Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 29

by Edited by Kelly Link

  BERT IS HER STEPDAD

  Yes. Bert was my step dad. That was more of a by-the-by.

  I’M SORRY THAT I SAID YOU WERE A BAD PERSON

  It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it.

  How to Seduce a Vegetarian

  Nicole Kimberling

  Step One: Find Likely Candidate

  In years past, finding a vegetarian to seduce was more difficult than it is today. Back when vegetarianism existed mainly as a symptom of some sort of religion, a VILF-hunter could go weeks, even years, without making contact with a likely target.

  Fortunately, today things are different. Now, even straight men can be found abstaining from plate-loads of surf, turf and sky. So pick a non-meat eater that you like the look of and invite him or her to hang out sometime, like at a park or something. Choose a venue that allows you to bring your own food. This is key because to claim the love of vegetarians you must prove that you can, and will, feed them.

  With vegetarians so varied and bountiful, one would think that ensnaring one for a night, or perhaps even a lifetime of passion would be easy.

  This is not so.

  For the vegetarian is, by nature, likely to be choosy and have what we in the world of professional cooking call, “standards.” You might have to try a few different leads before one takes the bait. In this case the bait will be a cold sandwich, which you will prepare and then present to your vegetarian, proving that you have the goods to make him or her happy.

  Step Two: Make a Sandwich

  Long have the vegetarians of the world been subjected to inferior sandwiches. You want your vegetarian to not only enjoy their snack, but to spend the next hour imagining ways that they will make love with you rather than devising ways to hide their uneaten food from you.

  First, consider the four basic parts of the sandwich. They are the carbohydrate, the protein, the vegetable and the condiment.

  The carbohydrate is, of course, the bread. Your choice of bread will depend on the relative wetness of the rest of the sandwich contents. Personally, I gravitate away from sliced bread when making vegetarian fare, because it’s often much wetter than the average ham on rye. Baguettes, hoagies, even hot dog buns tend to work better for the sorts of fillings that I favor.

  Protein is, of course, the hardest element. Prepared baked tofu is a true friend in this situation. It comes in all sorts of flavors, is available at most large grocery stores, is sliceable and has a pleasing texture.

  But there are also legume pastes. Standard hummus is made with chickpeas and flavored with garlic, lemon and tahini. But with the help of a blender or food processor, any legume can be made into a hummus-like spread, flavored any way you like.

  After you’ve decided on your protein, choose vegetables that complement the protein either in terms of flavor, texture or both. Raw vegetables add crunch, which is nice, but don’t be afraid to use cold cooked vegetables as well. Teriyaki-baked tofu would match blanched, cooled asparagus spears very nicely. Mushrooms sautéed with olive oil and smoked paprika go very well with traditional hummus. Ratatouille, hard-cooked sliced egg and deep-fried chickpeas make an excellent combination.

  Finally, pick the condiments. Some sandwiches will not require more than a little butter to moisture-proof the bread. Others might be graced with chipotle mayonnaise or bits of Moroccan preserved lemon.

  Here are some general tips:

  Cheese can be a little bit of a minefield. Some VILFs eat any cheese, others only eat cheese that is made with vegetable rennet, helpfully marked “suitable for vegetarians.” My advice: avoid cheese on the first round. You need to study your prey more closely before leveling up to serving him or her cheese.

  Toast the bread. Always. This will add a savory quality as well as texture.

  Slice raw vegetables thinly, so that they are easy to eat. When using hard roots such as carrots, beets or radishes, grate them.

  A sandwich should easily fit in your vegetarian’s mouth. Too tall, too fat sandwiches are sloppy and embarrassing to eat. You do not want your target to exhaust their capacity to endure sloppy or embarrassing situations before they even make it to your bed.

  Before you put any condiments on the bread, mix a small portion of each together and taste them as one. You might discover a thrilling new flavor combination, such as harissa mayonnaise. Or you might also find that that although you once felt you should apply teriyaki sauce, branston pickle and ranch dressing to a sandwich simultaneously, the resulting mixture looks and tastes like circus barf and should be re-imagined.

  If using a relatively wet legume paste, such as hummus, for the protein element, chose bread or bread rolls that are crusty all around, such as baguette to avoid the dreaded soggy, disintegrating sandwich.

  Wrap each sandwich tightly in plastic wrap. Baggies are inadequate to the task of transporting most truly interesting sandwiches.

  Think carefully before using peanut butter, because if you do, your sandwich has got to be fucking amazing. That said, peanut butter, cold fried tofu, curry mayo, cucumber and fresh cilantro might very well make a fucking amazing sandwich, so experiment. You’ll never know till you try.

