sunday prompt: delicious

he never had much of a taste for anything before. it had only been recently that he had discovered vegetables - the crisp crunch of lettuce - romaine, red and green, cabbage, frisee, endive, escarole. he tried it all, became obsessed with peppers, one after the other, beginning with green bell and ending with the megalomaniacal scotch bonnet, the tiny, ancient-looking habañero. then the small bursts of grape tomatoes between his molars, novae of flavour that caused his eyes to racket closed.

truth was, he had never been much of one for eating, for nutrition, for taste. it was the least important of the senses, to him. he shunned his mouth, despised it. glued it shut for days and used his voice sparingly. even shaved around its borders with a marauding hand, no gel or cream, just dry. the tingling burn of each minute bristle torn savagely from its follicle caused some irritation for hours after, but he didn't cease his self-destructive pattern. he never brushed his teeth and had terrible halitosis. his gums bled, regularly. he was constantly tasting his own blood, coppery and sharp, testing their swollen hillocks with the point of his short tongue. it didn't help, he supposed, that he ground his teeth during sleep and woke up with a sore jaw, as though someone punched him savagely, over and over, in the side of his face.

his life was routine, with brief moments of dissociation. he worked a regular job - a line cook in a small restaurant, putting together salads by rote, flipping the fries in their cages, pounding and chopping and twisting at the waist. his hands were speckled with the wholly unintentional design of white scars and small, pink burns. and he was tired. he drank a lot - too much - preferring after every shift to lapse into the quiet, wooden comfort of a faraway bar, trudging through gray snow and avoiding ice-slick the whole way. the walk did him some good. he liked to clear his mind, hit the reset button, slump into a seat and rake his hair back from his oily forehead. minutes after establishing himself, he would go to the bathroom and splash water on his face, stare at himself in the filmy mirror. let his eyes flick, rove, to the graffiti - the endless cascades of multi-coloured graffiti crabbing the flake-paint walls. from witticisms to averring love, to mindless design and visual art. he had added one of his own, in a black sharpie filched from the kitchen, wrote it neatly and straight at eye level above the toilet:

MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN

he sees it now. it has faded, but no one has touched it. he zips up after a heinous-smelling urination and returns diligently to his seat at the bar. he is thirsty. orders a beer, a stout, and when it arrives in front of him, as opaque as midnight, he tilts to his lips and drinks it steadily, rhythmically, adam's apple bobbing in syncopation with his gulps. in less than a minute, he sets the empty glass down on its coaster, the insides of it striated with foam.

"thirsty, eh?" he looks up and sees the bartender - Ruth - staring at him, arms crossing her chest, one eyebrow arched smoothly. he nods, preferring not to speak. she knows this. knows the next act, too, and swiftly begins filling another from the tap. "long night? it's been quiet here. no one knows about the old One Horse. a travesty, really. heard we might be shutting down..."

he is used to her monologues. likes them. he tilts his head at the appropriate moments, nods, shifts in his seat. toys with a pack of cigarettes - Camels - and smiles gingerly from time to time. when he laughs, it's a silent ripple of shoulder and facial tic. he doesn't open his mouth. Ruth rambles on, the same old doomsayings, how the economy is bad, how everything is terrible, how business is slow. he tips her well, and accordingly. she smiles and winks and calls him sugar and when she does it makes his teeth ache.

suddenly he is hungry and formulates a mental picture of the pantry in his apartment. of the refrigerator. notes the presence of a few shriveled stalks of scallions. the box of chicken stock. the plastic box of miso paste jammed between a bottle of diced lemongrass and a plastic container of marinated, pickled garlic and roasted red peppers. he begins to salivate, and swallows it hurriedly, finishing off his second beer. that is usually his limit. routine dictates he places the empty glass beside the coaster instead of on top of it, as a sort of signal. he idly wonders if Ruth thinks he's a mute. has he even ever spoken a single word to her? he drifts, still with his hand wrapped around the empty glass, hovering over the coaster. with a melange of resolution and resignation, he places it on the coaster. "i need a shot of something," he says, finally, and the words creak out of his mouth like an old hobby-horse.

"shaking it up tonight, eh? what kind of shot? something ... delicious? something ... alcoholic?"

"all of the above," he says. "surprise me."

it's the most he's ever spoken in this bar. Ruth laughs. it's not an unattractive sound, but it verges on shrill. she talks to herself as she gathers ingredients, bottles clinking, ice rattling. "my speciality," she says, emphasizing the incorrect syllable in the word.

a sad old drunk is clinking quarters in the electronic jukebox. the first notes of paul simon's "kodachrome" fills the bar. "ah, i love this song," Ruth says, humming along as she pours, slaps, mixes. he can't even tell what she's putting in the tumbler. the bottles look old. liquor he is unfamiliar with. he tends to stick to his stout and, from time to time, whiskey - but only at home, later hours, sitting up in an overstuffed chair with ice cubes glinting at him like knowing eyes through the translucent brown, a Camel curling up gray to the ceiling like a snake charmer's cobra. it is a long walk home.

Ruth places the shotglass in front of him. it is a milky, reddish hue, like liquid garnet. "bon appetit," she proclaims, a calculatedly mysterious smile tinging her full lips. "enjoy."

he catches some of the contagion of her dramatics, and with a little flourish, empties the concoction into his mouth, parting his lips just slightly to imbibe. it is harsh - spiced and pungent, and burns down his esophagus like a trail of fire ants to his belly. his eyes widen and spark with tears that he lifts a hand to brush away. "do you like it? i call it Fire in the Hole."

"god," he gets out finally. "what is that?"

