Irv was taking cooking lessons, and that irritated his wife. She couldn’t cook, didn’t want to cook, and barely could eat. When Sunday night rolled around and Irv decided to cook a French dish with mirepoix, or a Thai whole fish with peppers, she left the house. Usually she went to McDonald’s, but even that wasn’t to her liking.
Is there any way I can get by without eating food? she wondered, staring at Irv working at the homemade pasta machine on his saffron wheat fettuccine.
And that started her research project. Powders, pills, and power drinks: that became all she would consume.
“Don’t you miss food?” Irv asked. “Isn’t it one of the joys of life?”
“I wouldn’t miss life if it came to it,” she said. She was thinking about doing without Irv too.
For a few days the powders, pills and power drinks made her feel almost high. She felt wonderful, as opposed to her usual aches and pains. Why didn’t I do this a long time ago? she thought. Food is a fraud. Damn farmers and producers probably in on some kind of conspiracy.
Then the fourth day she could barely move. She sat at her desk at work, which she could do without too, staring at the stack of reports she was supposed to edit, and did nothing. When her supervisor yelled at her for being late with one, she realized she hadn’t even been thinking.
She liked that.
But while she lived she needed money. Irv didn’t make enough with his insurance sales. So she headed to Big Tex Steak House.
One Dallas Double Dude, 5 pounds of burned cow, on the plate in front of her was enough to send her running out the door. She threw a $20 bill on the table first.
Listless was how she would be. Listless was how she wanted to be.
Irv was gone one day, run off with a woman she knew who wore the lowest cut blouses she could find to show off her chest to any man until she hooked one. Apparently she hooked Irv because a letter from her husband’s lawyer was the only communication she had from him.
Then she got fired, although she hadn’t missed a day in eight years before she missed two weeks in a row.
Then her friends stopped calling; then her family stopped calling; then the mail, even junk catalogs, became fewer and fewer.
The house was going to be repossessed or made part of the settlement, she didn’t know. She slept 18 hours a day, and resented being awake those 6. She stared out into space from the sofa until it was time to return to the bedroom, which always made her happy. One day, she stared at the cup full of water and power drink, and had the same reaction she had with the huge steak, revulsion. She threw up, and curled up in a ball on the floor.
And that’s where the police found her, dead, boney and smiling.
A note was found in the bedroom, scribbled on the back of a bill she didn’t pay: “I never asked to be born anyway.”
David Flynn’s literary publications total more than one hundred and seventy. His background includes reporter for a daily newspaper, editor of a commercial magazine, and teacher.
His writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at http://writing-flynn.blogspot.com . His web site is at http://www.davidflynnbooks.com .
The post Irv was Taking Cooking Lessons by John Flynn appeared first on Microliterature.