Why You Were Taken by JT Lawrence

cuisine.
    It’s her favourite, and James had booked a table for them for his first night back home. Kirsten’s favourite gastroventure, she loves the purity of the flavours here; the shapes she sees and feels are so vivid and in focus.
    She is drinking their signature cocktail, an unBloody Mary-Contrary. The purest vodka swirled with clear tomato water and essence of pepper. They serve it with a long, slender, frozen piece of celery-green glass. Kirsten takes a sip and feels the crystalline shapes appear before her. Not as strong as the first drink, but quite clear nevertheless.
      Damn the law of diminishing returns.
    They’ll get stronger, more palpable, later in the evening; alcohol always makes her synaesthesia more pronounced. Suddenly she feels lips on her forehead, sunshine hue, a warm hand on her back, and she blinks past the crystals to see James.
      ‘Kitty! I missed you.’
    She springs up to hug him, inhales the tang of his neck. He smells like Zimbabwe: hand sanitiser and aeroplane cabin. Also: miswak chewing gum that has long lost its flavour. They hold onto each other for a while.
      ‘I missed you too.’ It was true.
    They sit down, and Kirsten orders a craft beer for him, a hoppy ale; he doesn’t drink cocktails. He always laughs out loud when they watch old movies and James Bond drinks a martini.
      ‘How’s the clinic?’
    He has a slight tan, despite his usually fanatical compulsion to apply SPF100, and crumpled cotton sleeves. He looks tired, but well.
      ‘Understaffed, underfunded, and bursting with sick people: sick children, sick babies. It was difficult to leave.’
    Something small in Kirsten splinters. He grabs her hand.
      ‘Of course, I’d rather be with you than anywhere, but there are just so many – ’
      ‘I understand,’ she says, looking away. It’s easier to be with people you can help.
      ‘So many of the babies there are hungry and neglected. Not like here,’ he says.
      ‘Not like here,’ she agrees. How can you neglect a baby? How come those creeps are fertile, she thinks, when I’m not?
      ‘I mean I can see how the border-baby trade is thriving. When you see kids like that you get the feeling that their parents would gladly part with them for a couple of hundred thousand rand.’
      ‘Awful,’ says Kirsten, pulling a face. ‘They should write it into law that you need to qualify for a parenting license before you’re allowed to procreate.’
      ‘You don’t mean that,’ James says, but she kind of does.
    They order the set menu, and an amuse bouche of wooded chardonnay gelée with pink balsamic caviar arrives, then Asian crudo with a brush of avocado silk, and wasabi sorbet. They keep quiet for the first few bites, allowing Kirsten to appreciate all the shapes, colours and textures of the flavours. The wasabi sorbet in particular sends cool ninja stars into her brain. It feels good.
      ‘How are you?’ James asks, ‘how have you been holding up?’
      ‘I had a very interesting weekend,’ she says, spooning the last of the wasabi into her mouth and feeling the jagged edges of the stars fade away. ‘I discovered the reason I’m so, well, fucked up.’
    James takes a long, slow sip of his beer. They had been through this so many times before.
      One of the problems with long-term mono-relationships, she thinks , is that listening to the same old issues gets eyeball-bleedingly boring. At least now she has a new angle.
    He looks at her, measuring her mood, puts his glass down. She senses him sighing on the inside.
      ‘Kitty, you’re not fucked up.’
      ‘I am, a little.’
      ‘Okay, you are, a little. But so is everyone else. You’re just more aware of your fucked-up-ness than the average creep, because you’re …’
      ‘Special?’
      ‘Not what I was going to say, but let’s go with that.’
    They smile at each other, and it reminds them both of when they started dating in varsity. When things were still shiny.