SHORT FICTION
The Raisin Notes of a Red
BY DEVIN MARQUEE
Part One. The Desire of the Other
“I think something’s wrong with me,” Lynn said.
It felt like the equivalent of being told that you weren’t the problem. I could appreciate the originality—assuming it was genuine. But though Lynn’s skin was clear, she wasn’t transparent.
I learned not to expect a blue sky in the city. This day was colder, heavier, and practically depressing. I shivered at each ramping of a breeze, embarrassed, and tried to play it off while lost in Lynn’s roomy pupils. The mist clung without request—I longed for the balance of the inside of a building. I could see the table we previously sat at through the window of a wine bar across the street, past the reflection, where we each had a single glass. One red, one white. There were two others seated instead, grabbing their glasses the same way we grabbed ours: with a false sophistication, a genuine facade. I love the raisin notes of a red, and how dry and bittersweet it tastes.
Lynn followed my gaze to the same bar, avoiding going as far as to look at me. Her feet were free of her shoes; the ripples of her white socks lived boldly against the concrete steps; the courthouse behind us projected a soft shadow that felt like judgment. Her stone-dyed skirt loved her, while her hands rested by her side as she tapped away the anxiety. The steps felt rigid against my tailbone, and our spot was raised far above the sidewalk as though on a stage.
“Robert, how would you define love?” she asked.
I looked up again, the sky having transformed into one large cloud. The architecture of the cityscape captured the gray as if humidity were a crime against the senses. Part of me nearly forgot we were sorting things out. We may have been conversing with the city, which resembled the sky. Or the moon, which we couldn’t see through the weather.
“How do we define anything?” I asked.
I squeezed my eyelids, squinted, and folded my lips around my teeth. I hate my philosophical side the most. It’s pretentious, and I’m not certain I enjoy sulking about my existence. Lynn looked at my Oxfords, not yet at my face. Good, I thought. Whenever she looked at me, it felt like an X-ray: my personal thoughts and ruminations stuffed between my brain dividers, unlabeled, uncoordinated.
“Or what I mean to say is, I don’t know if I know what love feels like for anyone, including myself. I’ve liked people differently. I’ve told them I love them—I’ve shown them as much. Maybe that’s the problem: I’ve shown too many others my version of love. Maybe my version of love is all dried up,” I said.
I considered my philosophy ironic—a dry wit on the surface, with a clotting bruise beneath.
“That’s fair.”
“Maybe something’s wrong with me, too.”
“Definitely,” she chuckled.
“Sounds right,” I said, finally turning to see her hair after it absorbed the scant rainfall, which looked like an ink spill on a primed canvas.
Seattle howled—sirens and honking, trading complaints, the city laughing like a hyena. Our surroundings gradually vanished, like a vignette, as the hour passed. Lightboxes and neon signs became more prominent, bringing attention to the series of nightlife establishments at the base of apartment buildings. These features were common in Downtown.
No one believes me when I recount the number of windows I’ve noted on my commute through each neighborhood. From the steps across the street from that wine bar, there were one hundred and fifteen. And from the ground, I saw that the top-floor windows reflected the sky, which camouflaged with the rest of the building. The structure was one giant vertical tablet; eventually, it rained a little harder, and the pattering sounded like a pill bottle being tipped. My head felt infected, and my eyes ached until they bulged.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about fate, ever since we last spoke,” Lynn said. “Like, the time we’ve spent getting to know each other—it convinces me that fate must be real. And that life is lived instant to instant, like chapters of a book.”
I considered her words, wondering what else the city might reveal to me.
“The wine was delicious, and you looked nice tonight,” I said. “About fate: do you mean to say our time together has felt conditional?”
“Sort of,” she replied.
Lynn looked just past me, attempting to figure me out. She wanted to know whether I inferred what she meant to communicate before she was forced to say it. I needed to hear it from her.
“Conditional for your path, for mine.”
“OK,” I said.
“I’m very attracted to you,” she paused, moving her hands too much. “But I don’t think our attraction solves my life.”
“Hm, am I expected to help with that?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. I just sort of expected—”
“You want more?” I interrupted.
Lynn clasped her hands together, taming them, and looked around as if she’d just noticed where we were.
