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By Root 307 0

They agreed to grow spinach for him. They traded their scallions for leeks grown in the central mountain region for him. They learned that he would not barter, and so they always quoted him their most optimistic price. Either he would buy or he would walk. It was the gamble they took for a chance at an easy week's profit. As for me, they had seen me before, but now they really looked at me, wondering where my allegiance lay. Whether I was the kind who would betray his own to save his Monsieur the equivalent of a couple of centimes. Whether I lived off of their blood or his money. Neither, thank you. After the third week Blériot told me to meet him at five. In the half-light of morning, everyone looks beautiful, I remembered thinking, even the twin sisters selling mangosteens. We took the half of an hour, the half of a waxing moon, and roped it around the city's still, blue streets. Intimacy, or something very close to it, was spun and webbed this way. Every week brought with it another half-hour, another sliver of the moon, till he had the entirety of a night. Naturally, the space between our bodies began to disappear. Effortlessly, we began to touch.

Men like Bão always think that this is when the story really begins. But there is no narrative in sex, in good sex that is. There is no beginning and there is no end, just the rub, the sting, the tickle, the white light of the here and now. That is why it is so addictive, so worth the risk. That is why men like me brave ourselves for it. It is a gamble worth taking. I brace myself for the Old Man's words, his lips sucking their marrow dry: "Where there is gambling, there is faith." Anytime that he has said anything truthful to me, I have come to regret it, because with him truth comes barbed in judgment, thick in condemnation. Truth is something strapped to a man's body before he is led to the water's edge and pushed. Yes, the Old Man was right, but not for the reasons that his sour heart attributed to me. In me, faith did flourish and, like the basket weaver, it was with faith that my story began. When I first heard the weaver's story, I did not see that we had more in common than this. No, I did not think to ask, What keeps him from returning home, to a house surrounded by water hyacinths in full purple bloom?

7

MOST MESSIEURS AND MESDAMES do not want to think about it. They would prefer to believe that their cooks have no bodily needs, secretions, not to mention excrement, but we all do. We are not all clean and properly sterile from head to toe. We come into their homes with our skills and our bodies, the latter a host for all the vermin and parasites that we have encountered along the way. I have seen chefs de cuisine who never wash their hands, never, not even after they stick their fingers into a succession of pots and suckle on them like piglets at their mother's teats. I have seen pastry chefs who think nothing of sticking a finger into their ear, giving it a good swirl, and then working the wax into their buttery disks of dough. Merely a bad habit or a purposeful violation? The answer depends on their relationship with their Monsieur and Madame. When placed in such context, my habit is not so bad. I have, of course, thought about it. The satisfaction that could be drawn from it. Saucing the meat, fortifying the soup, enriching a batch of blood orange sorbet, the possible uses are endless, undetectable. But that is an afterthought. I never do it for them. I would never waste myself in such a way. It is only a few minutes out of my day, usually in the late evening hours when all the real work has been done. The extreme cold or the usual bouts of loneliness will trigger it. I want to say it is automatic, but it is not. I have to think about it each time, consider the alternatives, decide that there are none. I want to say it brings me happiness or satisfaction, but it does not. It gives me proof that I am alive, and sometimes that is enough. I want to say that it is more complicated than this, but it is not.

Most Messieurs and Mesdames never even notice, understandable