  Eat at least one version of the sandwich before giving it to anybody else in order to get the balance and seasonings right.

  Prepare yourself to be questioned about all elements of your food. Read every label. Be sure you know what all the ingredients in every product are. When in doubt, look it up. Under no circumstances allow yourself to get angry or defensive during this inevitable interrogation. If this romance works out, you will be scrutinizing products like this for the rest of your life, so you might as well get used to it.

  Finally—and I cannot stress this enough—save your morbid jokes for after you and the VILF are married and have at least one baby on the way. Do not glibly claim that tofu is “baby panda organ meat.” This will only serve to make your target feel disrespected and suspicious and will lead to no joy.

  At this point you might ask, “but is it worth it?” Well, are you a VILF-hunter or just a poseur with a package of cream cheese and an avocado? I’ve given you enough information to be both suave and bulletproof. Now go forth and conquer!

  Ksampguiyaeps—Woman-Out-To-Sea

  Neile Graham

  I laugh at their games: those

  who trap my tale in words.

  When the brittle pages open

  voices appeal from them:

  the villagers chorusing: Woman-out-to-sea,

  do not harm our relative!

  Oh, give over. So what if I destroy

  all men who court me? Why not,

  for wherever I go there are more men.

  It’s like they want to be eaten.

  One kindly editor notes: vagina dentata

  theme omitted here. Thanks. I appreciate that.

  I appreciate, too, that my transformation

  is described so simply:

  until the best friend of the salmon prince

  takes her to wife, and subdues her.

  But I’m not so of the editor’s final dig:

  vagina dentata thwarted by love.

  Thwarted, ha! I was undone,

  every cell of my body broken

  to atoms, then rebuilt, remade,

  put together whole and wholly different.

  Her powers lost, she’s now

  eager for him, for life with him.

  So now I’ve changed. From cliché to cliché.

  That’s some magic. And true.

  But only launches the tale.

  Here is part two:

  I and my new husband, now we,

  take a blackfish canoe to visit my father—

  and passing my husband’s friend’s villages,

  the salmon people shout warnings.

  Listen to the salmon shout. Though I tell my father

  this man’s a keeper, he has his own plans:

  asks my love for sea-urchins, seal meat,

  the octopus, but my love, so clever


  captures them all, so father

  lets him take an abundance home, our home.

  So far so good. Deep breath.

  But this is part three:

  everyday my husband draws water

  for me to drink; I test it with a plume.

  But one day he meets a woman

  at the water hole and takes her

  before coming home to me.

  When I test it, I know I must

  return to my father. Goddam

  this wronged woman cliché!

  Though he follows, begging,

  twice I warn him: if you do not

  go back, I will look back

  and you shall perish.

  Don’t turn me to Orpheus,

  you bastard. I cannot sing.

  He takes no heed, so I look back:

  he sinks into the sea.

  The end? No, no but at least

  be patient—part four is the last:

  In my father’s house I am

  cliché again, tears and all.

  I love him. I want him back.

  I am so tired of the ends of men.

  Father fishes up my husband’s bones,

  reassembles, then covers them,

  jumps over them three times

  and they start to move.

  Uncovers them. My husband

  awakens. When I see him

  come back to life, I stop crying.

  I take him to my sleeping place, forgiven.

  This is the end.

  Or:

  we can’t find his shin bone

  and so we use that of an eagle,

  giving all people now their slender

  bird-boned shins. Still, I take him back.

  Ksampguiyaeps, I have

  cleverly re-made him as he only remade me.

  Oh, it’s love.

  Close the book now.

  Hermitage

  Neile Graham

  Solid, severe, deceptively named

  this castle reeks of rotting souls

  red swords, border reivers,

  feuds, reprisals, maidens

  abducted on their wedding days

  released the worse for wear

  captives slowly starved.

  The stones still speak of this.

  Blood, they say, scattered bones,

  hidden dealings, plots and fevers

  men held with lances

  under the river till drowned

  an evil lord boiled

  wrapped in sheets of lead.

  Entering at their own risk

  visitors scuttle away

  repelled by force of rancid air,

  the malaise of atmosphere,

  scatter to the thin relief

  of buses and cars.

  I’m in here alone.

  Breathe shallowly.

  Keeping this place out as best I can.

  I look around the cruelty

  of these grim and grimy walls.

  They weigh on me. The other face

  of my castle dreams of fey Scotland.

  The border country. I’m crossing it now.

  Four Phoebes

  Maya Sonenberg

  Now listen. Do you see those birds, four of them, perched on the wire? Do you see how they dip towards each other and away again, constantly wagging their tails? Do you see them take off, then spread their wings as they catch their midday meal—the wasp, the bee, the grasshopper, the fly? Do you hear the insistent first note of their call, the soft stutter of the second, their emphatic fee-bee?