I’m reminded of the time Lynn and I were past the initial dating portion of our relationship. The comfortable though exciting part. When hugs were stable, and we understood each other’s humor. When we could sit in our mixed aroma, looking up from our books to speak without saying a word. Several friends were with us at the dock of a lake where the mountains appeared unbelievably close. Mt. Rainier must have been about ninety miles away. Lounging on that dock—sunlight refracting, our friends splashing—Lynn lay back in a black one-piece with a book in hand, damp and looking off at the distance as if reading the horizon instead. She joked that her responsibilities felt as impossible to surmount as the mountain, but that is life. I lie next to her with my eyes on my page, not reading but considering how the things she kidded about were more profound than funny. How she saw life in nature, and the scale and distance relative to proximity, somehow blunted the pain of growth.
Suddenly, I worried that the pain behind my eyes was due to the combination of stress and heavy wine consumption. Or, perhaps, an issue with my contacts, and likely the other opaque parts of my life that kept attaching, building like a coagulated clog.
“Really, that is our only major incompatibility,” she began again. I rubbed the inner corner of my eye while she gained courage. “Our situation, this relationship isn’t romantic. There’s no promise of more.”
I know what she meant. My interpretation: you’re aromantic. I dodge emotional intimacy as if it would pierce my heart to leave it bleeding and covering my hands as I applied pressure, allowing room for only the physical aspects of a romantic relationship. I removed my ability to trust, placing it in a sterile solution, hoping for revitalization. I covered it with the lid of a dented Doc Marten shoebox, and then I lost the box during a move.
“Romance,” I said, as if it was for the first time.
“Yes, ‘romance.’”
“How would you define ‘romance?’” I asked.
She rolled her eyes.
“OK—it’s just, I am someone who likes to take my time with things,” I said.
Finally, she looked at me determinately. Her finger became a flesh-colored dot as she pointed at me. “I desire a loving bond, not necessarily a sarcastic one. At least, I’ll accept an emotional exorcism.”
“I think you’re undervaluing my approach,” I said.
“It’s like there’s a disconnect, or you don’t consider the things I see as obvious,” she said. “Could you possibly verbally express to me what you desire?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“I feel I’m overstepping when I ask things like that,” she said.
“I am only as comfortable as you are,” I told her. “So, right now, I am feeling very uncomfortable.”
“I’m vulnerable. I’m trying, I’m vulnerable about what sucks. I’m direct,” she said.
“Yet, you love a subliminal.”
I was happy to see her. Her cheeks were like roses, but her eyes told me something crucial about a tight squeeze. They were like pretty thorns. I caught myself admiring how she looked at me, as if she knew I could try harder. A lack of initiative settles better in the stomach than a lack of ability.
I began to go gray at sixteen, like my father. He had a head full of gray hair by his thirties. I didn’t finish growing until I was twenty-three. I lost my spirit at twelve, and again at twenty-six—chunks stolen. The rest melted through my numerous holes. I felt lighter, oddly developed. Lynn had a few gray hairs, possibly just coming in.
“You don’t speak like a normal person,” I continued, my eyes obviously skirting between her forehead and her nose. “Maybe there’s something wrong with you, and that’s why you’re likable. As for romance, how about that time I brought you that orange tulip?”
She instinctively looked away, possibly offended, and stared into the distance like she did on the dock, as if she recognized someone who walked just out of sight. She tended to do that—look off to some place or at something I couldn’t identify. She saw a different world than I did.
“Everything was orange that day: the sunset, the peaches, the apricots,” she said.
“And the tulip, I agree,” I said.
“Why can’t you just be more romantic?” she asked.
“I guess I could try.”
“You shouldn’t have to try. Romance comes naturally to most people, doesn’t it?”
“But every time I’ve been romantic, it was something I strove for.”
“Well, then, something is wrong with you,” she finished.
We sat as the light rain softened our hair; the city reeked of mold. We were along a quiet street, and with it being dark by then, the only people we’d seen in a while were a couple. They walked along the sidewalk below, shielding themselves from the rain by facing their palms to the sky. Streetlamps lit their path, the two emerging from the shadows between yellow ellipses. Moving around them were the occasional car and the rare person. Their large dog was unbothered but appeared ready for exercise.
Lynn and I used to play this game when we first met. Coffee was our initial connection. We’d people-watch while drinking hot Americanos at cafes, debating who had the more expensive dental insurance, or whether their past romances were as abject as ours. We wrote lives for strangers in real time, as if the enclosure ahead of us was a lined page.
