By M.L Ellison

There’s a certain kind of New York restaurant that doesn’t really want you to eat in it, so much as audition for the role of someone who eats there. Aubade is one of those places. Nothing has corners. Even the menus are elongated ovals, as if rectangles might cut the wrong kind of person.

The maître d’—all jawline, funereal warmth—glides us to a table shaped like a sculpture. My husband sits with the posture of a man testifying before Congress. His jacket seems to be testifying too. I’m already calculating how many of the people here would pretend to mourn me if this were, say, the last performance in the run.

The server arrives. “For water,” he says, “we have several experiences.” He pauses, like he’s waiting for applause. “Still from Icelandic glacial melt, naturally alkaline, bright finish. A micro-sparkling from the Dolomites, extremely subtle carbonation, almost suggestive. And a still-sparkling hybrid from Patagonia, which is…” He searches. “Meditative.”

“Tap,” I say, before I lose my will to postpone death.

My husband laughs too loudly. “She’s kidding. The Dolomite one. With the bubbles that suggest.”

The server bows. He actually bows.

“You’re in a mood,” my husband says once we’re alone.

“I’m always in a mood. It’s called being awake.”

He smiles like someone being patient with a difficult intern. “I just want tonight to be nice.”

“Nice is relative,” I say. “Exhaust fumes are technically warm and enveloping.”

He tilts his head, uncertain if this is a joke. He decides it is, which makes it easier.

The menus read like surrealist poems about vegetables. There’s a beet dish “reimagined through the lens of childhood amnesia.” I order scallops, something with fennel, and a dessert that identifies as transcendent. He orders lamb and anything involving foam. He loves foam the way some men love podcasts about medieval warfare.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” he says, scanning the wine list like he’s picking a side in a war.

“Preoccupied.”

“With what?”

“Logistics.”

“Of what?”

“Nothing you’ll need to schedule around.”

He blinks. “Should we get a bottle? Something red?”

“Get what you like,” I say.

He does. He always does.

***

The scallops arrive, glistening like they’ve just heard a secret. My husband’s lamb looks like it’s been reconstructed by a conceptual architect.

“This is beautiful,” he says, holding up his knife. “You can tell they care.”

“About what?”

“About—craft.” He pauses. “About elevating.”

“Elevating what?”

“Dinner. Us. The whole… thing.”

I chew my scallop and imagine the garage at home, the waiting quiet of it, the neatness. Logistics.

“You know,” he says, sawing into his lamb, “Stan thinks I’m burning out. I told him I might take a step back, focus more on us.”

“That’ll be convenient,” I say. “In case something comes up. Or goes down.”

He misses it. Or pretends to. “We could travel. Italy? Greece? Somewhere warm, with a pool.”

“Warm is overrated. It accelerates decomposition.”

He laughs again, nervously. “Dark tonight.”

“Tonight?”

The server materializes with the wine, describing it as “velvety yet cerebral.” My husband nods gravely, like he’s been invited to join a think tank. He swirls, sips, announces, “Notes of leather.”

“I’m not sure drinking leather is aspirational,” I say.

“You always twist things.”

“Do I?”

He launches into a half-remembered article about sous vide cooking, explaining time and temperature as though I haven’t been eating food my whole life. I nod, because it doesn’t matter. The scallops dissolve, efficient. I imagine dissolving too, just as neatly.

***

Dessert arrives: a white dome perched on spun sugar, a fragile planet colonized by minimalists.

“You’re going to share, right?” he says, spoon raised.

“No.”

He laughs, not entirely sure I’m joking. I stab the dome harder than necessary.

He pays with the flourish of a man confusing money with intimacy. The check is tucked into a leather sleeve embossed with the restaurant’s name, as though a bill is a keepsake.

Outside, the mist hangs like stage lighting. The street looks ready for a confession. I keep mine to myself.

***

Later, the suburbs. The house exhales around us, heavy with the day’s digestion. My husband collapses into bed, already asleep, certain of morning.

I kiss his forehead. He makes a contented grunt. He does not notice me put on sneakers instead of slippers. He does not notice much at all.

The garage smells of dust and half-finished projects. Bicycles lean against the wall like props.

I open the car. The leather is cold, faintly scented with his cologne, which is named after either a yacht or a felony.

The engine turns easily, low and steady, a loyal animal.

Upstairs, he dreams. Tomorrow he will wake, search, invent reasons. People always do.

The air changes slowly, imperceptibly. That’s the mercy of it.

I lean back, close my eyes, and listen.

Not to the car. To the house above. To the faint, rhythmic sound of his breathing through the ceiling.

And I wait, in the growing dark, for the moment when I can no longer tell the difference between his breath and mine.

Litro Magazine

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