Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

Author:Julia May Jonas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2022-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

X.

When I told Sid what the department had requested, she smirked and shook her head with the reassuring arrogance of a licensed and accredited attorney.

“They can’t do that.”

“Well, I know they can’t, but they didn’t say I had to. They asked me to consider it.”

I was making martinis for us in mason jars. Before I left the college that day I wrote emails to my classes and all other pertinent people, telling them that I would be taking off the next day due to a cold. As I expected, there was an email from Priya, saying that she was sorry, and she thought I should walk around with the red letters AW, for Adulterer’s Wife, pinned on my breast as performance art. I wrote her back a quick note of thanks, and wanted to write more, wanted to ask her over for dinner to talk about it all, but my fingers felt leaden against the keyboard.

Seized with an urge to consume, I went to an upscale butcher shop that had recently opened in the area and bought expensive T-bone steaks from a very handsome, well-muscled butcher. I tried to imagine him tracing the tip of his knife over the curves of my body to cheer myself up, but the fantasy failed to displace my doldrums. I stopped at the organic market and purchased dark black kale and designer anchovies and a nineteen-dollar brick of parmesan and olives and seeded crackers and an uncut boule of whole wheat sourdough and goat cheese and salami and raspberries and a flourless chocolate ganache torte.

Usually I went to some undignified liquor warehouse for alcohol—the wines were good enough and the prices were better and the salesclerks left you alone. Today, however, I stopped at the boutique in town—used only by tourists—and let an Englishman talk me into three thirty-dollar bottles of red and a new, artisan vodka. I wanted to take substances into my body like an immoral and immoderate businessman traveling on a company credit card. I wanted everything that passed my lips to be decadent, full of sulfites or iron, with mouth-screwing flavor, to taste rich and deep.

I found Sid in the guest room, glassy-eyed and grumpy, playing a multiplayer video game on her laptop. I demanded she shower, put on a button-down, and meet me downstairs. Sensing my desperation, she complied. I stripped, ripped, and washed the kale and set it out to dry, rinsed and patted the steaks and shook them with salt and pepper. (I am of the opinion that good steak should have no seasoning other than salt and pepper.) I lightly boiled an egg and then broke it into the bottom of a wide, low salad dish with anchovies that had been mottled with garlic and olive oil. To that I added the kale and a massive amount of freshly grated parmesan, and then massaged it until it shone. I set out the cheese, salami, bread, crackers, and olives and decanted the wine. I pulled out my tray of cocktail fixings with the firm intent of getting completely and gloriously wasted.

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