“How do you think they would define love?” I asked as the couple walked rather hastily. Just then, the man looked over to me as if he had heard of my spying. I waved as a distraction. He waved back with his hand wrapped in a towel. The woman nudged him.
“That’s silly, the way he has his hand wrapped,” Lynn said.
I peered at her and said, “He’s a chef, five-star Michelin. They were preparing dinner. During showmanship, he accidentally sliced his thumb.”
“Off,” I finished.
Lynn shook her head.
“Seattle doesn’t have a single Michelin restaurant,” Lynn corrected me. “But, instead of going to the nearest hospital to reattach it, which you and I both agree would be the most logical thing to do—” she obliged.
“The only option, really,” I assured her.
“—he’s peacefully letting it thaw as he considers the consequence of the subtle freezer burn,” she finished.
“Because he’d prove to be a better chef without the thumb, and the sacrifice is somehow romantic. It’s his right hand, after all. He’s left-handed.”
“He Vincent van Gogh’d,” she said.
“He Vincent van Gogh’d.”
“Alfredo,” the woman called to her dog. The two of them wrestled with its leash, detangling the slack from Alfredo’s hind legs. Lynn and I lazily pointed at them, as if in sync with validation. The couple minded their business. That’s how we’d often joke about strangers’ mundaneness. I couldn't have loved it more.
“Anyway, I don’t mean to project. Maybe I’m just frustrated,” Lynn said.
“And I get that,” I said. “I just don’t know how to help you. I am incapable, more so.”
“And I get that,” Lynn echoed. “For these reasons, there is no helping this situation.”
It was time for me to go, none other than to taste the finish of her sentiment. The moment demanded we act like adults—autonomy, ironically, dictated by time and place. One of my biggest regrets is becoming an adult, despite the initial excitement of the curriculum.
“You picture us as something we can’t be,” I said. “I want you to like me, but I can’t make you like me. Maybe I could try differently. I’ll never be the me you’re imagining.”
“Of course. And again, I don’t believe this is your fault. I feel the same way about my wardrobe: I hope my favorite pieces fit me perfectly, forever, and that I can pay for them once. I thrifted four dresses before I found the one I favored. Next month, I’ll hate the color,” she said.
“Four dresses, for Donika’s party?” I asked.
“It's a wedding,” Lynn said.
“Oh, yeah.”
I thought them perfect, slowly turning from Lynn to see the two move along the sidewalk. I could tell by the way he had approached her, desperately running for her, grabbing her arm at the elbow. The man was likely my height, six feet. Which really meant five-eleven. He probably stretched it the same way I did, with boots or thick heels. His lonely white T-shirt told me he had hastily left his apartment without considering the weather, presumably to help her walk their dog, Alfredo. His hair was slick and messy, darkened by the rain like mud. Hers, knotted at the nape of her coat, nest-like but conditioned. It appeared they lived together, in the heart of downtown. Which meant they were well-off together. Young, rich, and in love. Something Lynn and I could never have been.
Suddenly, Lynn placed her hand on my knee, grabbing my attention.
“Oh, I think they’re arguing.”
I was surprised, but I couldn’t help but smile. Not because of a sense of self-importance, but admittedly, I would rather my observable reality match my pace. As I expressed, I prefer a slow burn; I favor the buildup.
“No,” I said, dragging my vowels. “They seem so happy. It’s hard to tell with the weather. Suddenly, it’s so dark.”
Their display of confused affection married the totality of their frustration. Before long, they paced the distance of the sidewalk, our heads panning left while we watched them move nearly out of sight.
The woman spun around, leading the dog as its leash wrapped around the man again, a distasteful, disastrous moment. She pulled. The man held himself up with one leg, hopping and flailing. A red car sped by. So did a black one, and another red one. Sedan, sedan, sedan. All but kicking and screaming, all but screeching. The couple scrambled around one another like butterflies knocked from their flower, looking to land anywhere familiar.
And they did, onto the first sixty-foot-long slab. Two feet high. They sat and rested. Then, they kissed.
“Um, what was that?” Lynn said.
“I–,” I didn’t know how to react.
“Look, now they’re kissing,” she said.
“Hm.”
We didn’t dare look at each other, lest we become butterflies ourselves, drawn to the same milkweed unsuitable for both of us.
