“5 minutes left in your meeting.”
Diego’s eyes darted to the top of his computer screen where the message appeared. It lingered there a few seconds above the faces of his colleagues before fading away.
Please oh please, he thought. Please end before that.
He looked at the other participants in his meeting. Derek was clearly not paying attention. His eyes were glazed over in a way that said he’d secretly clicked away to read his emails. Yes, he was typing now. Not subtle at all.
Diego saw similar levels of disinterest from Janine, Emil, Dory, and Elisapee. Dougie, however, was rapt. He hung on Deb’s every word as if their boss was delivering a message she’d received on the top of Mount Sinai. He nodded in fierce agreement every ten seconds or so.
Diego blinked slowly so as to not show an eye-roll.
What the hell kind of grown man goes by the name ‘Dougie’? thought Diego.
“But,” said Deb, glancing to the bottom corner of her screen to see the time, “we’ll have to circle back on that after lunch. I see we’re five minutes before noon…”
Four, thought Diego.
“...so I’ll give you back those minutes and we can pick up where we left off later. Have a great lunch, everyone.”
“Take care!” said Dougie quickly, his finger always hovering over the “un-mute” button.
“See you, everyone,” said Janine, a second later.
The rest didn’t bother turning their mics on. They smiled and waved. Diego found himself doing his usually double-hand wave in the bottom third of his screen. Two quick pumps of the “bye-bye” gesture before hanging up on the call and wrenching the headphones from his ears.
Diego sighed.
He took a deep breath.
Lunchtime. Time to step away from his desk in the spare bedroom of his apartment. Time to turn off all thoughts of work and deadlines and the never-ending onslaught of meetings.
But also. Time to pee. He ran to the bathroom.
Walking out of the bathroom with an empty bladder and clean hands, he looked at the clock. 11:59.
Diego dashed to the kitchen. He had just over ten minutes to get lunch ready before his date arrived. Everything had to time out perfectly so they’d have the rest of their lunch hour to enjoy each other’s company.
Diego grabbed the medium cast iron pan from its shelf beside the stove and took it to the sink. Poached eggs tend to scatter in too much water, so he filled it a little less than two inches deep. He carefully walked the pan to the stove and turned on the burner.
He looked at the clock. 12:01. Nine minutes until the doorbell.
Diego grabbed his favourite two large plates from the upper cupboard beside the sink. They were the vintage Norleans Mystic China ones he bought at the flea market last summer. He placed them on the counter, side by each, and admired the simple border of diamond shapes painted in pale green, blue, and pink.
He thought of an article he read years ago about how we psychologically eat more if we eat off larger plates. He put the Norleans plates back in the cupboard and grabbed a couple of plain white, medium-sized plates.
Clean. Classic.
He crossed the kitchen to pull a carton of eggs from the fridge. He carefully cracked three into a small glass bowl. He was a pretty good cook, but he was still slightly superstitious about poaching eggs. He always gave an extra egg to the pot, just in case one turned out poorly. And if they all turned out well, it meant the chef could enjoy a private bonus egg.
12:03. Seven minutes until the doorbell.
Diego had picked up a loaf of crusty sourdough bread at the market Saturday. It was two days old, but he hadn’t sliced into it yet. It was still fresh enough for toast. He placed it on the cutting board and carefully cut several slices. He picked out the two largest and set them beside the toaster. He wouldn’t dunk them just yet. Timing was everything.
A faint bubbling sound alerted him to the boiling pan on the stove. He turned down the burner to coax the pan into a gentle simmer. While he waited, he gathered the loaf and remnant slices of bread from the cutting board and tucked them into a paper bag. He wiped the crumbs from the board and placed beside it a red onion, a bunch of parsley, a ripe red tomato, and an avocado.
12:06. Four minutes until the doorbell.
Diego stirred the water in the pan to create a gentle vortex. He read about this technique years ago to prevent his eggs from spreading in the water. He carefully dumped the eggs one at a time into the swirling water and watched them circle the pan once before settling at their eventual corners. He turned down the burner slightly.
Now it was time to make toast. He dropped the slices into the slots and depressed the lever. A lot of people swear by the clock when it comes to timing poached eggs, but in Diego’s opinion, it took exactly the amount of time to make and carefully butter two slices of toast.
