The Tahini Did Not Make It

June third. The chickpeas were already in the blender. That is the part that makes it worse.

Simone had come over on a Wednesday, her yoga slot had been cancelled, my climbing session had been cancelled, the world was still in that particular suspended mode where cancellations happen without much ceremony, and we had decided that we were going to make hummus from scratch because neither of us had ever done it and Simone had found a recipe that looked, she said, 'extremely doable.' The chickpeas were soaked. The lemon was cut. The olive oil was out. The garlic was roasted. We had done everything correctly and in order, which I want the record to show, because what happened next was not a process failure. What happened next was that I handed Simone the jar of tahini and she turned to set it on the counter and it slipped and it hit the tile and it shattered completely, in the specific way that a glass jar shatters when it has given up entirely.

We stood there for a full minute. The blender was full of smooth chickpeas. Gerald was doing whatever Gerald does on a Wednesday afternoon, which is nothing, visibly. Simone looked at me. I looked at the jar. Then Simone got out her phone and took a picture of it, which I think was the correct instinct.

Neither of us wanted to be the one to touch it first.

We did not salvage the hummus. I want to say we pivoted gracefully to something else, but what actually happened is we cleaned up the glass very carefully and then stood at the counter looking at the blender for a while and then ordered delivery. The chickpeas are still in the blender, in the refrigerator, as of this writing. I don't know what they're waiting for. Maybe I'll figure something out.

The hummus got this far. This was the high point.