A Spectacle

Once a year, in lieu of a prison sentence, I take my ex-wife to dinner. She lives in Paris now. Abbie is her name - I used to say it was short for abstinence. "What took you so long?" she snapped, when I arrived to pick her up at her townhouse.

We drove in her black Citroen to a restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne. She took me by the arm and led me to a table in a bright and noisy corner. She snapped her fingers, and a little waiter materialized. They had quite a long conversation. How delightful the language, when properly spoken; syllables melting, undulating. Unfortunately, I know only ten words of French, and Abbie squawks it like a drunken priest. The waiter scuttled off, but returned almost immediately with a loaf of bread. "Vouloir!" my ex-wife proclaimed. "I could eat a crocodile!" She tore off a chunk of bread and held it like a large stone in her hand. Suddenly she pointed it at me. "Please, take your elbow off the table," she said. "What are you, a barbarian?"

The waiter returned with two bowls of soup. My ex-wife seemed to forget me. She slid her bowl to the edge of the table, dipped her head and, utilizing her spoon dexterously, ladled the soup into her mouth. Her slurping drew the admiration of our fellow patrons. Broth leaked from her lips. Noodles disappeared between them like worms slithering into a rain hole. I hadn't taken two spoonfuls before the waiter came and whisked the bowls away, though in fact my ex-wife's was empty.

Now he set a new dish before us, pâté, a delicacy I could barely look at, but Abbie took up her knife and spread the paste thickly over another fistful of bread. She devoured it, then pointed the knife at the dish and garbled something at me, goose fat shining on her cheeks and chin, inviting me to dig in, knowing full well I was unable. Next came a large tray of blackened birds wings; she brushed the pâté aside and went at the birds with both hands. I cautiously reached for a drumstick, but with the first bite I felt like I'd swallowed fire. There was water on the table, with the constitution of weak tea; I didn't dare drink it. My dinner companion smiled. A piece of meat was wedged between her teeth, like a dead rat between two bricks. "Oh Lord," I thought. "Oh Lord, oh Lord."

After the chicken came chocolate cake, then steak tartar with raspberries and cream, then tongue in cheek, and black Russian caviar, dripping with brine and the tang of the Neva. I sat and watched her consume it all, while the society around us - though in general approving of eccentricity - were now beginning to murmur. Eventually one old aristocrat who could bear it no longer approached our table to speak his mind. "Madame," he cried, "Madame, pray, restrain yourself! Gluttony is no virtue."

"Oh really?" she answered. "Oh really? Well - tell him that!" And she filled the room with malevolent laughter.

Guy Wilkinson was born in Liverpool, England, raised in Saskatchewan, and now lives with his wife and three children in Vancouver, where he teaches literature at Langara College. He has had stories and poems published in various U.S. and Canadian magazines and is currently working on a novel..

Email: Guy Wilkinson

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