and blew on it. It was partly charred—unappetizing, really, but Annie seemed delighted.
“Then, you take a graham cracker and some chocolate—”
She showed us the whole architecture, the weird chocolate-sandwich-between-crackers of it all. With her free hand, she slid the singed marshmallow off her stick and onto the chocolate. She put her stick down, closed off her s’more with another cracker, and held it out to Gabriel.
“First bite,” she said.
That was a thing they did, a theory they’d built up in the shared language of their love: The first bite of any given food was deemed to be the best. If someone asked for a taste of someone’s food, they had to wait until that person had taken the proprietary first bite. Conversely, letting someone else have the first bite was a sign of deep care, a privilege passed down.
Gabriel crunched down on the s’more. He closed his eyes and chewed.
“Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”
He held out the s’more to me. I waved him away.
“I’ll make my own.”
I set out to work. Marshmallow, stick.
“You don’t have to burn it if you don’t want to,” Annie said. “You can just hold it close to the flames and wait for it to heat up.”
But I burned it. Oh, I burned it. Stuck it right into the fire, pulled it out, and watched the tiny flame singe the white surface, wrap itself around the marshmallow’s soft, squishy, gelatinous body.
After a few seconds, I blew out the flame. I mirrored Annie’s gestures, laid a piece of chocolate on top of the cracker, slid the melted marshmallow off the stick, completed the sandwich.
First bite.
Food was so intense, in those days. After years of Émile-mandated grub, followed by years of whatever would fill our stomachs for as little money as possible, our meals offered endless possibilities. The first time I had a cheeseburger—a proper one, with a thick patty and a brioche bun and rings of red onions on top of the meat—my jaw got sore from all the chewing.
At first, the s’more was all textures. The snap of the cracker giving way to the cool, smooth chocolate. Then the warm gooeyness of the marshmallow. It was hypnotizing, that initial resistance followed by total surrender. Like a magic trick you conjured with your teeth, a little voice somewhere immediately chanting,Let’s do it again, again, again.Physically impossible not to go back for one more bite, and another one after that.
And then, the tastes. Of course, the tastes. They were perfect. Sweet, perhapstoosweet, but unapologetic, overt in their own excess.What else did you expect? I’m a candy sandwich.
Only after I swallowed my third bite did it occur to me to speak.
“Wow,” I said.
Annie gave me a satisfied nod.
We went back for more, trying different combinations: a peanut butter cup instead of plain chocolate, strawberries betweenthe chocolate and the marshmallow. But I returned to the original. Nothing extra was needed.
After all this time, this was what fire could mean: a graham cracker yielding to chocolate, marshmallow melting on your tongue. The pure, pure magic of those days.
36Escalante, Utah
The Seventh Day
Gabriel and I make our way toward the edge of the hotel compound. Our heads are bowed, our steps swift. We’ve each grabbed a water bottle from the minibar—our only precaution.
“Hey!” someone yells in our direction.
I think I recognize Catalina’s voice. She must be outraged. We dared to leave our suite—we, the two persons of interest, to whom she so graciously granted one last night in paradise.
