Eggs

Such a craving for eggs I had. Indescribable, really, this craving. I don’t know where it came from—maybe the cat I met in the alley the night before, with its tail between its legs, or maybe the sour milk I poured down the drain that morning. Don’t ask me why. Either way, the craving for eggs was so large it could fill my bathtub.

I opened the fridge. Of course, I didn’t have any eggs. What I had was a slab of butter, a red bell pepper, a packet of ground beef, and a tin of tuna. I like my tuna chilled. Makes it soak up better, somehow, all the stuff you mix in with it, the pickled jalapeños and cornichon and the diced red onion. What I had most of in my fridge, though, was nothing. That was the reality.

My jacket had a hole in its left armpit, which didn’t bother me. It was still a perfectly good jacket. A parka, to be more precise. I’d had it for forever. Don’t know where I got it. It could’ve done away with another pocket or two, but, hey, you can’t win ‘em all. It had a nice loose fit that made a summer night’s breeze sweep under it like a mess under a rug. I liked that. Bring the mess t’me, O’ ye filthy brothers, sweep it under me rug, it said to me.

In the hallway stood Mr Paulson, my octogenarian widower neighbour. Dear child has many names. He was fumbling with his keys, as always. Never knew if he was trying to get in or go out. He was locked in that state, it seemed, of always locking or unlocking his door. A kind of Schrödinger’s Fumbler of Keys, if you will.

‘Morning—I’m hoppin’ down to buy some eggs. You need?’ I asked as I passed him.

He grunted and scratched away further with his keys on and around the lock. The sound of metal on metal scratched back at my ears.

‘Eggs?’ I asked again.

‘Got eggs?’ he said, not looking up. ‘Ain’t got no eggs, Sonny.’ My name wasn’t Sonny, by the way, and I wasn’t his son. Last week he’d called me George.

‘I’m going down to buy some,’ I said. I stopped next to him. ‘Do you need help, Mr Paulson?’ I put a hand on his shoulder. Then I withdrew it. He didn’t seem to notice.

‘I don’t need any eggs,’ he said, ‘and don’t got none, neither.’ The number nine on his door hung crooked, one quarter of the way towards being a six. I lived in number six. One day the postman might deliver his mail to mine, if that nine kept turning.

I tried to snatch the keys out of his hands, but he ushered them away. Mr Paulson must’ve lived in that flat for a godawful long time, because everyone knew who he was, but nobody knew who he was. Just one of those people that are always there, I guess, like a fern or something. A plant, taking up space and sound and vibrations in the background. He was nice enough. Didn’t hurt nobody, other than the lock for his door. The area around the keyhole was entirely a different colour from the rest—shining silver—from all his failed key-insertions and such. There was nothing left to scratch off.

Heading out, I considered calling back to him to ask if he needed anything else, but decided against it. He’d got by this long without my buying stuff for him. Why change the rhythm now?

Those eggs were calling for me, bad. I put a step in my stride. Picture it—what a step looks like, and then what it looks like adding it to a stride. That’s what I did. All the way down to the grocers. One step, two step, eggs, here I come.

They had lots of eggs. Thank god. I wanted a lot. The lot, if such a thing was possible—only I didn’t have the means nor the steps in my stride to carry that amount of eggs. A dozen was the amount I landed on; not a dozen eggs—a dozen cartons. A dozen, dozen eggs. Carrying that amount of eggs was hard work, and people turned a funny eye my way when the clerk scanned them all. Don’t know why she didn’t just scan one carton and multiplied it by twelve. Maybe the machine was incapable of such a manoeuvre, in which case they should get a new system. She sighed in frustration. Keep in mind, we’re talking one-hundred and forty-four here. Eggs. It’s a helluva lotta protein, Arnold. They fit in two large plastic shopping bags, though. Neat. Six in each.

My arms were aching by the time I got back. One and a half-hundred eggs is a lot to carry. An egg weighs about fifty-seven grams, I later learned. I was carrying eight kilos of eggs. It didn’t bother me, though, and it sure as hell didn’t stop me.

Mr Paulson was gone by the time I returned. So was his key and its scratching sounds. Who knows whether he was inside or outside? I considered leaving him a carton of eggs, but decided against it.

I set the eggs down in my kitchen, looked at them, at all those carton boxes. It settled in me, a little, that there wasn’t any physical reality in which I’d ever be able to eat this amount of eggs, and even if I could, my cholesterol would shoot through the roof. Probably other things, too. I was gonna cook them, regardless. All of them. How, though?

