Save the Best for Last

by Bettye Griffin

  Once she started, the process went very quickly. She removed the meat, added the vegetables, the rice, and then the meat again, mixing the ingredients with stir-fry sauce. “Voila!” she said proudly, tilting the wok and inviting him to look at her culinary creation.

  “Smells great. Makes me reluctant to spend a week in some river town in South Texas. I’ll probably live on Stouffer’s microwaveable dinners.”

  “Nowhere to eat there, huh?”

  “Nowhere I’d want to go. Just little coffee shops, maybe a diner. I actually eat out very little unless I’m able to inspect the kitchen.”

  “Do people actually let you do that?” she asked as she moved the wok to a cold burner. She was beginning to feel a bit uneasy, considering that maybe his offer to help was borne of a desire to inspect her kitchen.

  “If they don’t have anything to hide, they do. But if I think they might kick up a fuss, I just order fried chicken. It’s a good bet that at least it’ll be thoroughly cooked.”

  That’s what he’d had Saturday night, she remembered.

  “Much safer than hamburger. Did you know that meat is often ground together, even when it comes from different distributors? That means if there’s a breakout of E. coli anywhere in the United States you’re at risk, since the meat used in a single hamburger can come from literally hundreds of cows. There’s no such thing as a local outbreak.”

  “Wow,” Vivian said with more interest than she felt. She’d heard all about the danger of eating any meats rare, but she preferred her burgers and steaks well-done anyway.

  “Anyway, being invited to work on this study is a wonderful opportunity for me. I’ll manage, even though the restaurant situation leaves something to be desired. It’s a town, not a city, and there’s only one hotel, one of those midrange places. That concerns me, too. I’ve found that the more expensive the room, the fewer bacteria it has.”

  “I guess that’s true. I’ve always been suspicious of those bedspreads. I mean, how often do you suppose they really clean them?” Without waiting for an answer, she took two plates from the cupboard and handed one to him. “I’m going to let you fix your own plate. There’s plenty; take as much as you want. It’ll just take a minute for the egg rolls to heat up in the microwave.” She busied herself by adding empty bowl and spoons to the dishwater.

  “You know, you really shouldn’t leave dishes soaking like that. Warm water and food is the perfect setting for food-borne germs like Salmonella or Campylobacter to breed.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. It seems to make them easier to wash after dinner.”

  “You’d be surprised how quickly food particles come off, probably just in the time it takes to fill up the sink.”

  While she appreciated the information, at the same time she was feeling the tiniest twinges of irritation. This was supposed to be a fun and light-hearted evening, but it was turning into a lecture on how to avoid germs.

  They took their plates and glasses and sat at the table opposite the kitchen. The ordinary thirty-six-inch round butcher block, for which she’d forsaken standard dinette chairs in favor of a pair of more exotic fan-back wicker chairs, had an especially cozy look to it now that she’d put a crocheted overlay on top of the tablecloth and had lit candles.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” Thomas asked as he put his plate on the table, instantly killing the mood she’d worked so hard to create.

  “Right around the corner.” She knew he wanted to wash his hands; someone in his position would never sit down to a meal without doing that. Hell, she was surprised he’d fixed his plate already. She felt perfectly wholesome herself, having washed her hands thoroughly just before starting to cook. Still, he could have done that in the kitchen. There was a container of liquid soap—fortunately it was antibacterial—clearly visible in the corner by the sink, as well as a roll of paper towels on a holder. Now she found herself worrying whether or not he would think her bathroom was clean enough. Of course, she’d given it a thorough wipe-down with a sponge wet with a mixture of water and lemon-scented Mr. Clean while she was preparing the apartment for entertaining, but she didn’t have time to mop the floor. It was, after all, a Tuesday night, and she’d worked all day. She remembered what he said about the bathroom in the restaurant and wondered if he carried a bacteriometer or something in his hip pocket.

  She sipped her wine and took a few bites, unable to sit there and merely breathe in the appealing aroma of the meat and onions while she waited for him to return. It seemed like he was gone a long time. How long did it take him to wash his hands, anyway? Was he scrubbing under his fingernails? How dirty could his fingernails be, given his obvious tendency toward fastidiousness? Howard Hughes probably hadn’t been this obsessed about germs.

  Finally, he returned and began to eat. “Delicious,” he said after swallowing. “Did you make the egg rolls, too?”

  “No, those came from the deli at the supermarket. I just heated them up. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

  “You know,” he said as he swallowed, “in your bathroom I couldn’t help noticing that you keep your toothbrush in the built-in rack on the wall.”

  “That makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what it’s for.”

  “It would, except that the rack is awfully close to the toilet I did an experiment once where I put three sterile petri dishes around the bathroom and then flushed the toilet. Afterward, I tested and there were bacteria in each dish—even the ones three and four feet away! It has to do with an aerosol cloud…”

  At that point Vivian gave up any thoughts that this could be the beginning of anything memorable and just vowed to get through dinner. If he called when he returned from his trip she just wouldn’t answer the phone. Thank heaven for caller ID, she thought as she took a long gulp of wine.

  By the time he left she had learned all kinds of tidbits, most of them unappetizing. She tried not to gag when he told her that most people’s toilets are cleaner than their kitchen drains; that sponges, dishcloths, and dishtowels are havens for staphylococcus and enterococcus; that doorknobs are rarely cleaned and are usually filthy; and that the cleanest stalls in public rest rooms are often the ones at the far ends, possibly because they are the least used. Then he actually had the nerve to ask why she wasn’t eating. The man didn’t have a clue.

  When he finally kissed her good night and left, she imagined the first thing he would do when he got to his car would be to wash out his mouth with alcohol-based mouthwash to protect himself, since he’d also graciously pointed out—during dinner, no less—that a dog’s mouth is likely to have fewer germs than that of another human. The whole episode made her want to gag.

  Accidentally Yours by Bettye Griffin, available now!