The Half-Pound and the Fury

A William Faulkner Imitation

As the two of them sat facing each other, it was a

dim,hushed ambiance, perplexingly opposite to the restaurant’s usual behavioral inclinations as was advertised, that seemed to amplify every word and each prolonged silence that discharged from his mouth, exaggerating his stutters like the broken phonograph in the corner, (always accidentally replaying those four enigmatic bars of that one nineteen-twenties jazz standard with an exotic melody), its shell of undeluxe golden paint chipping away until the aged, splotched tin peeked through like a metallic curse of a birthmark; and yet despite the incessant stoppage of half-molded syllables in his larynx it was evident from the slight relaxation of her eyelids and the industrial spotlessness of her fork as it exited the aperture between her tightened lips that she was paying no heed to his digressions, for that culinary god Gianfrancesco was delivering a far superior pleasure: a voluptuous red sauce of flavor-and-sensation that gave birth to globules of hedonism with every wash-and-tumble of her mouth, a pleasure that he had to agree with reluctantly—this place is much better than Olive Garden he thought but Damn why does this bread and butter and beef have to be this good because I’ve never been here and frankly will never come back again looking at the black digits printed on this menu but the one time I visit they cook it so perfectly that I wish I had taken her to the local café instead so she could focus on me—but only for so long, as he watched her wield her knife and with a flourish bring it down to the plate, carving her Bistecca alla Fiorentina with the fire of a self-immolation, ravishing the loin until each cross-section of brown seasoned crust and mantle that gave way to a pink striated core seemed to grow in length and size, as if each cut of hers was an incision of his own epidermis, moving from his trembling, anxious shins upwards, splattering omnidirectionally his tomato-paste blood (that simultaneously boiled in his cranium, suffocating him like a Burmese python from Tuscany that sheds artisan dough); because for all that he knew, with every fine meat-devouring meal of his came empowerment—it was a primal, ritual sacrifice validating and engorging his humanity and virility—but no amount of vigor with which he could attack his Tagliata could compete with the utter potency of her bladework, an almost troglodytic ferocity that easily reduced his idea of male carnivorous elegance of which he held a high esteem down to a soupçon of sickly vegetarian pesto dispassionately hurled onto a glowing hot pan that was his bleached leather seat; shifting his pants uncomfortably and decidedly emasculated, he looked at the portrait of ecstasy before him only to wonder to himself why he could even bear the endless onslaught of oversexed head-thrashings and eye-squeezings on display; why he should not simply chop off his own thigh and offer it as the finest cut a man could have this side of the Mississippi only so that she may savagely defile it too and slice it with her two utensils—the handles worn smooth as polished Tahitian pearls—only so that he could be content with how there would be at least some part of him that she enjoyed on that day (and to remember him by), but upon becoming aware that he could not conceivably accomplish such a macabre fantasy he modestly resigned himself to savoring his own pieces of manzo (though regrettably not to the same degree as the unchaste gourmandelle before him) and reached out his arm to deploy the salt and pepper shakers around the candle as a makeshift barricade, dividing the tablecloth like a border wall, except that he was presumably the one to take out his wallet and “pay for it” at the end of the night—but, that was something to be determined, he realized, and in a fit of vengeful genius almost as orgasmic as the cucina italiana on his plate, he resolved to force the unabashed girl to defray the cost of her own sensual experience—and at that moment the waiter, seeing that both plates were clean, fetched the small black folder embroidered with a golden Gianfrancesco’s, placing it on his side of the table; and for the first time that night, he looked her directly in the eyes. “How about we split the bill?”