Sheila heard a sharp yelp from Steve as he probably bumped his shoulder on the doorframe of the bathroom. He did it every time. She wondered briefly whether or not she had subconsciously taken him to that bathroom for that reason, but dismissed it as unlikely given the longer distance to the other bathroom. Plus they didn’t use that one all that much.
In the kitchen she pulled the oven open and looked in at her roast, the haunch of goat looking brown and delicious. An excellent complement to the potatoes and carrots next to it in the pan, soaking up grease and turning their own shade of maillard. She closed the oven and turned to the salad she had been mixing as Steve and the schnauzer drove up. Simple, just greens and tomatoes, but looking bright and festive in the evening light and with the sharp dressing she’d made- the waft of vinegar courtesy of some apples she’d found in an orchard which… was abandoned the right word?- ready to offer a counterpoint to the profferments of the oven. Dinner was going to be excellent.
Steve, dressed now, entered the kitchen and sat down, wincing as he lowered himself. Ridiculous, she thought, to get attacked by a wolf over a bunch of wood. Especially while- apparently- surrounded by forest and free to cut down any bit of it you’d like. And yet he had been, so there was little to do.
“How’s it?”
“Hurts,” Steve grunted, “But I’ll probably not die.”
“Fair enough,” Sheila said, pulling two bowls from the cabinet and filling them with greens. “How was the rest of it?”
“Pretty good, I’d say,” Steve said, “Normal, anyway. Restocked on a bunch of things, as long as they’re still in the truck. It wasn’t the calmest drive in.” She nodded. “Said hello to Mary and the mayor.”
“And what’d they say?”
“Nothin’ much, really. Same as usual.” He smiled. “Dinner smells good.”
“It better, after the day I had.”
“Oh?” Steve looked around, as though there might be evidence of hardship somewhere in view. “Everything looks fine.”
“That’s because I’m not running around getting attacked by wolves,” she said, moving the bowls aside and opening the oven. The smell of roast meet boiled out, carried along with the sizzle of fat and steam from the vegetables soaking it up. Sheila caught Steve inhaling with his eyes closed and very briefly considered throwing the pan at him- not to harm him, just to surprise him, but there was no way to do one without the other and the fleeting thought passed. It would have ruined dinner anyway and she was hungry. “Got myself dressed in a tub of blood when the stupid radio squawked,” she finished, setting the roasting pan down on the stove and covering it with another pan to hold in the heat and let it rest. On cue, the schnauzer exploded into the house through the back door, shaking the walls. Fortunately she’d remembered to close the inner door- there was no way the thing was clean and even less likelihood that it wasn’t shaking as if its life depended on it. She rolled her eyes. Steve looked towards the door, saw it was closed, and lifted himself.
“Don’t let it in.” Steve looked up, hurt. “No. It’s covered in mud.”
“You can’t see him,” he replied, hope in his voice.
“I can’t see the stars from where I sit, either, but I know they’re there.”
“Let me just check on him.”
“If there’s a speck of mud on it…”
“I know, I won’t let him in.”
Sheila waited, leaning against the counter. She smirked a bit and picked at a fingernail. It was ragged, and she made a mental note to cut it before bed so that it wouldn’t get caught in the sheets and annoy her. Looking up, she saw Steve limp sadly back to the table and sit down, dejection emanating off of him in waves that would have made sound seem still.
“Problem?” She asked. “Speck?” Steve pursed his lips and looked down at the table.
“Speck,” he replied. “Lots of specks. Basically a schnauzer’s worth of specks.”
“I did warn you.”
“I know,” Steve replied, before shaking his head and looking up. “A tub of blood?” Sheila smiled and turned back to the counter, pulling two wine glasses down from their rack below the dish cabinet and setting them down.
“A tub of blood. I was bleeding the goat,” she said, moving to the wine rack and pulling down a bottle, “And I would guess your friends became chatty on account of you.” She poured two glasses, took a sip from the first, and passed the second to Steve. Then she distributed the salad across two bowls and brought them to the table.
“Looks good,” Steve said, wincing as he rotated his shoulder and considered the greens in front of him. “No blood.” He smirked.
“That’s what you think,” Sheila replied, before taking a large bite. She crunched the leaves and accoutrements, watching the color- what was left of it- drain from Steve’s face. He glanced down. “There’s no blood,” she said, swallowing. “Eat the fuckin’ thing.” He lifted a fork and stabbed, lifting it to his mouth and inhaling the contents with a hungry fury. Then the two of them sat, in crunchy, contented silence, until both bowls were empty.
Sheila, having finished her bowl first, stood and retrieved the roast from the counter, lifting the second pan and revealing the rested main course in its preassembled state. A pair of tongs got the meat onto a cutting board and she sliced off two thick slabs, centering them on plates and surrounding them with vegetables from the bottom of the pan. The whole thing- dark, succulent, and heavy- was an excellent counterpoint to the brightness of the salad and a worthy piece of punctuation on what had been a fairly unfortunate day for both of them. It looked great, in the way that only food you might have suffered for ever really will.
Setting the plates and sitting down, Sheila took a moment to consider how things might have been different. Steve could, she reasoned, be actually dead right now, lying in some weird cult’s butchering shed or something while she listened to them talk about finding his truck. Her own day had been less dangerous but she could have slipped or something during her time with the Hermit and that would have been rough. She could have picked up rock plague, whatever the hell that was, and it seemed to her like that might have been bad. She could have pierced a hand or something with a shard of bone and been killed by some goat disease. That the two of them were here, in the moment, and having a delicious dinner was something of a victory, all things considered.
Steve, sitting across from her with his mangled shoulder, ate his meat as it hung straight from the fork- like an animal- and she thought about stabbing him in his other shoulder just to balance things out and force him to use both in order to distribute the pain. That felt normal, the thought, and she felt her hand twitch reflexively into a new grip she’d learned that day. Then she smirked, stretched her arms above her head, and shrugged before picking up her knife and fork. Stabbing Steve probably wouldn’t solve anything, she was hungry, and they had both earned the right to eat in peace on at least this one particular day.
Silence settled over them. Animal or not, Steve was capable of eating quietly and for this Sheila was immensely grateful. The calm of the evening rippled around them, the only things missing maybe a nice jazz record or the rest of society. The absence of such trivialities made it special, though- a perfect meal with one detail about which to complain. She’d heard someone say that once, she thought, that that was the absolute perfect way to end a day. And here she was, sitting with Steve, eating well in silence and with one small thing to complain about. She chewed, took a sip from her wine glass, swallowed, and savored the pairings as they rode down her throat together. Then she looked up, opened her mouth, and a massive BANG shook the house from the foundation to the rusted weathervane latched onto the roof like some kind of rooster simulacrum of the moon flag, and before either of them could stand up the schnauzer was eating dinner too and the table was covered in mud.
