Truth: Who do you make love to in your mind when you make love to your partner?
Menu: bruschetta with basil and parsley on pumpernickel; chilled lemon broth with cilantro salsa; grilled scallops; chateaubriand with blue cheese; salmon, beet and dill gravlax; yellow fingerlings with wild mushrooms; mango and habanero slaw; arugula with escarole, pear, pine nuts, and balsamic; herb-crusted scallops; bumbleberry compote with red wine and maple
Dinner Party:
Pierre
Miss Stafford still finds her way across the years from tenth grade into his dreams, and she’s never aged a day. And he frequently revisits a woefully chaste chance encounter some years ago, the goodhearted flirtation of a shopgirl, her night blue skin and delicious perfume.
Helen
Helen fiddles with her fan and the fraying velvet edges of her gown. She hopes she is not singled out for the question. How can she answer? The truth is, Tom has not looked at her since she lost her left breast. Perhaps conveniently, neither has desire come over her. But she mourns its absence nonetheless. She was so alive before everything. There was no stairwell or alleyway they had not christened in their heyday, but even in middle age, they’d come together candidly, frankly, honestly. Now she cannot summon a flicker. Now the spilling abundance under her blouse is a garish, cyclopean thing.
Ruth
Her smile can’t hide her hunger. It’s written on her face. In the way she tilts her head for the last cool drops of Champagne. In the fluid way she moves, revelling in slow motion. How her soft hands run languidly over leather, or caress pearls after their removal like a rosary. Ruth unabashedly lives by her senses, all of them. Her real and imaginary lovers are part of the banquet, and if she is the one who is asked, she would be more than happy to go into all the delicious details.
Gerald
Gun shy widow. His last date was a disaster. A barely literate divorcee. Indeed, he’d rather be home with his marvelous tabby cat and the new edition of Melville from the Folio Society. His mother had mentioned more than once since Meredith passed away that he needed to get out more, so he’d accepted the invitation. But he is bored around these insipid games and all the chirpy chatter, barely placated by the impeccable assortment of delicacies. Lightly seared scallops in garlic and rosemary; gooey French onion soup with a dash of Tabasco; bleeding beef with generous globs of Gorgonzola; crisp Viognier. Impressive. Oh, he does long to share his world with someone and Meredith insisted on it. She encouraged him to start searching even before she was gone, so much did she value his happiness. He doesn’t expect any new acquaintance to be her, or be like her. Still, he chose her for good reason. How alluring was their secret, the livewire behind her deceptively dignified pantsuits and sensible nurse shoes. She had her own library, mostly archeology and modern poets. Gerald goes through the motions, downs the neat Scotch as old as he is when it lands beside his dessert plate. Sapiosexual, he’d read once on something on his phone. Is that really a thing. The beverage burns pleasantly on his tongue.
Claus
Not who but what. For as long as he can remember, the only thing that will take him there is a bit of hanky spanky. In thirty years, he has never once mentioned it to his wife.
Cindy
Elisabeth knows the answer.
Allison
She is writhing already in her mind. Allison can hardly wait to get out of here. Never mind that they already made love this morning, and on the kitchen floor. And married now nine years. Oh, sure, there are all kinds of flashes that course through her veins and her mind’s eye in the thrall of it all, but she can’t isolate any of the imagery into an honest answer. She is ultrapresent during these urgencies between them, a lights on, sweat and musk, unshaven, woman-on-top kind of girl. And more than that, she refuses to police her own or Mark’s imagination. The primal world is the natural one, not these well-heeled, dull pantomimes of civility while everyone stuffs themselves into oblivion. A light eater, half of the generous tumbler of wine has been more than enough to make her think of later, of him pulling up her Kate Spade skirt and taking her before they can get through the door.
Lorette C. Luzajic’s flash fiction is widely published, anthologized, nominated, awarded, and translated into Urdu, Arabic, and Spanish. She is the founding editor of The Ekphrastic Review and The Mackinaw.