Fried Eggs

A selected story from “Thirteen Views” (Senior Honors Thesis)

The first time he came to my flat, he needed to borrow some eggs.

“I was going to make breakfast,” he said. “I guess I need to go to the store.”

I promise you, that’s how it happened. I’d seen him with his girlfriend moving onto the first floor a few months before. We’d never met. He said his name was Alex.

When I reached the door, my hand rested on the knob for a split second before I opened it. And in that moment, I told myself that you’d be on the other side. I don’t believe in ghosts. I knew it was irrational. Of course, it wasn’t you.

“Alex or Alexander?” I asked, slipping my engagement ring on and off my finger – that nervous twitch you hated so much.

“Alex,” he said. “Always Alex unless I’m in trouble with my girlfriend.”

He said it like this had happened many times before.

“Commander of the People,” I said, and he frowned.

You know how I like to play that funny game – memorizing the meanings of names and spurting them out like a dictionary. It’s one of those quirks you always liked about me.

“Your name: it means ‘commander of the people,’” I said.

“And what’s your name?” he asked.

“Rose – Rosalind – but Rose.”

“Rosalind, like in Shakespeare? Very English.”

“I’m American,” I said looking up at him and then quickly back down.

“Me too,” he smiled. “So, Rose, how about those eggs?”

I led him into the kitchen. But, as you know, the word “kitchen” is really an exaggeration. With just enough space to lean over the stove without butting the cabinets, it hardly constitutes a whole room.

I grabbed my sketches from the counter. “It’s a bit of a mess,” I said. “You can tell I don’t use it much.”

“You’re an artist?” he asked, peering over my shoulder at the drawings.

“When I have the time,” I shrugged. Actually, I haven’t painted anything for about a year now, since I’ve had the flat to myself. Instead I added, “But I don’t make any money doing it.”

“Definitely an artist, then,” he smiled.

I shook my head but even so I was imagining how I would draw him. Tall with broad forearms, Alex took up much of the small space. I imagined painting him in my kitchen with all the windows open and the light dancing off the blue tile. But he’d cover much of the canvass – brown eyes flecked with gold, lips parted slightly, torso hunched over the stove.

“Can I ask you a strange question?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I really hate eating by myself and my girlfriend is teaching abroad for the semester, so–”

“If this ends in you cooking for me, then yes,” I said.

“Good,” he smiled and rummaged through the fridge.

“Top shelf, next to the milk,” I said, but he’d already found the eggs.

He moved effortlessly around the kitchen, as if he already knew where everything was kept. It took almost a year, even after we were engaged and had moved in together, for you to find the frying pan – a fact that, looking back, I somehow find endearing but at the time was really quite annoying.

“Lived in London long?” Alex asked, cracking an egg over the rim of the bowl.

“I moved over here after I graduated college,” I said. “It’s been a couple of years. How about you? When did you cross the pond?”

The eggs hissed as they hit the skillet and expanded in warbled globes. Their translucent outer rings bubbled and turned white, then golden at the edges.

“My girlfriend and I moved for real just a few months ago,” he said. “But we’d been going back and forth for a while before then. She’s British.”

He slid two fried eggs over toast, the weak yolks bursting.

“Yeah, I moved for a Brit, too,” I smiled.

“And now?”

“Well, he’s not leaving,” I said. “And, besides, it’s a hard city to get away from.”

He studied my expression carefully, and I wondered how much he’d guessed, how much you should tell a stranger cooking in your kitchen.

“Coffee?” I asked and poured us each a cup from the French Press your mother gave us.

We took the plates into the living room. I moved more sketches from the table, tossing them on the couch behind us. We sat down.

“Some of these still lifes are really good,” he said, turning to study them.

His eyes flitted over each of the drawings and settled on the one I drew of you when we were visiting your parents. It was of a bowl of fruit – apples, pears, a nice round grapefruit.

“It’s not a still life,” I said. “It’s a portrait.”

“It’s a bowl of fruit.”

“A bowl of fruit can be a portrait,” I said. “Portraits don’t have to be of faces and arms.”

I could never draw you right with your blue eyes ringed in gold, pointed nose and upturned mouth like you were always about to laugh at a good joke that only you could properly appreciate. So I’d drawn your breakfast instead.

“Well, I’m just glad the fruit isn’t rotten,” Alex said. “Too many paintings have rotting fruit.”

“That’s just the first draft. I never draw them rotting in the first draft.”

