The Way to a Man’s Heart
On the pleasure of cooking… or not cooking, for love
I’really going to miss your cooking, Paul told me on the day I finally moved out of the home we’d shared for three years, his voice creaking with lament. He’d taken a deep breath, winding up to deliver some final parting words, an elegiac salute to our seven years together — the road trips and Target runs, the meltdowns and make-ups, what we’d learned and who we’d become — but all he could think about was my grilled skirt steak tacos.
We’d broken up months before I moved out, and lived together awkwardly until I did, squirreled away into separate bedrooms while winter tiptoed into spring. Our set-up was torturous, but I knew the wait would be worth it — come June, I’d fly to Mexico after securing a sabbatical from my journalism job “to write poems,” I’d pleaded in an email to my editor. But neither Paul nor my work knew that I was running a small-time grift: I was headed to Mexico to be with Eduardo, the scuba diver I’d met a summer earlier on vacation with Paul. On our final afternoon in Cozumel, Paul insisted on hanging back at the resort, and so I’d embarked on a snorkeling excursion alone, mildly annoyed with Paul, yet totally unaware that I’d soon launch a yearlong affair with the tour guide who led a group of Canadian retirees, honeymooners, and me through Cozumel’s famed reefs.
