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When there’s a lull, I ask a question that I’ve been wondering since I met her. “Why are you vegan?”
“So, I’m not a super strict vegan, and I actually consider myself plant-based, not vegan, but hardly anyone knows what that means. There’s a surprisingly large amount of food with animal products in it. I was super strict for a long time, but now I don’t worry about it too much. I don’t eat flesh or dairy or eggs. I don’t stress over wine.” She pauses and takes a sip. “Or cosmetics, or a variety of smaller things. As to why, there are a lot of reasons. Meat is bad for the environment. It’s bad for the animals. But mostly,” she continues as she stirs something thick and white on the stove, “it’s for my health. There are a lot of studies out there correlating meat to lower life expectancy.”
“My mom changed her diet when she got sick. Or she tried to. She wasn’t much of a cook, so taking care of herself that way was hard.”
Sara nods. “It is a lot of work. Hence the knife skills class and such. Okay.” She switches off the stove. “You’re about to have your first vegan meal, the perk of being my roommate.”
I watch as she assembles dinner and then presents with a flourish. The savory, umami smell of sautéed mushrooms hits me first, then the richness of the sauce.
Sara climbs onto the barstool next to me and angles her wine glass toward me.
“Cheers.”
“Prost.”
The food is freaking delicious. “Fuck, how are you not a chef?”
Sara laughs. “Turning a beloved passion into a job is a surefire way to start hating it.”
That’s fair.
Sara talks while we eat, and I try to slow down to enjoy the taste. She’s telling me about substitutions and cooking techniques, but it just feels like magic to me.
She tries to gather our plates when they’re empty, but I beat her to it. “You cook, I clean.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hey, I may not be able to cook, but Iamcapable of cleaning.”
“All right, then I’m going to go meditate. Unless you want to join?”
“This was healthy enough for one day.”
She laughs. “It was nice having dinner with you, Chris.” She pats my shoulder before leaving the kitchen.
“Hey, man!”Ram says as soon as I answer the phone. Our drummer calling at one in the morning probably isn’t a good sign, and he sounds drunk as fuck.
“Ram, how’s it going?”
Tonight, I’m sitting out on the patio in the cold air, a cigarette keeping me company on an otherwise empty night. Sara’s bedroom light went out hours ago, and I have hardly moved since.
“I have a song idea.”
I grimace. This isn’t the first time since the tour ended that I’ve fielded a call like this from him—or from any of our band members, actually.
“Yeah?” I say.
“Yeah, hang on, hang on. I wrote something down.” There are the sounds of people talking, low music, and chair scraping. “Yeah, yeah, here it is.”
I wait while he clears his throat.
“Upside-down and underwater. And that’s all we are,” he reads aloud.
It takes me a few beats of silence to realize he’s finished, that those two lines are all he’s got for me.
But then again, that’s maybe two more lines than I have after weeks of working before Sara moved in.
“Say it to me again.” I put him on speaker phone and open a notes app to write them down.