I could fry them, of course, but I didn’t think I could do more than four at once on my one pan, so that would take too long. Boiling was a good option—I could boil a big load at a time in my largest pot, but I wasn’t craving boiled eggs. Poaching was straight out of the question. Too much work and I wasn’t a big fan. Never got the technique down.

I wanted scrambled eggs. Dina had loved scrambled eggs. Mine, to be specific. I cook them real nice. Butter, whipped cream, fresh chives, salt and pepper. In a pot, let the steam coat the sides, cook the top. On and off the heat. Sour cream to finish it off in a round four knockout. Dina loved them. I’d put them on a piece of almost-burnt toast, wholegrain, serve it with a couple of cherry tomatoes. Smidge of extra virgin. God, she loved them. Her smile when she took that first bite, the small sound of excitement that left her nostrils after she swallowed it. She would squint her eyes. I made them for her almost every day, and if we were ever out of eggs, I would run down to get some more, you bet. We were rarely out of eggs. I would serve them to her while she still lay in bed, either sleeping or on her phone, scrolling her way through the morning. Then she would eat them. Dina loved those damned eggs.

So. I cooked scrambled eggs. Placed my pan on the stove, flipped the gas on. Let it heat for a while, all toasty. I wafted my hand above the pan, felt the heat on my palm. Then I cracked the first egg. It sizzled. The whites turned white. Then I realised I’d forgotten to scramble it. I’d simply cracked it open over the pan. That was it. I’d left all my methods in the hallway, next to Mr Paulson’s lock. It was a fried egg now. I threw it in the bin. Turned off the gas. I stared at the pan and all my eggs for a while. Not thinking, though. Not much was going through my head. Dina was there, sure. Where else would she have been? But nothing else was in there, no feelings, no nothing.

I went into the bathroom, closed the toilet lid, and sat on the toilet, leaning my elbows on my knees and my chin in my palms. I needed a shave; stubbles were pricking my hands.

I looked at the bathtub and remembered how Dina used to lie in there, bubbles all around her, covering her nipples and lacing her shoulders, like a soapy wedding dress. Sometimes I even served her eggs in there. I got in, sat there with all my clothes on, leaning back, looking up at the ceiling, imagining water splashing around me, steam rising to fog up the mirror. Dina yelling at me, Shut the door, don’t dampen up the whole place, we don’t live in a rainforest, she would say.

I got out of the tub and grabbed a carton of eggs, minus the one I’d accidentally fried. Then I took an egg, cracked it on the side of the bathtub, and opened it into the tub. It fell and landed with a plod, egg white splashing around. The yolk stayed intact. The plug was already in. I didn’t know if bathtub drains could handle eggs. I threw the shell on the ground. The egg floated around on the tub’s ceramic bottom. It looked lonely down there, so I cracked open another, then another, until the whole carton was empty and eleven shells lay scattered around my bathroom floor. Then I got the rest of the eggs, all eleven cartons, and placed them next to the bathtub. I took off all my clothes, climbed in, and lowered my body into the eggs already cracked down there. One by one, I took an egg, cracked it open, and let it fall into the tub. Every other egg or so I would crack open over a part of my body. My knee, my stomach, my penis, right down my chest, where it would slip like on a slide. By the time I was done, a long while later, eggs were covering the entire bottom of the tub. That single egg that had looked so lonely at first was now lost in the crowd, a tree in a forest, indiscernible from the rest.

Dina loved my eggs, I tell you.

I hunched my knees together, lowered my back further down. The eggs were cool against my back. I got goosebumps. Cupping my hands, I held as many yolks as I could, then let them rain down over me. Holding a yolk like a small pouch was hard, but doable and satisfying. Sometimes they burst. Every few minutes I would take a single yolk in my hand and squeeze until the yellowy goo flowed out between my clenching fingers. It was cold. I didn’t eat any of them.

I wasn’t smiling through any of this. There wasn’t any joy in it. I don’t know what it was.

By the time the sun had set, I was lying in complete darkness in my egg-filled bathtub. There weren’t any unbroken yolks left. All the eggs were scrambled. Then I started crying. Why? Maybe to see if Dina could hear me crying amongst the eggs I’d scrambled for her. Do you like the eggs, Dina? Do you?

But Dina, my Dina, was lost in the yolks somewhere, one yolk out of twelve dozen, all popped, all splashing around me like a protein soup, one the same as the other, a complete scramble.

Dina, I swear, she loved my eggs.