Oh no, everyone’s done eating, and the lady hosting this dinner party wants us to “retire” to the living room. Retire? There’s a turkey leg dangling from my mouth. I’m not done eating. Can I bring it with me? Because I don’t see any other food in the living room, just paintings of cylinders and National Geographics and a coffee table you definitely can’t put your feet on.
If I give up this real estate now, I will never get it back. The momentum will move from the living room to the coat room and then outside where there are no garlic mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy and bread I didn’t bring. Cannot be cast out of this culinary garden of Eden to have work by the sweat of my brow.
They’re moving. And they’re only bringing their drinks with them, not plates of food or the entire roast beef tray. What if the roast beef wants to retire to the living room as well? Who speaks for him? Must think fast, pretending to tie my shoes is not going to work much longer.
“Let me do the dishes!” I half-shouted in a desperate bellow, feigning generosity. “You guys made this wonderful feast, and it’s the least I can do. I’m too stuffed to talk at the moment anyway.”
Holy shit that last part was brilliant, they appear to be buying my self-deprecation. They resisted, and I insisted, and now I am by myself in the dining room with full access to the kitchen and a bona fide reason to be here. It’s like I just acquired two territories in a game of Dinner Party Risk.
As soon as they left the dining room, I sunk my hand into the roast beef and ripped off a piece the size of a child’s coat, then picked up the potatoes and scooped at them while dancing around the table, humming, “I could have danced all night, and still have begged for more…” The string beans were crunched on, the glazed carrots deglazed, and everything, everything was submerged in gravy like I needed information.
The issue is that now I actually have to do the dishes, but this naturally takes a long time, so if I keep making noises like running water and clanging pots and pans, I can continue to surreptitiously pick at the brussels sprouts and deviled eggs while sipping at the Yorkshire pudding. As long as one big dish is removed from the table every ten minutes or so, a sense of dish progress will be evident to any nosy passersby.
Each tray being transferred from the table to the kitchen counter is enduring a culinary assault en route as my form of an inter-room transportation tax. Best to clean the dishes first and leave the trays so I can continue to graze them into dust. Because once their contents are transferred into Tupperware, they’ll be wheeled into the far reaches of the fridge and sealed away from me forever.
“You sure you don’t need any help on those dishes?” Sara just offered as I was chewing six string beans over the sink, unaware the kitchen boundary had been breached. “Aww, I’m fine, thanks,” I said, not turning around as the beans dropped into the sink and acting as though I were too busy to face her. Hope she didn’t notice that only four dishes were cleaned in the last half hour.
That can’t be allowed to happen again. Need to account for various sightlines and entrances, lest my scheme be discovered. Perhaps I should put a stack of pots and pans at each kitchen entrance, which will make me look busy and send out an alarm as an intruder trips over them.
“Dessert time!” Oh god, didn’t account for this. There was more food—how could I forget about dessert? I can hear them coming toward the kitchen as my left hand holds a dollop of creamed corn, and my right is stuck underneath the turkey’s coccyx. They’ll see that there are actually more dirty dishes than before and discover my fake dishes binging scheme.
I should start a fire or hide in the coat room or just spray the fire extinguisher all over the totally eaten leftovers and say there was somehow an odorless fire that I put out. Fuck, they’re coming in!
Can’t believe I just announced to Sara in front of everyone that her husband is cheating on her and then took my leave in forged disgust. This wouldn’t have happened if we stayed in the dining room.