“And the second?”

“Not until I add paint.”

He turned back to the table, folded the toast over and bit into it like a sandwich, the yolk running onto his fingers.

When I think of our last morning together, I think about how it should have been. I should have gotten up from my seat by the window where I was drawing your portrait, and I should have kissed you goodbye. We would have leaned in the doorway, my arms wrapped around your neck, and I would have whispered, “Don’t go.”

And you would have laughed and said silly things like, “But I have to go to work.”

And I would have been spontaneous – though I was never very spontaneous when you were around – and I would have said, “Let’s play hooky.”

And you would have lifted your eyebrows and laughed – and because this is what should have happened – you would have said, “Why not?” and dropped your suitcase.

And I can think of lots of things we could have done after that. But that’s only what should have happened.

Instead, I didn’t even look away from the canvas. I was so intent on getting the lighting right, I’m not sure if I even said, ‘Goodbye.’

When I think back on that moment, I imagine that you turned at the door and watched me. And I wonder if your last thought of me before the accident was of me hunched over your portrait. And maybe you hoped that at least I’d finish it.

Since it was just breakfast, I figured Alex’s visits weren’t doing any harm. Besides, there was something – an intangible quality – about him. Maybe it was that he was safe – nothing could happen while we each had somebody else. So after a while, I started leaving the door of my apartment unlocked. Not so much as a direct invitation. More like an open suggestion. And he came of course. I knew he would.

“I brought the goods,” he said one morning, letting himself in.

He held up a grocery bag and walked into the kitchen.

“I just think you should know that I’m engaged,” I said all in a rush. I’d been thinking about how I should tell him this since our first meeting and planning just how I would broach the subject. You would say that I completely botched it, that I always botch subtlety, which, of course, is true.

“I guessed as much,” he said, pointing to my ring.

The small square cut diamond caught the light from the kitchen window and flashed.

“Yes, well, I just thought you should know,” I said, helping him un-bag the groceries. “He’s never home, so some people don’t realize.”

“How long have you been engaged?” he asked.

“Over a year.”

“Mmmhmm.” But his eyes narrowed, and he looked at me that half-second longer than usual, like he knew otherwise. “So I have a question,” he said. “Is that portrait you drew of him?”

I nodded.

“And you haven’t finished it because – ?”

“I need the subject in front of me,” I said.

“You mean you need a bowl of fruit? Because I can get that to you right now. I’ll just go downstairs and –.”

“No, I mean –”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “Where is he exactly?”

My eyes widened. I wasn’t used to his direct questions. “He went to work,” I said. “Long hours.”

“Really long hours,” he shook his head. “I don’t think he’s come home once since I moved in.”

I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s complicated,” he repeated. “Ok, so he’s off and you’re, what, left waiting?”

“No, I’m left fielding questions from people like you.”

There was an infinitesimal moment where I felt the direction of things could go one of two ways. I gave him that look you know so well: that look that says ‘not any further.’ Only I think this time it was more pleading than that. ‘Let me win’ was more like it.

He let me win.

“Complicated, huh?” he asked. “Well, you know what ‘they’ say: most everything good always is.”

“Mmmm… right, ‘they.’ Who’s that again?”

We laughed.

“Fine, not ‘they,’ me,” he said. “But I think some things are worth finishing.”

“Like a painting of a fruit bowl?”

“Like a portrait,” he said. “Just think about it.”

After that we stopped referring to you altogether. Skipping over the subject of you was just another part of our routine. He made the omelets, I fixed the coffee, he harped on how I should paint something, and I showed him a new sketch I’d been working on of just his arms stretched over the skillet.

“This isn’t the same portrait,” he laughed. “Is this one of me?” He seemed pleased.

I shrugged.

“Look, I even have arms,” and he raised his in mock celebration.

We both laughed. We laughed long after it ceased to be funny.

It wasn’t until he left that I realized I hadn’t once thought of you the entire morning. Not when I poured the coffee from your mother’s French Press. Not when we talked about my artwork. Not when Alex ducked out for work.

The thought hit me – or more like smacked me – as I was washing my coffee cup. I didn’t want to think of what that might mean. I ran my finger around the rim of the mug and let the water run.

The last time he came over, his grocery bag was bulkier than usual.

“I thought I’d make omelets today to celebrate,” he said.

“What are we celebrating?”

“My girlfriend’s coming home.”

