10. Virgil #2
Beyond, I see the feast. There is bread—crust dark and blistered from the oven, dusted faintly with ash. Someone rips a loaf apart, and steam escapes in a soft sigh. Another person pours olive oil into a shallow dish scattered with crushed herbs and a pinch of coarse salt.
I can nearly taste it. Nearly feel the tingle of the herbs upon my tongue, the bread's warm and golden softness in my mouth.
There is cheese—fresh and white, still cool at its center. A hand drizzles honey over it, amber and slow-moving, pooling in the grooves. The sweetness clings, thick and floral, and I imagine how its viscous warmth would coat my throat, sweeten my lips.
Steam rises from a clay dish at the table's center.
It holds a stew, dark and fragrant, the surface shimmering with glossy fat.
A hand ladles it into bowls, and the lentils and chickpeas spill out, swollen and tender, stained reddish-brown from rich wine and crushed tomatoes.
Chunks of lamb land with them, simmered until they surrender at the slightest pressure.
Musa's favorite meal.
I am frozen, unable to pull my attention away. I do not even notice the rest of the feast—the roasted vegetables and free-flowing wine and honey cakes.
My eyes linger on that stew.
I imagine how Musa would close his eyes as he took a mouthful. How he would taste it with his entire presence. How later he would kiss me and the sweetness on my lips would mingle with the warm earthiness of his. His bright smile and shaking shoulders as he laughed at some other's joke.
It was the happiest moment of my life. One of the few snatches of happiness I possessed. Sharing a wonderful meal with Musa, who found such great joy in so many little things. I always had my eyes set toward some distant sense of greatness. He found greatness in a bowl of stew.
"Virgil!" Dante's shout is so roaring, so commanding that it snaps the tether I have found myself bound to. I gasp—out of surprise, not any need for breath—and look to where he stands so near to me, his dark eyes gleaming like coals. "Virgil?" he asks again, more quietly.
"Yes?"
"You were..." He frowns and glances out at the scene I refuse to look toward again, for fear of becoming caught in the loop once more. "Stuck."
"I apologize." Shame glides through me, an emotion that would heat my flesh were such a thing still possible. "It is not often the loops enrapture me anymore."
"Food, though?" Dante asks in a way that makes it clear he finds such a temptation bizarre and perhaps beneath me. The way he says it makes me feel both ashamed and honored—a complicated mixture of emotions.
"Food is not merely food,” I whisper, fighting myself against looking at the scene. How I wish we could hold this discussion outside this realm. "No temptation is the same for any one person."
"Is that how you can walk with others as their guide and not face temptation?" he asks, his head cocked slightly. "By seeing their thoughts instead of your own?"
"It helps, yes."
He seems to consider this, then looks ahead. "I don't see the door yet, so I suppose we keep walking."
I nod again but do not look up. I fear that I will be lost again if my mind even scrapes against the edges of the domestic feast before me.
A feast I am certain I shared with Musa at my side.
With him exclaiming over the floral notes of the honey and the perfection of the blistered roasted carrots. The joy in a perfectly ripe fig…
I release a slow breath, trying to ground myself. The loop has already tried to snag me again, and it is a struggle not to think of it.
"Would you tell me of a meal you enjoyed in life?
" I ask. Dante looks back at me with a furrowed brow, and though it shames me, I continue, "It has been eons since I have experienced any sensual pleasure.
Some are easier for me to avoid." Lust, for one.
I have never found much pleasure in carnal love outside of intimacy with someone I cared for deeply.
"But some are quite difficult. If you would talk, it would help distract me from the loop. "
Dante slows to walk alongside me, almost as if positioning himself to block my view of the oil-fed wicks of the lamps and the laughter of those feasting just beyond. "I'm no poet, Virgil."
"It does not matter. You can simply speak."
"On food?"
"I find things I have never experienced interesting."
Dante's lips thin. He presses his hands behind his back. There is nearly a pained expression on his face. "You now know I starved as a child. I vowed to never be ruled by a desire for food as anything more than basal nourishment again."
A haunted expression has entered his eyes, softening them, making them drift far ahead of us into the nothingness beyond.
"You never had a single meal in your life you truly enjoyed?" I ask.
He sighs. "I suppose I can think of a few."
"Would you describe one?"
The way his body stiffens and tenses, the hesitation, the lack of command in his posture, tells me how much he yields, even considering honoring my request. His jaw tightens, loosens, tightens again. Perhaps studying him wrestling with himself alone will be enough to usher me out of this space.
"I had a bowl of pasta once that was remarkable." He grits this offering between his teeth, like he is giving up legacy and funds to gift it.
"Pasta?" I ask quietly.
"Yes, it's a wheat-based—"
I laugh, unable to help interrupting him. "I do know what pasta is. Even in my mortal walk upon the earth, we had thin sheets of dough formed of flour and water and cooked in boiling water. I am simply curious, what kind of pasta? Where? What made it special?"
Dante's scowl only continues to lift my spirit, and I find myself smiling despite myself.
His strides pick up pace. "The location doesn't matter. It was some foolish little restaurant near a subway stop uptown. I don't even remember which line."
"Yet this meal lingers in your memory for some reason?"
This is working. I have nearly forgotten the clatter and sights just beyond him. I am so enraptured by the way he avoids meeting my eyes, the slightest uptick of the corner of his lip, the way a certain heaviness has quietly left his body.
"It was perhaps influenced by who I shared the meal with," he whispers. I do not press. I can hear the sacredness in his words. That this person was special, and he now carries regrets.
"And you ate pasta there?"
"I certainly didn't choose it. A platter of carbs is neither beneficial for optimal health nor day-to-day function, in my experience. It leaves you sluggish and exhausted. But—" A beat of silence. "The person I ate with ordered for us."
He falls quiet again, and I do not press. There is something sacred here, and I have never been one to trample upon holy ground.
"Do you know what pappardelle is?" Dante asks.
"I do not," I whisper, not wishing to break whatever trance his memory has taken him to. His shoes clip softly against the tile beneath our feet. His watch ticks faintly.
"It's... wider than most," he says at last. "The pasta, I mean. They're long ribbons of dough. They're not elegant. Not uniform, even. They're cut broadly, almost carelessly." He pauses. "Yet this is the meal that M—“ He clears his throat. "Someone wished to share with me."
"Was the pasta served plain?”
"No." His voice has changed and lost its edge.
It is quieter now, less certain, as though he is no longer dictating facts but uncovering them.
"It was served in a heavy sauce, wine-reduced, tomatoes cooked down for hours, probably.
There was meat that fell apart and slipped from your fork when you tried to eat it. It was a messy meal."
"Yet you loved it?" I ask, whisper-quiet.
"Yes," he replies just as softly. "We ate it hunched over the bowl, letting the pieces slip from our mouths.
It tasted rich and indulgent, warm and wine-dark and fragrant with spices.
The waiter grated a heap of cheese on top and poured us overfull glasses of wine to go with it.
You couldn't rush through that meal if you wanted. "
He is staring off into space, his steps slowed to an almost stop.
"Dante," I say quietly.
"Yes?"
"We have made it to the door."
This startles him, and he straightens again, steps back into himself.
"Thank you," I say as his hand lands on the knob. "For sharing that with me."
"Don't mention it." His voice sounds more like the certain and unyielding man I first met, but when I look at him, I cannot help but imagine his lips smeared with red sauce, eyes reflecting candlelight, fingers twisting to capture the messy, indulgent meal...
smiling at whoever the someone was that led him to that table.