Blackout Odyssey by Victoria Feistner

Author:Victoria Feistner [Feistner, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magical realism, odyssey, blackout, toronto, woman, female, lead, protagonist
ISBN: 9781928011538
Publisher: Brain Lag
Published: 2021-08-13T04:00:00+00:00

11.

Dylan

You pause, knife in hand, but then give a shake of your head and slide the utensil along the edge of the lamb roast where it’s sticking to the pan. This isn’t what you wanted; you wanted to make your girlfriend a special dinner. She knew that. And yet she hadn’t shown up. Hadn’t even bothered to call.

Most of the neighbours, especially the older ones, and the ones with kids, have gone home already, taking their empty food bowls with them, leaving many of the candles behind. They’re stumps now, the candles, sagging into the wood of the patio railing or the picnic table, guttering and smoking, but still light.

Not everyone has gone. Glasses are still being clinked, drained, refilled. There’s laughter and goodwill and a sense of community that you hadn’t realized you’d missed since you’d left school. You have friends, good ones, but as each of you partner up, marry, have kids, the wedge grows wider and the times when you’re all in one room grow farther and farther apart.

Such is life. You knew this would happen. Just like you knew the roast would dry out being in the oven for so long. But part of you hoped for a touch of the miraculous.

You slice the lamb roast. It’s dry as leather now, like old boot, but you don’t like lamb much anyway so the texture hardly matters. When it was obvious that the power wasn’t coming back on in a timely fashion, you took everything out of the fridge for the neighbours, and wrapped an icepack or two around the tzatziki. Still hoping.

But it’s not dusk anymore, it’s night, and there’s still no word from Mallory. Even if she’d walked from Scarborough she’d be here by now. So you can only conclude she’s staying somewhere. Maybe with her friend Aggie or maybe the whole team is still having drinks and dinner somewhere, waiting for the subway’s return.

The last cut. You would have been okay if that’s what she’d chosen to do, but she hadn’t called. And she knew you’d been cooking all day.

You spoon the tzatziki onto the plate out of the container; presentation is still important, even if it is just cold cuts out on the patio. The rich smell of garlic and yogourt and cucumber and mint fills your nose and dampens the lamb. Suzy down in the health food store was right; it’s the best sauce to cover up the taste of the meat.

Part of you wants to stop and put the platter back in the fridge, keeping it for when Mallory gets home, but another part of you doubts that will even be tonight. And besides, there are people here, now. Hungry people.

You carry the platter out onto the picnic table to oohs and ahhs.

“This smells amazing,” calls out Heather, in that annoying sing-song voice that she has, but she doesn’t sound like she’s lying.

“Dylan’s a great cook,” Jeff tells her, pulling a piece of lamb onto his paper plate. “The smells that come out of the apartment just when I am getting home, man, it’s torture.

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