Member-only story
FICTION
The Lemons
The lemons don’t taste as tart as I remember them, but I haven’t eaten one since William Boyd pelted me with a few slices during fifth-grade lunch.
Funny how we tend to make enemies with food, that earthly element designed to help keep us alive. Some people worship food, paying high dollars to experience tastes they can only dream of. Others, like me, feel that food is a necessary evil, like government and honesty.
Lunch is usually a piece of wheat bread and water, a prison diet. I suspect prisoners have better options in their cafeterias. I think of those death row inmates and their last meals, and I can’t imagine what I’d want. Maybe toast my bread?
Chef Allen is talking about the different spices he’s collected on his travels. Spice is his niche in the food world. He cooks dishes of different nationalities but changes them with spices. He is convinced he can get me to love food if only I had the right amount of turmeric or saffron or, insert any of the hundreds of spices available here. I admit I kind of spaced out while he was talking.
Maybe my problem is I don’t find anything interesting anymore. Everything was interesting when I was growing up. I could name a band’s complete catalog without stuttering. I knew every player on my favorite football team and where they went to college and their major. I…
