Percy stretched lazily on an armchair. Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, lay open on his chest like a comforting blanket. He had read it twice, and he found solace among its pages whenever his writing life overwhelmed.
The days when he was not writing moved like a cruise ship. He knew he was covering great distances while he read and ruminated, but the landscape remained unchanged. It was the best of autumn, and like a cruise ship, he did not feel he was making any progress at all.
“All I need to do is write,” he said with a sigh, drowned by the overpowering rumble from his stomach.
He had not eaten anything since morning, not because he wasn’t hungry but because the food looked unappealing.
Percy looked at the side table in his study, where his faithful helper Vix had placed the food.
What repelled him? The food was the same. Mary cooked it despite Vix’s protests. Vix wanted to take over the entire domestic responsibility, but Mary stood her ground in the kitchen, right in front of the stove and the oven.
“This is my place in this universe. I won’t give it up even if you offer me a royal kitchen,” she said.
Percy was unsure if she was serious about the royalty part, but she surely didn’t like Vix’s interference.
“How in the whole wide world did he manage to use a bento box to serve my food?” Percy wondered aloud. “But first of all,” he stood up with a shocked face, “why a bento box? Why wouldn’t he serve in a proper dish?”
Percy raced downstairs in the doubled excitement of finding the reason for unappetising food and for thinking of the right question to ask.
“Why the bento box?” Percy burst into the kitchen only to shock Mary clean out of her kitchen apron.
“Goodness gracious me!” she yelled, dropping the ladle onto the floor.
Percy was surprised to not find Vix in the kitchen. He walked around diffidently, afraid of knocking things down. He wasn’t well-versed in the kitchen layout in a house he had lived in for forty years. It had changed quite a lot from when his mother made him do his grammar lessons at the kitchen table. It was now more in sync with Mary’s daily routine.
“Erm, how do you two divide the work in the kitchen?” Percy asked and immediately realised his mistake when he met Mary’s glare.
“Is that what that scoundrel told you? That we share our duties?” she asked. She was evidently hurt.
“No, no. I mean, I thought…well, he does place my food in the study, doesn’t he?” Percy finally found his nerves. “But why use a bento box. I hate the taste of plastic in my food, not to mention the ignominy of dipping my fork into those tiny compartments, scraping for the last morsel.” Percy shuddered as he imagined it.
“Of course. That’s his latest obsession!” Mary retorted.
“Obsessed?”
“You need to get out of your head sometimes and look around you. See what’s happening in the world,” Mary said as she pulled a newspaper from the top of the pantry shelf.
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