Let Simmer

In truth, it was a surprise to Cassidy that the husband wasn’t dead. She’d considered it as a possibility, one of many, but his death seemed significantly more likely compared to what was currently happening. The husband dips a piece of tofu skin into the laksa broth, making direct eye contact as the skin sizzles.

“Skin?” he asks.

“I’m good.”

“You sure?”

Cassidy nods. A waiter brings a plate of bamboo shoots. The hotpot restaurant is exactly what Cassidy pictured when the Sunday School teacher asked her what heaven might look like. Bright and clean, all sharp angles and functional storage. Waitstaff like angels attending to your needs. The ever present eye of God in the numerous surveillance cameras. Cassidy assumes it’s a liability thing, video proof your own stupidity burned you. Or to prevent people stealing the iPad menus. 

The husband has a face designed by an architect. Cassidy has never seen a mouth so full of teeth. She knew what the husband looked like, based on tagged photos and the blessed luck of the wayback machine, but to watch him thoughtfully chew an oyster mushroom is something else. Someone previously perceived as static now in motion. 

“Are you sure you won’t have anything?” he asks.

“If I eat something, will I be trapped here forever?

The husband shakes his head. “No, it doesn’t work like that.” 

Cassidy drops some Sichuan beef into the pickled cabbage broth. She’s undecided about whether she likes Sichuan pepper. Her taste buds aren’t convinced they’re experiencing the citrus aftertaste, try to tell her brain it’s metal instead.

Neither one of them speaks while the beef simmers. Cassidy is unsure where to start, what question to begin with. The husband is busy sipping almond milk from a can the same shade of navy as his shirt. 

Cassidy is stuck processing that she found the husband at all. The fact that he’s still here after so many months. It shouldn’t be this easy, Cassidy thinks, the last place he was seen is where he’s been all along. The adventure cut off at the knees. Cassidy eats the beef. Her tongue says pennies, playground railings, bottom of batteries. She chews with more consideration, gets the lemony overtones, the vinegar sourness from the pickled cabbage. Realises it’s actually delicious. 

Cassidy is here, in this hotpot restaurant, in the booth across from the husband, because she woke up the day before, with a question bubbling around in her brain and felt the best use of her time was to answer it. The question had been months in the making. It started to form when Cassidy had noted that the husband had stopped appearing in the wife’s Instagram stories. The wife was a fashion blogger. The wife liked early twentieth-century clothes. The wife was elfin, a seven-inch single of a woman. The wife was someone Cassidy followed but rarely liked the photos of.

Cassidy had seen the wedding pictures. Remembered the lavender field setting, the bouquet of modest size, the wedding dress that was less bridal monthly and more generally acceptable for most formal occasions. The husband’s suit was brown. It included suspenders.

Those photos were no longer present on the wife’s Instagram page. It was like they had never been taken at all, except there were photos of the generally acceptable dress, divorced from its original intention with nothing captions designed to court follower engagement. So, proof that the event had taken place, if all other evidence had been scrubbed from the record.

“I just think it’s strange,” Cassidy had told her flatmate Eloise, “it’s like the relationship never existed.”

“It’s not strange, it’s sad,” Eloise replied, “clearly something went wrong and she’d rather forget it. It’s not like she owes people an explanation about the dissolution of her marriage.”

Cassidy did not tell Eloise she was going to the husband’s last known location. She wasn’t interested in the scrutiny. Although, now confronted with the fruits of her investigation, she might have to share. 

“So,” Cassidy begins, grappling with a lotus root and hoping the sentence will come together in a non-offensive way, “you’re not dead.”

The husband accepts a refill of jasmine tea. “As far as I’m aware. I’m inclined to call what I’m experiencing suspended animation.”

“Right. And how did you get suspended exactly?”

The waitress brings them another plateful of mung bean vermicelli, clears away the numerous empty plates.

“You should try the chicken and mushroom broth,” the husband says “or dip some beef in the laksa, and pair it with the pickled cabbage. It’s a good flavour profile.” 

“And if I do, will you answer the question?” 

The husband shrugs as if to say sure. Cassidy obliges, feeling it to be a small concession in the grand scheme of things. The result is outstanding. 

“I came here with my wife,” the husband says, dropping small tubes of rice into each broth, “these will need five minutes before they’re cooked through. Anyway, we were sat right there.”

He points to the booth across the aisle from them, currently empty.

“And she was complaining, as she was wont to do, about Instagram changing the algorithm. I’d heard it all before. The algorithm is an ever demanding mouth. No matter how filling the cake, how decadent, how well crafted the sugar work and fondant flowers are, it will never be sated. It’s exhausting.”

The husband takes a moment to slurp some noodles. One smacks the corner of his mouth. His dark pink tongue darts out to coax it inside. 

“Anyway, there was a woman sitting in this booth, alone. The waitstaff kept bringing her food despite the fact she never touched the menu once. She never stopped eating. When my wife got up to use the bathroom, the woman turned to me and said, I think you’ve come to pay my cheque. I asked for clarification. She ate sliced peaches, laid out the entire deal. I pay the cheque, I take her place. I guess it’s kind of a blood sacrifice thing. There must always be someone at this table, they must always be eating. I was just the next person in the relay team. The rice should be good now, you might have to hunt around to find them.”

Cassidy grabs the ladle in the laksa, rotates it around to find the rice parcels. She retrieves a couple, slides them into her bowl. They resist being picked up with chopsticks, so she changes to the spoon. Warm burst of coconut on her tongue, chilli hitting the back of her throat. Cassidy quickly scoops up the second parcel, eager to experience the flavour again. 

“What does your wife think?” Cassidy asks, covering her mouth as she finishes chewing.

“She wasn’t pleased, but I haven’t heard about the algorithm for eight months, so the trade-off seems fair.”

Cassidy dabs at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. 

“What happens now? Am I here to pay your cheque?”

The husband’s face folds in on itself like the top of a deflating souffle. “I don’t think my time is done. I mean I haven’t gotten to the dessert menu yet.” 

Cassidy leans back in the booth, drums her fingers on the table. The waiter brings a fresh plate of enoki mushrooms.

“So I can leave at any time?”

“I’m not going to stop you, but first you should try the pork belly. It’s to die for.”