I want to cook, but with Lucy standing there, looking so delectable, and having missed her so much over the past few days, cooking can wait. Her mouth is mine and she’s hot against me. Her arms come around my neck, and I have a feeling we’re not going to get to dinner for a while yet.
My knees are weak when we finally part, both of us breathing heavily.
My stomach growls. Then so does Lucy’s. She laughs, resting her head on my shoulder. “Rain check for later?” she asks.
My stomach growls again. “I think so.” We’re still reluctant to part. I take out a second cutting board and knife, and take the chicken thighs out of their packaging. “How do you want these cut?”
“Diced in larger cubes, or pieces, just not too big,” Lucy says. “They’ll need to cook quickly in the wok.”
I get to work. Standing next to her, our elbows brushing now and again, the scent of ginger and onions rising in the air…it feels right. Our time in the kitchen is a bit like a dance as we move around, getting ingredients ready, the oil in the wok, the bamboo wood utensil, turning on the stove burner. I watch as Lucy watches the oil in the wok.
“Once it shimmers, it’s hot enough,” she says. She takes the cutting board with ginger and onions and scrapes the contents into the oil. There’s a sizzle and a pop and the sharp scents rise in the air. It smells amazing.
“Do you have any sesame oil?” Lucy asks. “It’d go great on the chicken before we toss it in.”
I go to the pantry and do the bottle shuffle, finding the small bottle of sesame oil I think I’ve used maybe twice in the last six months. I hope it’s still good. I open it and sniff a bit. It doesn’t smell rancid. “How’s this?” I hold it out to Lucy. She’d probably know better than I do. I’ve cooked for years, but I feel out of practice. It’s been so long since I’ve made a proper meal, aside from helping her mother that one night.
“Still good,” Lucy says. “Chicken in a bowl and tossed with the oil, then we’ll get that in the wok.” She stirs the onions and ginger while I do as asked.
“Ready?”
“Let ’er rip,” Lucy says, and I dump the chicken into the wok. There’s another sizzle, and Lucy stirs a bit, making sure the chicken is well spread out.
The water in the larger pot is boiling.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Slice the ends off the gai lan, and then plop them in the pot,” Lucy says. “It won’t take too long for them to cook. They’ll get nice and tender.”
My stomach growls again. “It won’t be too soon.”
“I know what you mean.” Lucy leans over to me, and I meet her with a kiss. “We need to do this way more often.”
“Kiss?”
“That. But cook too,” Lucy says. “If we’re ever going to get the restaurant off the ground, we’ll have to do a lot of testing.”
Hours in the kitchen with Lucy.
I want that.
I really want that.
* * *
Before long, the meal is ready. I plate up the chicken, which has been drizzled with soy sauce, and Lucy drains the gai lan before tossing it back into the now empty pot with some oyster sauce. She tosses it, lightly coating the greens, then places it alongside the chicken.
“We could have done rice too,” Lucy says, “but this will be delicious on its own.”
I can’t help but pluck a piece of chicken from the plate and pop it into my mouth. It is delicious. Better than I’ve ever had. I close my eyes.
“Let’s eat at the bar,” Lucy says. “Try not to inhale it all.”
I laugh and open my eyes and take the plates to the bar. Lucy grabs cutlery from the drawer and tears off a piece of paper towel for each of us. “For the extra drool.”
“Want a glass of wine?” I head to the fridge and pull out a bottle I’ve had chilling.
“Just a small glass,” she says. “I don’t drink much.”
“It’s a good one. French, from Sancerre.”
We dig in, and it’s quieter than it’s been all evening. I’m savoring every bite, that flavorful zing of the ginger and onions, that brief taste of the sesame, and the tender crunch of the stalks of gai lan, with its wilted leaves reminding me a bit of sautéed spinach. I feel like I could eat this forever.
Lucy eats slowly, thoughtfully, and I wonder what she’s thinking about. I take a sip of my wine, trying to slow my own eating, but honestly, it’s so delicious that I can’t be slow. When I’m done, I sit back in my chair, savoring what I’ve just eaten, taking small sips of wine. I glance at Heimei, sitting there in her metal catlike glory watching over us, then at Lucy. I can’t help but feel a bit of wonder at her presence here, loving her being in my apartment, in my kitchen, sitting here with me. I don’t know why I feel like this with her. I know my apartment has felt lonely, even a bit sterile. All work. Lucy brings warmth here, just like her sculpture. Her creativity amazes me.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says after she finishes her last bite. She sits back in her chair, shifting to face me.