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Lynn said dismissively. Her tone betrayed her. We were becoming drenched, and we both knew it would be best to seek shelter.
“Should we kiss too?” I asked.
Lynn slapped my shoulder. She moved me in a way no one else ever had. I wasn’t sure if it was her as much as my maturing self, a gathering of the incomplete pieces into a single pile, that gave me perspective. But suddenly, my life looked a little different from where I sat. The windows fit the building as pieces fit a puzzle. My life fragments lie in a mound—some missing, or unrecognizable. I began to rebuild from the corners. There were bits I couldn’t find, so misplaced that I hadn’t realized. As I slowly reconstructed my mess, I realized the potential of an assembly.
“Lynn,” I said.
She looked at me; the rain had subsided. Her eyes were a ditch, beads of water falling from her hair.
“I’ve been hurt and I’ve hurt others. I lie about being incapable of love because I’ve only ever known it as pain. I have indeed given a lot of myself to others, often to the point of being taken advantage of. I can’t help but fear this type of pattern is unresolvable,” I told her.
My mouth agape, she wouldn’t speak until she was certain I was done. But I had nothing left to say. She placed her hand on my cheek for me to lean against. I invited the depths of the black, large at the center of her face.
We sat there like that for some time. The couple eventually stood, kissed again, and walked back to where they had come. Lynn and I descended from our stage, each step as complete as the end of a sentence. She searched for me with her hand, swinging it behind her. I grabbed it, looking for her eyes as she turned to smile at me. She felt like my lighthouse, guiding me through the smog. A series of cars dashed by as we approached the crosswalk, where we hugged, said goodbye, and walked in opposite directions. Uphill, my slippery shoes became uncomfortable on my way home, but I wasn’t frustrated that my commute was mainly an ascent. This gave me time to ponder the fiction I wrote for myself, a piece about how love was just a desire, and my continued living would be the only way to resolve my confusion. Lynn and I were done, but she provided me with another piece to place around the edge of my puzzle.
Part Two. The Self is the Other
“I think there’s something wrong with me,” I said.
My hands were shaking. Blood dripped from my wrist, having traveled down my palm like a stream on a hill. A shard of wine glass protruded from my skin, and at least I might not need stitches, I thought.
“You’re a terrible fucking person, and I can’t believe I let it go on for so long,” Christa said from the entryway of my apartment, her hand on the doorknob while her keys dangled from her finger. Sauce sizzled in a pan over the stove, a pungent scent of fresh rosemary attacking my sinuses. There was glass everywhere. “I’m taking Alfredo for a walk and some air. This is insane.”
“Just wait for me, I want to talk about this,” I said. I panicked, pulling at every drawer. Bottle openers, canned soda, misplaced jewelry—but none of it could do the job of a sterile towel; it was hard to distinguish what was mine and what was Cabernet Sauvignon. “Where in the hell are our towels?”
“Come here, Alfredo. Be a good boy,” Christa said.
“Please, Christa, can we talk?” I said, carefully, avoiding the large pieces of glass near my slippers, moving from the kitchen to the hallway. The sound of ballet softly played through the wireless sound bar. The grumbling of the developed sauce distracted me, and I would need to turn off the oven, despite the food having just been put in.
“Jesus, Trey. Please rinse your hand, you’re getting blood everywhere,” Christa said, waving her fingers as if to shoo away the dog deciding between opposite directions.
“Towels.” My vowels desperately dragged.
“I moved them. I’ll get you a towel. Don’t follow me out.”
I hurried back to the sink, the floor crunching beneath me. In a haze, I could hear my blood splat on the counter. It was on both of my hands by then, as if someone stabbed me twice; though, I was sure it would easily clot with pressure. The drain hole vortexed while my blood spiraled down the pipes like the red of a candy cane. Next to me, a towel unfolded by force, flopping at the edge of the sink. A set of keys hit the tile, scraping and clattering as Christa picked them up. She slammed the door.
I stared at her ghost, the rain tapping against the windows of my living room over the noise of the sink. The big screen was playing a movie we had been watching thirty minutes before I pierced my palm with a wine glass: Black Swan, by Darren Aronofsky. I kept my hands under the running water; the warmth of the water provoked me, giving me visions of a different life.
