"Do you like wasabi peas?"
She hands me a small sage-green orb.
"It's hot, spicy," she says, nodding encouragingly. "Have you ever had wasabi?"
It tastes like horseradish and is not at all spicy in comparison to the chile-spiced mango I've been snacking on. I nod and smile to her approvingly.
Before I know it, she's handing me a chocolate sandwich cookie and without saying a word, going back to the duty of putting away the groceries. It's delicious.
Jivy, upbeat soul music blasts from an iPhone speaker dock. The kitchen faucet is running. Cabinets, the dish washer, opening and closing like a delicate rhythm.
He was building a fire pit outside, thick white smoke billowing up into the sky. But it started to pour a soft summer rain, as it had two or three times already that day. The world beyond the kitchen is grey, wet, happy. The shabby porch is used to being drenched in rain, the mason jars filled with dead cigarettes and the disarrayed furniture.
With more than one person in the narrow stretch of kitchen, it's a crowed party. I watch on from my chair in the breakfast nook. She chops vegetables on the counter for cold gazpacho soup.
She, in a delicate red rose skirt. The men except for me in cargo shorts.
I'm drinking flat Dr. Pepper from a painted mug, instead of something hard like I might want. The sip of black beer he gave me tasted like soy sauce. It fizzled on the porch a bit.
"Oh, ****!" he said, putting his hand with the overflowing beer out the door while standing partly inside.
/
Asking the cook for permission, he sits down across from me and begins to sing a song on a guitar. A sad song, one that he's played before. Maybe the only one he knows.
I sit in my chair and watch it all go by. I take out a book from my bag to look like I want to read it. I'm really just sitting here, like a fly stuck tragically on the fly paper he hung in the kitchen two nights ago. Lying there all sprawled awkwardly, eyes open to what's around me.
He finishes the song. "Beautiful," she says, gathering papery remains of an onion and tossing them into a plastic bin. He strums another tune. His voice is untrained and not hard to listen to if not a tad syrupy and self-aware. A bit like the way he carries his wide personality.
He answers questions from across the room, interrupting the melody for a few seconds now and then. The two men are on separate wavelengths. But the singer didn't seem to mind being interrupted. They must have grown up with this dynamic, the men. It's a story they tell easily.
/
"Buongiorno!" she says, slicing a lemon.
"Hey, you have a nice accent. Arrivederci!" says the guitar-player.
"Arrivederci!" she responds, playing up the dialect with sweetness.
"Good deal." He says, striking up another tune. He puts on a different voice. Deeper, with more swing, like a caricature country-western singer. His voice fills the space.
Our mugs are gathered all together, mixed up in a menagerie of colors and shapes at the end of the kitchen counter. I brought several of mine from home and they mingle with the others unnoticeably. Multi-colored ones from Poland. Mine, purchased at various thrift stores. All of them stacked awkwardly and happy.
He asks me if I want to share a smoke on the wet porch. I say "Not right now. Maybe later, though."