“I always find the blue ones to be too cold, whether they’re roasted, grilled, seared or served in a rich béchamel sauce,” he said in between chewing his food and inserting another piece of prime roast between his lips and running the fork across his teeth.
He sat at the head of the table, clad in a burgundy dinner coat over a ruffled, white blouse. A mess of perfectly oiled and curled black hair sat atop his pear-shaped head. His full, black eyebrows nearly obscured his smallish, close-set blue eyes, which he shielded with tiny, rectangular blue-tinted glasses. His nose rose like a pink peak from two billowy, ruddy cheeks. Beneath his tamed and waxed mustache, which curled out comically at the ends, small, red puckered lips emerged.
He held himself with esteem of one who finds his charms immensely pleasurable and cannot fathom how they could be lost on anyone except those given to boorish and unfortunate life lots.
“The green ones,” he said, holding his knife and fork aloft like a maestro with stubby sausage fingers attached to fleshy ham-hock hands, “have a fresh, nearly ripened quality – a roundness of flavor, if you will. I find them most refreshing in the spring with a rocket-and-Pecorino salad, or as a mid-summer treat with squab.”
He sliced into the glistening slab of meat, letting the silver scrape across the plate’s white porcelain surface. He raised the cut, puckered his mouth open and pushed the morsel in; gravy dripped down his chin. He raised his glass of red wine, took a gulp and set it on the table. Oily finger prints shone in the candle light.
“But the brown ones,” he said, his voice trailing, “So robust, so flavorful, so…aahhh…bravisimo!” He sat back, put one paw across his stomach, and kissed the finger tips of his other hand. “The browns’ flavors could be woody, sweet, earthy or savory. They melt in your mouth and are perfect with a red wine reduction. Autumn is the best time for the browns.”
He surveyed the feast laid out in front of him on the oaken table piled so high with roasted game, succulent root vegetables, aromatic breads and rich cheeses that the guests couldn’t see each other across it save for the shadows they cast on the opposite walls of the wine cellar by the baroque candelabras.
He sat back and ran his fingers across the outline of his lips, musing. “Autumn is my favorite time of year,” he announced. His proclamation was answered with a chorus of “Oh, yes,” “Hmm!” and “Absolutely!” As he sat forward in his intricately carved, wooden chair with the plush velvet cushions, and surveyed the guests, he noticed the curly auburn-haired woman sitting two chairs down from him on his right. She looked at him confidently, listening to his oratory and daintily picking at the food on her plate. No one else at the table would look at him directly, but she didn’t blink or shy away.
He leaned down the table to get a better look. His shirt cuff rested in the gravy bowl, but he didn’t seem to notice. “And you, my dear. You are?” he asked.
“Charlotte,” she said as she picked up a sliver of meat from her dish and popped it into her mouth.
“And your eyes,” he said, leaning ever further, spilling the gravy, “What color are they? I have never seen eyes like yours before.”
“Hazel,” she said. “I hear they taste like caramels.”
[Three Word Wednesday submission using the words charm, robust and feast.]