On the coffee table, a find from a neighborhood-wide garage sale, my phone vibrated repeatedly. I had the urge to run to it, as if it had possessed me. Possession—could that work as an excuse? I wondered.
I wanted to rewind time or discover a new line of it. An hour would have done me well, a parallel universe. But the night before was the real concern. Something did take me over, in fact. I just wish it were a passion for Christa. I’m not sure I ever really felt that kind of fire, not like I had then.
I’ve been possessed most of my life, perhaps since I first saw myself in the mirror as an infant. From then on, I’m sure my image occupied my mind entirely, organized by the folder system. My perception of my image as an object fascinated me, but every glance at the reflection felt like being assigned an orphan. What great expectations—they weren’t even my own.
My phone continued to buzz, just like when someone was calling. Christa was past the lobby by then. The person calling wouldn’t have been her.
I turned off the sink, spun around, and kicked the glass before the bleeding returned. The black knob of the oven clicked into place as I turned it off. I wrapped my hand with the clean towel Christa tossed my way, tucking parts of it under a knot to make a glove. Then, I grabbed my keys, exchanged my slippers for shoes as if a chariot awaited, and hurried down the elevator and out the lobby door. From a fair distance, through the weather, I could see Christa standing near a bush with Alfredo. Her hand was to her head, her elbow creating a flag. That was how she spoke on the phone. Unsurprisingly, the world was made of clay. The rain bothered me.
But it didn’t stop me, of course. I took a big step onto my heel, catching the momentum in my arms and transferring it to my whole body. My arms were pendulums. Le Bar à Vin, across the street, was busy for a weekday. It was especially charming when it rained. I happened to recognize one of the patrons seated under an awning, sipping the sweet, red elixir I felt only I could truly appreciate in that moment.
Wine sorted me out, flipped me over, and stamped my back with an inky insignia. It placed my body, folded and smoothed, into a drawer alongside the others. Uncanny—managed into the system of a mink gray filing cabinet—the others became me, who became the folder, which becomes the cabinet. And, apparently, the cabinet becomes the world. I often looked at the sky upon my first sip.
“Christa,” I whispered aggressively as I approached her. “Christa, who are you talking to?”
She turned to see my skinny arms swing ridiculously; my posture was compromised. I was treated as if I didn’t exist. She moved a little farther, guiding the dog out of the bushes. We came up on the giant courthouse staircase—she and Alfredo were a little ahead—where we often ate takeout sandwiches during our lunch breaks; our knees usually touched, Christa always on my right side; the sandwich wrappers caught the spillage of red onion and tomato juice.
Instead, in our spot was another couple enjoying the spoils of love, albeit during a light rain. It was triggering. The man rolled his sleeves, which were already short, his pants blending with the background. Surely, he was cold. He appeared to float without the bottom half, like an iceberg. His beige shirt clashed with his dark skin. The woman wore a stone-colored skirt that stood out against the concrete steps, and she appeared to watch me as I fast-walked.
Having caught up to Christa, she had begun walking toward the end of the block. Cars passed beyond her like fleeting strokes of fresh paint, and several strangers skipped on their heels along the crosswalks at a distance, as if they were avoiding the rain. By the tone of her voice, it seemed she spoke with her sister.
“Christa, look at me,” I said.
I reached for her left arm, her elbow. She reactively pulled away.
“Hold on,” she said. “Let me call you back.”
She lifted her coat and put her phone in her back pocket.
“Another woman, after the last, is crazy,” she said. “There is no ‘let’s talk,’ Trey. This relationship is over.”
Her voice reverberated, and as if it weren’t sufficiently embarrassing that my head was a drenched mess—my white T-shirt syrup against my shoulders—I looked at the couple on the staircase of the courthouse to see a man waving at me as if anticipating my turn, smug in his joy. I’m sure I hated him; maybe I still do. Regardless, I waved back with what I had forgotten was poked meat packaged in a towel. Christa nudged me.
“Don’t show them your dysfunction, idiot,” she said.
I quickly retracted my hand.
“Why can’t we be like them?” she asked with her mouth narrowly opened, nodding at the damned couple high on the steps. “Why can’t you be romantic?”
“I prepared dinner upstairs, and there’s a movie going on. It’s a Thursday night. I forgot your flowers, I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m calling out of work tomorrow. I’ll have to spend my vacation hours crying.”