I was surprised that spring had passed so quickly. He popped a bottle of champagne, and I grabbed glasses even as I protested that it was 11 in the morning.

“We’ll close the blinds,” he said. “And turn out the lights so it’ll seem later.”

We hung towels over the blinds for greater effect.

I brought out candles. “Because it’s so dark,” I said, in way of explanation.

“Of course.”

We toasted our glasses and drank deeply but even so it felt more like a funeral than a celebration. We drank two glasses before we started the omelets.

He cracked eggs over a bowl and whirred the golden centers into a frothy blur.

I diced tomatoes, onions and green pepper.

He dished the omelets onto plates and carried them into the living room. He glanced over at my portrait of you. He seemed irresistibly drawn to it – like it was a problem to solve.

“When did you draw this?” he asked.

“About a year ago,” I said.

I cut into the omelet, the egg falling away from the knife and the vegetables spilling out. We ate in silence, talking only after we’d pushed back our plates and poured more champagne.

“I think you should finish it,” he said.

“Actually, I have done a little work on it,” I said.

He frowned at the untouched sketch on the couch.

“No, not that one,” I said. “A newer version. I added paint.”

He smiled. “And where is this newer version?”

I grabbed a package off the mantel. “Open it later,” I said.

“I hate waiting,” he said. “Come on, let me open it now.”

I shook my head. “You should say, ‘thank you,’” I said. “It’s a gift. That’s what people normally do in situations like these.”

“But why this one?” he smiled. “Why not the one of that fine looking man frying eggs?”

I laughed. “I’m keeping that one,” I said. “Take what you’re given.”

“And happily,” he said. “I look forward to meeting your fiancé.” He raised his eyebrows and grinned.

“It’s a bowl of fruit,” I said. “It will look good in your kitchen.”

I carried the dishes to the sink. I took my engagement ring off and placed it on the ledge above the faucet. I ran warm water and slid my hands over the plates. After rinsing, I toweled them dry. Alex put everything back in the cupboard.

When the ring fell, it made the tiniest little clinking sound. I could hear it clanging as it went down the pipe. I saw the whole thing, even though I don’t know how it happened. I’ve always taken my ring off to do dishes, but this time it was like the ring jumped off the shelf of its own accord. I saw it flash as it fell, so very slowly I could have almost caught it, but I didn’t. I just watched it plunk into the suds.

I screamed and turned off the water, but I wasn’t as upset as maybe I should have been and that upset me more. You always said I shouldn’t take it off to do dishes, and you were right of course. You were almost always right, which I almost always hated.

Alex came up behind me. “Do you have a plumber’s wrench?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, grabbing your tool set from the bottom shelf.

Alex rummaged through it and held up a bright orange wrench with an adjustable metal top. “Plumber’s wrench,” he said and ducked underneath the sink.

I bent down beside him, our arms touching. He clamped the wrench around the U-shaped drain and twisted. The pipe came off in his hands.

“I’d move back if I were you,” he said and tapped the drain trap on the counter.

A water-logged mesh of hair and food scraps fell out. “You think it’s in there?” I asked.

He shrugged and fingered through the mess, emerging with the ring. A little egg was on it, and he rinsed it off. He watched me closely as he handed it to me. I didn’t put it back on.

Instead I walked with Alex back to the table, and he poured us each what was left of the champagne. The champagne was almost flat, but we drank it anyway, the engagement ring between us. We took slow sips, stretching time.

“Are you picking her up from the airport?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She should be back soon.”

Silence lengthened and enveloped us. I watched him over the rim of my glass.

After a while, he rose from the table.

“This was – ” he started, but I put my finger over his mouth.

“Don’t,” I said.

I followed him to the door. “Goodbye,” I said.

He waved from the staircase.

I returned to the table. He hadn’t finished his glass of champagne. I drank it slowly, letting the froth settle over my tongue before swallowing. I played with my ring, spinning it on the table with my finger.

“Wait,” I cried and ran back to the door.

He was still on the staircase. He looked up expectantly.

“You forgot your coat,” I said.

It was hanging on a peg in the living room. I handed it to him. He draped it over his arm and patted it thoughtfully, then left again.

I watched him walk down the stairs. Leaning against the doorframe, I imagined him returning to his room and opening the package. He’d unwrap it and find the painting just as he’d wished: a beautiful basket with fresh fruit, none of it rotting. He would hang it immediately. And I smiled as I turned from the door.