Dark Matter(32)

—

I sit in bed watching the daylight fade over Chicago.

Whatever storm system brought the rain last night has blown out, and in its wake, the sky is clear and the trees have turned and there’s a stunning quality to the light as it moves toward evening—polarized and golden—that I can only describe as loss.

Robert Frost’s gold that cannot stay.

Out in the kitchen, pots are banging, cabinets are opening and closing, and the scent of cooking meats drifts back down the hallway into the guest room with a smell that strikes me as suspiciously familiar.

I climb out of bed, stable on my feet for the first time all day, and head for the kitchen.

Bach is playing, red wine is open, and Daniela stands at the island, chopping an onion on the soapstone countertop in an apron and a pair of swimming goggles.

“Smells amazing,” I say.

“Would you mind stirring it?”

I walk over to the range and lift the lid off a deep pot.

The steam rising into my face takes me home.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Like a different man.”

“So…better?”

“Much.”

It’s a traditional Spanish dish—a bean stew made with an assortment of native legumes and meats. Chorizo, pancetta, black sausage. Daniela cooks it once or twice a year, usually on my birthday, or when the snow flies on a weekend and we just feel like drinking wine and cooking together all day.

I stir the stew, replace the lid.

Daniela says, “It’s a bean stew from—”

It slips out before I think to stop myself: “Your mother’s recipe. Well, to be specific—her mother’s mother.”

Daniela stops cutting.

She looks back at me.

“Put me to work,” I say.

“What else do you know about me?”

“Look, from my perspective, we’ve been together fifteen years. So I know almost everything.”

“And from mine, it was only two and a half months, and that was a lifetime ago. And yet you know this recipe was handed down through my family over several generations.”

For a moment, it becomes uncannily quiet in the kitchen.

Like the air between us carries a positive charge, humming on some frequency right at the edge of our perception.

She says finally, “If you want to help, I’m preparing toppings for the stew, and I could tell you what those are, but you probably already know.”

“Grated cheddar, cilantro, and sour cream?”

She gives the faintest smile and raises an eyebrow. “Like I said, you already know.”

—

We have dinner at the table beside the huge window with the candlelight reflecting in the glass and the city lights burning beyond—our local constellation.

The food is spectacular, Daniela is beautiful in the firelight, and I’m feeling grounded for the first time since I stumbled out of that lab.

At the end of dinner—our bowls empty, second wine bottle killed—she reaches across the glass table and touches my hand.

“I don’t know what’s happening to you, Jason, but I’m glad you found your way to me.”

I want to kiss her.

She took me in when I was lost.

When the world stopped making sense.

But I don’t kiss her. I just squeeze her hand and say, “You have no idea what you’ve done for me.”

We clear the table, load the dishwasher, and tackle the remaining sink full of dishes.

I wash. She dries and puts away. Like an old married couple.

Apropos of nothing, I say, “Ryan Holder, huh?”

She stops wiping down the interior of the stockpot and looks at me.

“Do you have an opinion about that you’d like to share?”

“No, it’s just—”

“What? He was your roommate, your friend. You don’t approve?”

“He always had a thing for you.”

“Are we jealous?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, grow up. He’s a beautiful man.”

She goes back to her drying.

“So how serious is it?” I ask.

“We’ve been out a few times. Nobody’s leaving their toothbrushes at anyone’s house yet.”

“Well, I think he’d like to. He seems pretty smitten.”

Daniela smirks. “How could he not be? I’m amazing.”

—

I lie in bed in the guest room with the window cracked so the city noise can put me under like a sound machine.

Staring out the tall window, I watch the sleeping city.

Last night, I set out to answer a simple question: Where is Daniela?

And I found her—a successful artist, living alone.

We’ve never been married, never had a son.

Unless I’m the victim of the most elaborate prank of all time, the nature of Daniela’s existence appears to support the revelation these last forty-eight hours have been building toward….

This is not my world.

Even as those five words cross my mind, I’m not exactly certain what they mean, or how to begin to consider their full weight.

So I say it again.

I try it on.

See how it fits.

This is not my world.