I looked at my schoolmates nervously. I’d been warned about the dangers of messing with the dead. The dark forces. A Ouija Board was not just a Parker Brothers game. Even in our small Iowa town, midafternoon.
“Don’t worry, Meredith,” said Stacy, across from me, her voice cutting through the sound of the other girls’ giggling.
Stacy had offered up her high school attic bedroom for our haunted little party. Lucie and Danielle sat opposite each other, cross legged on the floor, faces hovering over the low coffee table, fingers hovering over the planchette—a flat, heart-shaped finder with a window at the corner through which we were about to watch some otherworldly entity spell out its secrets.
With reluctant hands paused in midair, I was suddenly compelled to yank them back, and claim loudly to whatever spirit or unseen thing was listening, “We’re requesting good spirits only, please!”
The moment the words left my lips, a terrifying force was unleashed into the room. A storm that shook the very air. My vision tunneled in the direction of my wide-eyed friend across the table as everything behind me in the room began to fly past me toward her: dust, books, papers. Stacy threw her arms up to protect her face as artwork, clocks, curtains flew off the walls, clipping my ears and forcing my hair forward, caught in the blast of a demonic beast that was choking darkness into the room. My entire body shook. And it dawned on me, as my lungs began to empty and vision began to blur, that the demonic beast was me. I grabbed at the corners of the coffee table to stop myself from shaking, to stop the whole house from shaking. The most awful sounds were coming out of my mouth. Grunting, panting sounds, a demon from hell using my body, my voice, my very lungs to spew its horrid spell. A poltergeist working its way into a scream.
The guttural, scraping gasps coming from my throat were loud enough to wake me, shake me, back into the present at 4703 North Damen Avenue. My 30-year-old body clawing at sweaty sheets like a horror-film cliche, I fought to recalibrate my psyche back into my second-story Chicago apartment, the awful noises of my nightmare giving way to wailing cries. The street lights shone in through cream-colored curtains and the soft glow of my roommate’s living room lamp found its way all the way down the L-shaped hallway and through the silhouette of my doorframe. I was up and running—turning right, turning right—straight into the arms of Drue, who was at his desk, with earphones on.
He took in my tear-soaked face, instinctively stood, and let me collapse, under the wrap of his giant popeye forearms. He held on, ushering our hug onto his lumpy leather sofa as I relinquished the grip of my terror into more tears.
I finally managed to squeak out a word.
“Nightmare.”
He nodded.
“I was possessed by something evil.” The words sent me into another tailspin.
Drue, a short, broad, boxy man—a veritable Viking who had no concept of an inside voice—spoke artless, affirming words that calmed me—a normalcy that interrupted the dark.
“That f***ing suuuuuucks,” he said.
Drue was the sous-chef at an upscale modern downtown Italian restaurant called Vivere, a flamboyant word that means “to live!” Whereas my days revolved around children’s theater and reception-desk temp jobs, Drue’s workday peaked around the supper hour. After riding the el train for 45 minutes back to our northside neighborhood, he had his own personal dinner hour from 11 o’clock to midnight. With street traffic quiet again and the neighborhood mostly asleep, save a few locals who lingered down at the corner bar, it was a moment of bliss he spent off tired feet, in front of his screen, with a cherished, prepared meal before him.
With my shock subsiding and mind finally settling down, I wrapped myself in my roommate’s Jayhawks throw blanket, the one with cotton tassels. I tucked up my legs, hugged myself, and let Drue resume his desk dinner. He distracted me with chatter about Johnny Cash’s last album, or was it Dave Chappelle, or Henry Rollins, or KU basketball? I don’t remember which; I was captivated, as always, by his supper. Midsentence, he lifted the first of five peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to his mouth. A third of it disappeared behind a row of evenly spaced, very square teeth. The most impressive jaw I’d ever seen made efficient business of that first spongy sandwich. A sleeve of Chips Ahoy cookies and a tall glass of milk stood on standby, as dessert.
I leaned my head on the back of my arm and continued to watch Drue chew and swallow, returning to myself and our cozy shared apartment. White bread, jam, and chocolate did a disappearing act behind his massive mandibles.
“Drue, I don’t understand,” I said, at last. “How can you have such a reverence for food—I mean you spend the day preparing apple-fennel soup, pumpkin risotto, poached pears with foie gras, herb-encrusted whatevers—and then you come home and eat …” I gestured with an open palm to the remainder of processed flour and sugar substances arranged on a white paper towel between his blue screen and red face.
“It’s comfort food,” he said, sounding like a child caught in the act of something he’d been told not to do. A slight whimper, endearing, and rare, for a man of his intimidating stature. A quiet plea for understanding. “It’s comfort food.”
I understood.
After a harrowing day in a hot kitchen, with fire-breathing customers from hell fully expectant of the best meal they’d ever had—because, after all, they were paying good money “to live!”—even the most masterful of chefs just need some down time. With aching legs and back, fresh blisters and burns across fingers and forearms, all this Kansas boy wanted when the silent moon hovered over our big-city apartment was the relief of something sweet. Simple. Easy.
As far as roommates went, and men, Drue was brash, boxy, messy, and masculine. And Drue just happened to be my comfort food.
