French Fries

1

"I like my french fries with mayonnaise," I said, dipping my first crispy potato stud in the oily yellow stuff and sighing with satisfaction while snapping its soft whitish belly.2

"I like mayonnaise too," she said, dipping her first in red ketchup. Followed by a second one in ketchup too. Then a third one.3

I watched amused, following my personal call for gluttony by a thick threesome dipped and munched together. After she delivered her tenth potato piece to the unforgiving jaws of her mouth, continuously insisting on dipping them in ketchup, I could not resist any further.4

"You said you like them with mayonnaise," I said as politely as possible. After all one had to be extremely careful with sacred gobbling rites and their mystical meaning to different people in different places. Not necessarily mystical people nor mystical places.5

"I said I like mayonnaise, I did not say I like french fries with mayonnaise," she answered unperturbed, took a few gulps of the red soda stuff burping softly and apologetically, and continued chewing eyeing me in a strange way. My fingers were greasy with yellow leftovers, and I hardly resisted an impulse to wipe them on my trousers.6

"Do you have a hanky?" I asked her, showing the fingers of my left hand.7

She took my hand in hers, took my fingers in her mouth and sucked noisily. When they got out they were glittering and clean.8

"Here, what do you need a hanky for? The perfect ecological solution." She smiled and I felt like eating her alive. Even though she was full of ketchup and I was basically a mayonnaise guy. Her legs hooked around my left ankle underneath the table and I responded in kind, never for a moment stopping my chewing. After all, with the energy we expended the last few days I needed to resource myself or risk dying dehydrated and desolidated... I choked on my potato with the excitement of finally inventing another word that was bound to become an instant hit. I kept deluding myself with similar thoughts for quite a number of years now, didn't see any wrong in that as I pulled out of my pocket a piece of paper and a pen and jotted the invention down.9

"You are a funny guy, you know?" she tried to say, sputtering dirty red pieces of fries over the white table cloth. I expected the next step to be sputtering the same red pieces through her nose as she would go into her habitual fit of uncontrolled laughter which got us kicked out by now from one restaurant and two fast food joints. But, remarkably enough, this time she succeeded to get the urge under control. "I guess I am in love with you because you like mayonnaise," she added. "Maybe also because you have a way with words, but definitely mayonnaise." She kicked my left shin viciously with her right heel, thus ending the war for liberation raging underneath the table in a most decisive manner, got up and came to sit next to me. "And stop calling me a liar. And... DON'T!" Her command was soft, mighty, imperative. Even imperious and imperial, I chuckled internally while shivering externally.10

My tongue, which was about to sneak out to catch on its tip the smudge of mayonnaise which squirted its way at the corner of my mouth, retreated to its adobe obediently. I waited, my fate uncertain, my eyes focusing on her nose in cross manner as she approached her face to mine, and then with one long languorous move licked away the smudge from the strategic spot. Then she sucked one finger clean, dipped it in my mayonnaise and ran it along my lips smearing them with a thick yellow layer. Her tongue followed, slowly, ensuring a spick-and-span run of lips left end to right end and back. She was completely unconcerned with the disgusted looks on the faces of the few present customers, so deep in their disgust that they kept cranking their heads to better satisfy their disgustability crave by ensuring themselves with a better viewing angle.11

She kept humming softly, something between a nightingale's song and a locomotive's puff. I refrained from pulling out my piece of paper and writing disgustability on it, for the simple practical reason that I wanted to live. I preferred to wait. After examining my lower lip from uncomfortably close by for several seconds, then moving to my upper lip for a similar period of time and licking away sharply one spot which did not pass her inspection, she sat herself on my lap looking as serious as the Vatican's Daily. I dared not move, even though at that close range her left eye was looking into my left eye and her right into my right at cross purposes. As said above, my survival instincts grabbed control over my laughing drive.12

"I told you I like mayonnaise," the nightingale sang and the locomotive puffed. "I am not hungry anymore," the locomotive puffed. "I love you," the nightingale sang.13

I breathed, relieved. So maybe I will live to see another day after all, was the message she was trying to tell me. Was this the message? The mayonnaise might have gotten to my head, dizzying my senses, I kept telling myself. And thinking this way might mean it is worse than I originally surmised, I thought on. And remembering it means the situation is desperate, I shivered.14

"I love you... madly..." I told her, biting deeply into her ketchup laden lips. And suddenly it seemed like french fries do not matter anymore.15