Chapter 2, Sarah
Sarah had been learning to cook since she was a teenager. She knew one day she would have a husband to feed, and she wanted to be better than merely serviceable at it. She had acquired some skills over the last ten years, and felt that Mark was better fed than some of their other married friends, and certainly better than if he were left to cook his own meals.
She had perfected a handful of staples: a golden roasted chicken with yellow potatoes, savory meat lasagna with sauce she made from scratch, and meatloaf from her mother's recipe. While not groundbreakingly interesting, she made them well, and felt confident in this aspect of being a wife. Lately though, despite never a complaint from her husband, she had begun to feel in her bones that Mark was bored with her cooking.
The day Sarah first saw the blonde next door, she had sized up her too-wide hips and over-large breasts, and determined her not a threat. What had interested her far more than the woman herself, was the kitchen in which she stood. The longing for it seized her like a fist grabbing a handful of fabric, and she felt possessed. If an outside force had not taken control of her, she would have been unable to explain how she came to find herself perched on her balcony with her bird-watching binoculars, spying into that room.
Tightly organized chaos was the only way she could describe what she saw. A white hutch, probably antique, held several bottles of what looked like oil (they certainly weren't wine bottles). She couldn't quite make out what was inside the piece of furniture, but it looked full of books. Next to it, an industrial steel counter top held a crock of kitchen tools; most Sarah recognized, but there were several that escaped her, and she could only guess at their uses. Beside the crock was a glass jar full of lemon peels and a yellow-ish liquid, and a vase of water and...green onions?? Their roots curled in the bottom of the glass. The object beyond the vase was obviously a lazy Susan, packed with glass jars of salt, all different colors, and no two alike.
Sarah hadn't even known there existed that many kinds of salt, and she suddenly felt she understood absolutely nothing about food.
She sat befuddled at her neighbor's strange food stuffs, when the circular window of her binocular lens was suddenly filled with the very pale skin of a woman's bare ribcage and breasts. Sarah pulled the binoculars away from her face and ducked low on her deck, praying she hadn't been seen. She peeked over the railing one last time, watching her stark naked neighbor pull a small pan from below the steel counter and place it on a burner, lighting a flame underneath it. Sarah longed to stay and watch the woman create something with the oddities she had seen, but was afraid of being caught, by her neighbor OR her husband. She pried herself away and crept back inside.
She had perfected a handful of staples: a golden roasted chicken with yellow potatoes, savory meat lasagna with sauce she made from scratch, and meatloaf from her mother's recipe. While not groundbreakingly interesting, she made them well, and felt confident in this aspect of being a wife. Lately though, despite never a complaint from her husband, she had begun to feel in her bones that Mark was bored with her cooking.
The day Sarah first saw the blonde next door, she had sized up her too-wide hips and over-large breasts, and determined her not a threat. What had interested her far more than the woman herself, was the kitchen in which she stood. The longing for it seized her like a fist grabbing a handful of fabric, and she felt possessed. If an outside force had not taken control of her, she would have been unable to explain how she came to find herself perched on her balcony with her bird-watching binoculars, spying into that room.
Tightly organized chaos was the only way she could describe what she saw. A white hutch, probably antique, held several bottles of what looked like oil (they certainly weren't wine bottles). She couldn't quite make out what was inside the piece of furniture, but it looked full of books. Next to it, an industrial steel counter top held a crock of kitchen tools; most Sarah recognized, but there were several that escaped her, and she could only guess at their uses. Beside the crock was a glass jar full of lemon peels and a yellow-ish liquid, and a vase of water and...green onions?? Their roots curled in the bottom of the glass. The object beyond the vase was obviously a lazy Susan, packed with glass jars of salt, all different colors, and no two alike.
Sarah hadn't even known there existed that many kinds of salt, and she suddenly felt she understood absolutely nothing about food.
She sat befuddled at her neighbor's strange food stuffs, when the circular window of her binocular lens was suddenly filled with the very pale skin of a woman's bare ribcage and breasts. Sarah pulled the binoculars away from her face and ducked low on her deck, praying she hadn't been seen. She peeked over the railing one last time, watching her stark naked neighbor pull a small pan from below the steel counter and place it on a burner, lighting a flame underneath it. Sarah longed to stay and watch the woman create something with the oddities she had seen, but was afraid of being caught, by her neighbor OR her husband. She pried herself away and crept back inside.
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