“About?”
“Names. We can cook and eat, but if we can’t get the people in, then what? We need a name that pops, that grabs their attention.” She picks up her glass of wine and takes a sip. “But I don’t know what the place should be called.”
“Brainstorming. Hold on.” I hop down from my chair and go to my home office, my second bedroom, grab a yellow legal-sized pad and a couple of pens. I come back and shift my plate to put the notepad down.
“I know you suggested The Cat’s Paw, but if we do Cantonese/Canadian fusion stuff, then what about Canasia?” Lucy suggests. I write it down. “Or what about something about the location, or the food itself?” Lucy adds. “There’s a small storefront in town that I was thinking might do, and it’s just around the corner from the main street.”
“Around the Corner?” I suggest. “Around the Bend?”
Lucy rests her chin on her hand. “Maybe. Write those down.”
I scribble down both names.
“Cantonese Corner?” Lucy adds.
“Sumo Corner?” I add, thinking of a restaurant a few blocks away.
“Not unless we’re doing sushi.”
“What if we name it something similar to your farm?” I ask. It makes sense to me—Lucy already has a presence in town, and even here in Calgary, with Country Mouse Farms.
“A restaurant named Mouse would be really weird,” Lucy says, though she’s smiling. “It’d make for a cute logo and theme, though.”
I write it down. We sit in silence, and I find myself struggling to think of something creative, something fun. Something that will draw people in.
“Cantonadian?” I suggest, though just saying it, I feel a cringe at the silliness of it. Like the celebrity gossip rags and their Brangelina nicknames.
Lucy chuckles. “That sounds awkward.”
“It really does. The worst kind of celebrity couple.”
“Kitlu.”
She says it so quickly I’m not even sure what I heard. “Say that again?”
“Kitlu,” she says. “Kitty-Lucy shortened.”
“Kit-Lu.” I write it down, both hyphenated and not.
“We could always use my Chinese name,” she says. “Ming Kitty.”
That one’s catchy. And it brings up something I’ve been wondering about. “Why do you have a Chinese name and an English one?”
“Easier, mostly. Especially when I was a kid. How many kids at the country school had even met someone named Ming?” Lucy shakes her head. “And I always liked Lucy. Mama used to watch I Love Lucy on TV when I was really little. She was funny.”
“I’ve only seen clips.”
“Why are you called Kitty?” Lucy asks.
“Short for Katherine,” I reply. It’s automatic, a question I’ve had so many times.
“I like Katherine,” she says. “Like Katharine Hepburn.”
“But hard to say when you’re two,” I quip. “That’s why Kitty, at least at first. Then it stuck.” I shrug. “So, Kitty.”
“Do you like it?”
I haven’t really thought about it before. But it’s me. I’ve never really thought of myself as a Katherine. “I’ve always been Kitty. Katherine would be weird.”
“There we are, both of us with names we didn’t quite intend,” Lucy says. She lifts her glass of wine and we clink the rims.
“At least here we can choose,” I say. I shift on my chair. “Let’s go sit in the living room. It’s more comfortable there.”
Lucy slides off her chair, taking her glass in one hand and the notepad in the other. I move into the kitchen and grab the bottle of wine from the fridge, scooping up my pens and glass on my way back. Lucy settles on the sofa, propping her stocking feet up on the coffee table.
“I’m really feeling Kit-Lu,” she says, holding out her glass for more wine. I oblige, sinking down next to her.
“Or Ming Kitty,” I say.
“Ming Kitty. Ming Kitty. You don’t think it’d start to sound silly?” Lucy asks.
“Almost anything does if you say it too many times.” I pull my phone from my back pocket and google the name. The first hit is a cat looking for a home on one of the pet-finder websites. I keep scrolling. Nothing there that’s anywhere near what we’d be doing. I type in the name of a domain provider and try it out. It’s not taken yet.
I show Lucy. “That’s a real possibility. Should we?”
“Do we want to take that leap?” We look at each other.
“Do we ever.”
We have a domain name. And a plan.