"secret recipe," she replies. "want a chaser?"

"some ... water," he says. his lungs are itching for a cigarette. "i need a smoke."

"i'll join you." she's already got one arm in a coat, and before he can protest, they are both out of doors, in the small culvert by the door, out of the sleepily increasing winter wind. he lights her cigarette out of impulse, notes that she smokes a parliament. she notes his glance and smiles. "recessed filter. that's why."

"you like that?" he surprises himself. "i always thought it was kind of weird. why do they do that?"

"they say it's so the filter doesn't touch your tongue. some marketing bullshit, i don't know." she flips her hair - long, curled and auburn - over a shoulder and shudders involuntarily. "fucking cold out."

"it's not as bad as it could be," he offers. "supposed to get worse."

"snow?"

"tomorrow, maybe. mostly freezing rain."

she nods, a bit absently. "so ... your tongue got loose."

"what?" he is surprised, meets her cool and nonchalant gaze.

"you know what i mean. you come in here practically every night and you haven't said more than a word. why tonight?"

why tonight indeed. he can still feel the lash of the Fire in the Hole on his tongue. he finds himself warming to her now that she is in front of the bar. "i didn't realize you had legs," he tries, and she laughs suddenly, with great gusto.

"yeah. never heard that one before, smokey. what's your name, anyway?"

he finagles for a good lie despite not knowing the reason for hiding his real name. "Colin." it's a lie and she knows it.

"good Irish name." she plays along.

he doesn't know where to go with any of this. the hunger he felt earlier rises up inside of him and he does another mental imaging of his cupboards. no bread. some eggs, maybe. pasta. no sauce. could make a vinaigrette. olive oil, cider vinegar, some mustard to hold the emulsification - some tuna, maybe. he feels his tongue wriggling around in his mouth like a dog on a leash, straining. "are you okay?" she asks. "did i kill you with that shot?"

"still alive," he strains the reply between his teeth.

she has turned coy in the silence. something in her stance has shifted. the air curls around her differently. "but seriously." she looks him up and down. she is just an inch or so taller than he is. her eyes glint like gimlets. "what's your name."

he shrugs, lamely. "Lionel." and a part of him inwardly collapses, like a pillar in the ruins of its parent building.

"that's a weird one. Lionel."

"and you're Ruth."

"Ruthless."

"ah, i get it."

she flicks her cigarette with a practiced gesture into the frozen black river of the street. above them, a light goes out on its high metal post, stuttering into a smouldery oblivion. a single car rattles by, exhaust pipe purling out weird gray curls. he can see the ember of her Parliament in the middle of the road, winking, blinking, and finally dying out. "hey," she asks finally, turning to him. "are you hungry? i could eat."

he nods, somewhat dumbly, and throws his cigarette into the street after hers. "let's go inside," he states, as if issuing an order. "when do you get off?"

"an hour or so. depending on how busy we get." the loping sarcasm is evident in her tone, then in the way she bares her teeth at him.

"you have some humor stuck in your teeth," he comments, and she laughs out-right, the same shrill sound as before. he feels as though it comes from a little shrew, hiding inside of her mouth, which pops out to issue its cry. it doesn't belong to her, somehow.

"c'mon." and they go in.

hours later: the taste of her in his mouth, fresh from where he has clamped his lips over her bare shoulder. they are in her bedroom, whose walls are adorned with posters of Kate Bush and various photographs of her, her friends, what he assumes is her family. she is cluttered, a mess, strewn clothes over the back of every chair. they'd had to swipe all the detritus from the twisted bedsheets before climbing in, each so involved with one another's bodies, groping blindly for a clean spot. he rolls over onto a box of colored pencils that rattle sharply at contact, which he promptly jettisons from the bed. she is giggling now, softly, hurriedly, a new laugh that takes the place of the old harpy call, like an amused child with a playtoy. he buries his face in her hair, and laughs silently, the same way, an undulation of his shoulders and chest.

"you know," she says, between fits of laughter and shallow breath, "you should really let that laugh out. no good to hold it in like that - !" and he dives in like a mad bomber to tickle her exposed ribcage, his fingers like a rush of feathers -

and still later, at her kitchen table. two plates. he has made them a salad with the half-wilted lettuce he has unearthed from her crisper and from which he has also discovered a pair of tomatoes and some cucumbers. he has made the vinaigrette he was imagining, but with the lack of dijon has settled for ordinary yellow mustard. she is not eating, though she pirouettes her fork on the greens like a multi-legged dancer, rocking it this way and then that, on the tines. she supports her chin with her other hand, tilting her head, gazing at him. "this is really gross, Lionel."

"yeah." he has been making a game effort of it, chewing when it was unnecessary to, when the limp leaves would have just slid down his throat. he puts his fork down and stares at her, seriously, then issues a sigh. "sorry."

"not your fault."

"well, the lettuces was pretty old."

"lettuces. did you just say --"

"no, i said -- "

"you totally said lettuces."

"lettuces." the word with its ersatz plural feels as weird in his mouth as the actual leaves did. "lettuces."

"fuck this," Ruth proclaims, shoving back from the table with a crash, rummaging in her pocket and withdrawing a Parliament. lights up. inhales and blows it at his face. he follows suit, but after a moment.

this, then, how they sit, her kicked back, rocking back and forth on the hind-legs of a protesting chair, he sitting with hunched shoulders, eyes darting from one place to the next like a bird unsure of which branch to alight upon. in silence. both unknowing of the irony that they both think of the same thing, which is: what next? and concurrently,

how do i get this godawful taste out of my mouth?