While the eggs poached and the bread toasted, he turned his attention to the vegetables. He grabbed a small handful of parsley and rinsed it under the tap. He laid the greens out on a tea towel and dried them carefully before dumping them on the cutting board.
Is there anything that smells as nice as freshly chopped parsley? Diego doubted it. Outside his window, the January winds swirled up the powdery snow and pelted the glass. With the smell of fresh parsley in his nose, Diego closed his eyes and it was the height of summer. He scraped the chopped herbs into a bowl and wiped his board and knife clean.
The tomato was particularly nice, especially this deep into winter. This tomato, he bought Saturday at the market from Damandeep, who kept a little greenhouse just outside of town. The tomato had the irregular shape of an heirloom and was streaked with different shades of purple. He sliced it in half straight through the stem, then again in quarters. He removed the bit of core around the stem and chopped the rest into small pieces. He scraped the tomato into the bowl with the parsley. He wiped his board and knife clean.
Diego didn’t want to overwhelm the rest of the veggies with too much onion, so he diced just half of this small red onion and added it to the bowl. He gave it all a thorough mix with a healthy sprinkle of coarse salt and divided it into two very small bowls, one for each of the plates.
The toast popped just in time. He grabbed both slices and cut them in half before laying them on the plates. He scooped a bit of butter from the crock and scraped it across the toast.
12:09. One minute.
He checked the eggs. They were so close to perfect. He had just enough time to cut his avocado in half and pop the seed. He daren’t slice it up before rescuing his eggs, or they’d be overdone.
He carefully lifted the eggs from the water with a slotted spoon. Two of them were textbook perfect poached eggs, nicely flatish and oblong with a perky yolk. The third was just so-so. He set it aside for the chef to enjoy later. He placed an egg on each plate and gashed the yolks with his spoon to stop them from cooking and to expose the shine of the jammy yellow insides.
He glanced at the clock the exact second the knock came to the door. The clock was just switching from 12:10 to 12:11.
“Right on time,” he whispered.
Diego could not believe they’d been able to keep their little office romance a secret. Is it safe to call it a romance? he wondered. Yes, it probably was. Things were going really well. Graduating from movie dates to weekday lunch trysts was a pretty clear sign.
It felt a little dangerous. Diego wasn’t even sure work had a policy about dating coworkers, but it didn’t really matter. They didn’t want any of the crew to know they were a thing until, well, they were a thing.
Three more knocks on the door.
“I’m coming!” he called.
But he wasn’t coming. Not just yet. He had yet to slice the avocado. He carefully scooped the ripe green flesh and placed it on his cutting board. A few long slices with the knife and he was done. He picked up the slices from the board with the knife blade and fanned them on the plates. He sprinkled both plates with salt.
Three more knocks. More urgent this time. Not angry, but definitely with a bit more intent.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It was 12:13. He’d waited too long.
Diego ran to the door, feeling terrible. He thought he’d timed it all out so perfectly, and here he was, leaving his love waiting at the door.
Hold up, he thought, standing at the threshold, his hand reaching for the doorknob. Did I just think the word “love”?
Of course not. It was too soon.
Was it?
He’d never been in love before. How do you know when you were in love? You hear stories all the time of people who fell in love quickly. The expression “love at first sight” existed, right? So it had to happen.
He assumed the timing for love had to be perfect. Diego was a pretty specific person about time. He timed most things. It’s what made him so good at his job.
Funny though. He realized he doesn’t time everything.
Take poached eggs. He just worked on a vague notion of simmering them softly while he toasted and buttered bread. He just knew when they were perfect.
Was love so different?
The person on the other side of the door drove him absolutely crazy. The two of them were different in a lot of ways. But that seemed to make him even more convinced.
Maybe it was love.
Maybe?
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
“Are you literally standing at the door waiting to open it?” called a voice.
“I am so sorry,” said Diego.
He grabbed the door handle and swung it open. Dougie greeted him with a big goofy grin.
“Hello Diego,” said Dougie.
“Hi Dougie,” said Diego.
“What’s for lunch?” said Dougie, walking past him into the apartment.
Diego smiled.
“Perfectly poached eggs.”
Thank you so much for hanging out in Dunnock Bay this morning. I hope you’re enjoying reading as much as I’m enjoying writing.
Be sure to also check out my weekly newsletter The Quack where I have a lot of fun writing about not much at all.
Have a great week. <3 Davy