  Any ornithologist will tell you that the Phoebe is a solitary bird, more likely to join a winter flock of Eastern Bluebirds or Pine Warblers than to seek its own kind, but these four sit together, fly together—oldest to youngest, largest to smallest, shrinking manifesto of themselves, each with a smaller white patch on its breast sparkling against its dun back and wing feathers. They used to be human, you know, human sisters, but they’ve been on that wire for six years, six years as birds.

  I am going to tell you the story of their kindnesses to each other, how when the third Phoebe was kidnapped by a giant when walking in the forest, the first Phoebe came after him with a wooden spoon, the second wove a net to catch him, and the littlest, the fourth, dressed up as a white cat and followed him home. On the way, she found Number Three’s feet, which the giant had chopped off to prevent her from running away. The cat placed these into a velvet sack and took a detour to find the right herbs for a salve. When she found her sister and opened the sack, the feet had turned into birds, white with rings around their necks like the remains of a red necklace, but with a kiss, she was able to turn them back into feet, attach them again to the poor torn ankles, and heal her sister’s wounds. How the two eldest saved the youngest from the giant is another story, one about wits and bravery, and perhaps they will tell you that one themselves if you are very quiet and listen very carefully.

  The sisters lived in a city perched at the top of a great waterfall.

  Yes, cliffs and a cataract, billowing mist, pontoons, bridges, pilings, guy wires and suspension cables, piers, docks, wharfs, and jetties. Above, the sky, and below, the raging waters. In summer, tightrope walkers seemed to float in mid-air under their red and white spotted umbrellas. Far below, tourist boats defied the rapids, drenching their riders with spray. In winter, amusements sprang up on the banks above the falls—skating parties, bonfires, and sing-alongs—and mountain climbers tried their skills against the rugged, cascading ice.

  The girls’ father controlled the falls with a great golden dial, and they all lived in a castle at the very center of the city, surrounded by maze-like rose gardens, wax museums, and curiosity shops. The castle’s portico is crusted with gold and its front door is guarded by a purple demon.

  When the girls were still tiny, their mother died and their father remarried. You might think that the constant roar of water would have forced them all to speak louder, but in fact it made them quieter, and they grew up whispering into each others’ ears until it drove their father crazy, wanting to hear what they were saying about him, but since they would never tell—there was never anything to tell—he turned them out. The castle’s turrets grew haunted, and the girls, all but the youngest all grown up by then, moved to an old farmhouse at the edge of town, one with a sagging porch and scabrous clapboards, a tilting chimney and a weedy overgrown lawn.

  The girls had only each other since their mother’s death. Father had left her for a blond enchantress. Or did he enchant her? Or was it his gold? Or his crown? Never mind—what’s important is this: Mother withered—green leaf, berry, stem—until only the skeleton of the leaf remained and her goodbyes to her daughters were slight as the wind and their father remarried. They carted her cold body home wrapped in white linen and buried her under an apple tree.

  The eldest Phoebe was a chef. At home she heated cans of soup and opened bags of packaged salad, wishing she had the time to make her sisters hearty meals of plump meat-filled dumplings floating in rich chicken soup, crisp potato pancakes shining with oil and dressed with sour cream, carrots braised with honey, chopped liver mixed with chicken fat. She hated to see them so thin. At work in the castle kitchens, she fixed veil-thin crepes, angel food cake, steamed bok choy—and still the Queen wouldn’t eat. Between meals, she called her kitchen sisters to order, reminded them of their long work days and the terrible wages, and taught them union songs. Sometimes she stole home a meringue and her sisters let the sweet air melt on their tongues.

  The second Phoebe was an artist, her job to take photos of tourists dressed up in costumes from an earlier time: the beaded buckskins of the Indian Maiden who’d gone over the falls in a white canoe, the French aerialist’s tight bathing costume, or the orange life jacket worn by little Roger when he tumbled unexpectedly from a boat—survivors all. At night she retreated to the tumble-down barn behind the farmhouse and fashioned crushing blue-black-purple sculptures out of felt, some that looked like pl
ums and some that looked like daggers until you stepped round to the other side and realized they looked like nothing at all.

  The third Phoebe took in laundry. Every day she carried huge loads of linens back and forth between the hotels and the house where a cauldron bubbled and a wringer waited to squeeze the clothes flat before she hung them to dry on the lines zig-zagging like a spider web across the yard. At times she was so bored she thought she’d split her skin or her head would explode, but she had a good memory for which underwear belonged to which customer. As she washed and folded, she dreamed of escape, though to where or what or with whom, she didn’t know.