Morticia’s head.
Make her love you.
Who didn’t like breakfast in bed?
I opened the fridge. Just like the last few times, no food had miraculously appeared. It contained the usual chicken breasts and steamed vegetables that I ate, but I didn’t think that was going to work for Morticia. I needed her to be infatuated with me. Poached chicken breast wasn’t going to cut it.
There was no grocery store near me—not that I would know what to do if I went to one. I hadn’t stepped foot in a grocery store since the last time Belle had dragged me when I was a teenager.
In the end, I bribed the doorman to go buy me stuff for breakfast.
“What kind of stuff?” he asked, confused.
I shrugged.
“Do you have a list?” he prompted.
“No. Just what you think a woman might want for breakfast.”
I wished I could wave a magic wand and have cinnamon buns appear. I still had dreams about them…and dreams about Morticia feeding them to me and dreams about her wearing absolutely nothing.
Nothing in my dreams resembled the basket of raw ingredients the doorman brought over an hour later. The sun was just starting to peek up over the buildings in the distance and stream in through the French doors that led out to the balcony.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked the doorman when I looked into the bag.
“It’s all the fixings for a full English breakfast,” he replied.
“I don’t know how to cook any of this!”
“You just put it in a hot pan,” he insisted. “You’ll impress your lady friend.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Morticia’s good people. She helped me figure out my tattoo design.” He took out his phone and showed me a scan of a drawing.
“Wow,” I said, staring at it. I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but of course the tattoo design Morticia had drawn was beautiful and stark and unique, just like her. It was a partial line drawing of a cat stretching, a subtle pattern on the ears and paws, all working together to evoke the essence of a cat.
“It’s cool, right?” the doorman said with a grin.
It was cool. Morticia was cool, and I knew she was not going to be cool with what Greg was planning for the development of Dorothy’s property.
She doesn’t have to find out, and once it gets going, I’ll steer Greg to a better path, I assured myself.
I tried to put it out of my mind. I had a pound of raw sausages that I had no idea what to do with.
“Okay, English breakfast,” I said, reading the first recipe that came up on Google. “First, make the beans.” I had figured I would just have to open the can and heat the beans in a pan, but this recipe called for onions and bay leaves and celery.
“Fuck,” I cursed. I set the can aside and picked up one of the packages wrapped in white butcher paper. “Bacon. I can cook bacon!”
When the smoke alarm went off ten minutes later, it turned out that I could not, in fact, cook bacon. I had tested a small piece, and it was a good thing I did, because sometime between it sizzling away happily and my trying to crack an egg without shattering shells in the bowl, the pan caught fire.
“Shit!” I yelled, running around looking for the fire extinguisher.
“Oh my god!” Morticia exclaimed behind me.
“Evacuate!” I told her. “Where’s the cat?” I picked up a dish towel to try and fan the flames.
“No!” she shouted, snatching it from me and grabbing another pan, stacking it on top of the frying pan. She held it there while I found Cindy Lou, who was spiting and hissing, fur on end.
Morticia peeked under the lid. “Fire’s out.”
“Cindy Lou, we almost didn’t make it!”
The cat meowed at me.
“That was a lot of excitement,” I said, flopping down on the couch. “I say we call it a day and go get McDonald’s.”
Morticia poked around at my haphazard stack of ingredients.
“I was trying to make you breakfast,” I explained as she took stock of the excessive variety of meats. “I swear, as soon as my development is signed off across the street, the first thing I’m doing is putting in a restaurant. It’s going to serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner twenty-four seven!”
“What development are you building in Hamilton Yards?” Morticia demanded.
“Er...” I coughed dramatically. “Smoke inhalation. I need a doctor.”
“You’re trying to bulldoze the art retreat that Dorothy runs,” Morticia said