The Long Table
A dinner party with close friends
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I have been cooking since three o'clock and the kitchen looks like something has exploded in it. There is flour on the ceiling. I do not know how flour gets on the ceiling. It just does.
The guests arrive at seven, which means they arrive between seven-thirty and eight-fifteen depending on the person. Yusuf is always exactly on time and always brings wine. Petra is always fifteen minutes late and always brings flowers that she has clearly just bought from the petrol station but presents as if they came from a garden. Daniel arrives last, breathless, with a very good excuse that is probably not entirely true, and chocolate for dessert.
By eight-thirty we are all sitting down and the table looks nothing like I planned — the candles are different heights, someone has put their jacket over the back of a chair that was supposed to be clear, and the bread is in the wrong basket. But none of that matters because the wine is open and everyone is talking at once.
This is the thing about people you have known for a long time. You can all talk at once and somehow follow multiple conversations simultaneously. Petra is telling a story about her neighbour's dog. Yusuf is explaining something complicated about his job that I follow for about thirty seconds before I lose the thread. Daniel is eating the bread before the food arrives and pretending not to.
The food is good. Not perfect — the sauce is slightly too salty and I overcooked the vegetables a little — but good. Nobody mentions the vegetables. Yusuf says the sauce is excellent. He might be lying, but it is a kind lie and I accept it.
After dinner, nobody moves for a long time. The plates are still on the table. Someone has lit another candle. The conversation slows down into something more comfortable — the kind of talking that does not need to go anywhere in particular.
At midnight, Daniel falls asleep on the sofa for eleven minutes. He wakes up and claims he was just resting his eyes. We have a photograph of him snoring. He knows we have the photograph.
People leave slowly, in the way that people who do not want to leave always leave. More hugs than are strictly necessary. Promises to do this again soon, which this time we actually keep.
I wash up alone in the quiet kitchen. The flour is still on the ceiling. I will deal with it tomorrow.