Alfredo showed his teeth, panting, playing in the puddles, shaking the rain from his fur. Christa detangled his leash, unwrapping it from his hind leg.
“Alfredo!” she yelled.
“If we could just go back inside,” I said. I attempted to help with the leash.
“Fucking another woman isn’t romantic, Trey. I’m tired of forgiving you.”
My saliva tasted like dried fruit. Our relationship felt like a head-on collision. High beams were blinding us on a two-lane road; we were headed in opposite directions. The threat could be seen miles away, but the speed of the rage and stubbornness made it impossible for the flicker of our headlights to warn the other. There was no tragic accident, not yet. Constantly, we nearly missed, steadily driving onward with mere complaints, high beams bright.
“You call me an idiot so often, I’ve gotten used to it,” I said.
Christa didn’t move an inch. She was hardened plaster.
“Yeah, you move things you’re not meant to move, like my watches, or things that don’t need to be moved all that often, like towels,” I continued.
“Oh, you’re ridiculous,” she said, rolling Alfredo’s leash around her wrist.
She walked, finally pulling the dog completely out of the bushes. I followed.
“And—and you shit-talk your friends and co-workers. No complaint is legitimate; it is mostly appearance-based. Or, their partners, and how little money they make. You talk about that a lot, too,” I said.
“Well, you’re so obsessed and perverted, you can’t help but get your tiny little dick wet by any upright person with little dignity. Because what amount of self-hatred permits someone to sleep with a man like you?”
“You’ve never called my dick tiny before. So, you’re either a liar or you’re the one with no dignity. Which one is it?”
“For how long will you take out your insecurities on me?” she asked.
“How long until you tell me that you and Dave kissed at my birthday party?” I got louder.
I had forgotten about the couple perched up on the courthouse steps. I could only imagine what they had thought of us as a failing pair, incapable of sorting out our issues in a more dry, civil manner. I’m convinced we were possessed—by what, I don’t know. We were likely shaped by the movies we watched as kids. We were well into adulthood, sloppily processing the subliminal. The body acts out what it doesn’t actively comprehend. The child in us failed to see it; we wouldn’t recognize it until we have become a reflection of someone terrible and make-believe. Or we were a result of the directionless, degenerative arguments we witnessed with undeveloped minds between our parents, planted in our souls the size of the smallest seed. Mutating over time, denying any common sense that other adults developed as they grew. Look at the fruits of our labor, the reaping of what we sowed.
Christa looked at her feet, lifting her toes as if to peel them from the ground. She sighed, charging a response to add to the hurt. It needed to be good, worth it. Cars whizzed by. People avoided us; a contempt the wondering world holds for each of its occupants. The rain started and stopped, picked up by a breeze, or stuck in the air as if it were frozen in time. A hint of moon peeked through a cloud, reflecting off windows, then covered again. Before long, Alfredo became unsettled, exhausted by our fight. Once more, he wrapped around our legs with his leash as I hopped, swinging my stick of an arm for balance. We spun around each other like debris caught up in a whirlwind. She spoke of petty things, and so had I. Unclean dishes, an erect toilet seat. Negligence, a rude remark. Purposeful hurling of words to inflict pain, unseating, and destabilizing. Laundry, unaffectionate, and strange women. Cheating, cheating, cheating.
Exhausted, we sat at the foot of the large courthouse steps, pinned together in an unlikely fusion. Her shoulder was against mine. The memory of her touch, our knees, convincing us everything would be okay. Alfredo sat still after being twirled, settling as if stirred and left to cook. He showed his teeth while his tongue poked out like a ladle. Christa placed her hand over mine on my knee, breathing laboriously. Our pulses synced. When I looked at her, I saw my match, a fire in her eyes red with intensity but brown in hue. The flame burned through our reserves, threatening our fingertips. Our heads pushed together in a slow action, her lips soft and dripping from the rain.
Our lips clapped together, bodies limp against each other to exchange the scent of ripe rain between our chests. The work of an arborist cast a dark-gray shadow against the concrete steps where we sat. A deciduous tree shed amid the breeze, which agitated the chestnut-brown leaves free from their limbs. The taste of her tongue brought me back to the square tile I stood on as I whisked the sauce over my stove; the hint of a red wine, the likes of which crashed into my hand. The remains of those bitter-sweet notes melted in my mouth like the making of a raisin.