So many things in my life coincide with what my S encounters.
Last night I read a chapter entitled "Elena" from Anias Nin's Delta of Venus, and when I was almost through it, S comes strolling into the room with "Elena's Mexican Cookbook." Coincidental? Given the steamy nature of Nin's book, I found it quite appropriate that he was reading an old-school style Mexican cookbook. "You gotta hear some of these recipes," he said, and spread out on the bed. S likes old cookbooks. He's a wonderful cook.

I closed my book and sat cross-legged on the bed and watched the fish in the tank while he read me the ingredients, "Twenty jalepeno peppers, ten bell peppers, thirty cloves of garlic, ten eggs..."

We have three angel fish, by far the most flirtatious and always fun to watch, a plecostomas, a krebensis, and two cherry barbs. The tank is on top of my dresser. It makes a soothing watery sound and I like to watch the plants move in the current generated by the pump.

"Thirty cloves of garlic?"
"Yeah, and two pounds of cheese, seven cups of rice,"
"How many people does it serve?"
"It's in restaurant batches. Elena," he showed me the cover, "opened a restaurant when she went blind. Went blind and became one hell of a cook, I guess she did it all by smell and taste."
"The Elena I was just reading about had just had her eyes opened."
"Hm."

I poked his leg, "I like you."
He set his book down and said, " I like you, too."
"Seven years we'll have known eachother, tomorrow."
"I like you even better now."
"Oh yeah? Why?"
"There is more of you to like." I had weighed 95 pounds soaking wet when he met me. His wonderful cooking has added another 20 pounds.
"I know; I have a butt now."
"Oh, yes. But I like you even more than the more amount of you there is. It's exponential, you see."
I did see, and I turned off the reading lamp.