The Lid Was Right There

August twenty-fourth. The tomato soup was Simone's idea, which I am not saying to assign blame, I am saying it because she brought the tomatoes, she found the recipe on her phone, and she was the one who said, and I quote, 'this is going to be so easy.' I am not assigning blame. I am simply recording the facts.

We had done everything right up to that point. Roasted the tomatoes. Let them cool the appropriate amount. Put them in the blender. The lid was sitting on the counter approximately four inches from my hand. And then, in the spirit of the standing order, in the spirit of one new thing, in the spirit of all the earnest cooking practice I have been logging since March, I turned the blender on.

The sound it made was immediate and absolute. The ceiling got some. Gerald got one dot, directly on the pot, which I almost respect for its precision. Simone made a noise I have never heard from her before, something between a gasp and a laugh, and then she just, sat down on the kitchen floor. Not dramatically. Just: sat down. I stood there holding a dish towel I had not yet had the presence of mind to use, and I looked at the backsplash, and I thought: this is exactly the kind of thing I would not have written about two years ago.

Simone's response to disaster: sit down and laugh. Mine: stand there holding a dish towel.

We cleaned it up. The soup was actually fine, what remained of it. We ate it standing at the counter because neither of us wanted to be formal about it after that. Simone said it needed more salt. I said she had forfeited her right to critique. She said the lid was technically closer to me. I said I was not assigning blame.

The cleanup stage. Mostly just leaning and sighing, honestly.

The food photography class is still on the table, by the way. I looked it up. Simone was right that it's cheap, and right that it's one evening. I haven't registered yet. But I looked it up, which is, for me, a thing.