The Egg at Dumstreet

Intuition

The table wasn't set yet. Mrs. Meier started to orchestrate the communal efforts to get things ready, efforts that resulted in a general milling about. Art soon recognized that his talents were best invested in staying out of the way of those who knew what to do.

He watched Adriana fold paper napkins into cute little birds and place them on the table, one in front of each of the six chairs. One sat next to him, and he picked it up, tempted to unfold it and to explore the secrets of its geometry. But something told him that Adriana might not condone experimental disassembly of her work, and he was unsure if he'd be able to restore it afterward. He set the fowl back down to perch on the plate where he had caught it. "They are lovely."

"Thanks." Adriana smiled without taking her eyes from the work of her hands. "I love making them."

"My wife used to fold napkins, too," he said. "Well, not like yours. She didn't do birds. Hers were more geometric. Stars and flowers."

She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. "Used to? You've been married?"

"Yeah." He nodded, not in the mood to talk about Jane now.

She still scrutinized him. Then she smiled. "Sorry, none of my business."

He shrugged. "It's okay. One of those stories, you know. It just kind of happened."

"What just kind of happened? You two falling in love?"

"Nope, us falling out of it." He knew the words were lacking, not providing the details Adriana wanted to hear.

It wasn't us falling out of it, it was she who had done the falling out.

Art waited for the pain to materialize, the hurt that thoughts of Jane entailed.

Monica.

"You're smiling..." Adriana said.

Yes, he was. And it felt good. "So, do you know what we'll have for dinner?"

She scrutinized him once more, the corners of her mouth bent upwards in a quizzical expression. "Well... someone's changing the topic here... But that's fine. Let's talk about dinner." Her gaze returned to her fingers' work. "As far as I know, the traditional Meier pre-Christmas dinner has featured the same menu for decades. Not that I've lived here that long, of course... but I've been told so. And last year, at least, it was raclette."

"Okay..." Art had had that dish once, in the States, in a specialty restaurant. He remembered greasy globs of half-molten cheddar, which had squatted his stomach like industrial waste in final storage. "It's molten cheese, right?"

"Yes, but not like Fondue, you know."

"Yeah, I know." He nodded. Fondue didn't sound half as intimidating as the cheese globs.

"What about fondue?" Ralph, holding a table-top grill in his hands, had appeared beside them. He placed the contraption on the table, clamping the tail of one of the birds in the process. "We'll have raclette, not fondue."

"I've just told him so," Adriana said.

Ralph nodded and unwound the machine's power cord.

Art pulled the half-crushed bird from under the oven and smoothed its tail.

"Thanks." Adriana smiled at him. "Hold it to your nose."

Confused, Art sniffed at the bird. It carried the wisp of a smell. It was a scent reminding him of Christmas. "Cinnamon?"

"Yes." Adriana lowered her voice. "Mrs. Meier... Agatha... she's storing the Christmas napkins together with cinnamon sticks, for months, to give them this smell. She told me so, last year."