TITLE:  A Moveable Feast

AUTHOR:  Suture

RATING:  PG-13

EMAIL:  holly_springs94706@yahoo.com

CATEGORY:  S, M/S UST, mild Scullyangst, brief S/O in
flashback

FEEDBACK:  is like doorbells and sleighbells and schnitzel
with noodles.

SPOILERS: A tiny one for "Small Potatoes." Really though,
this story could take place during any of the more light-
hearted moments in seasons 5-7.

SUMMARY: Mulder, Scully, and tropical things on a winter's
day.

DISCLAIMER:  I know they're not mine.  I just do this for
fun.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The words slip out of me without any authorization from
above.

"Let me cook you dinner, Mulder," I blurt and wish
conversations came equipped with delete buttons.

Mulder looks up from a rousing game of Minesweeper.  To
his infinite credit, he has the good grace not to appear
surprised or confused.  "Tonight?" he asks in a neutral
tone.  He seems a little distracted, but then again, he is
twenty points away from setting a new all-time office
record.

"Yes," I say just as I remember that my refrigerator
basically contains wilting lettuce, half an avocado, two
oranges, and pesto sauce.  "No.  Wait.  Tomorrow?  Eight
o' clock?"

"Sure," Mulder says, tilting his chair back so he can
prop one long leg on his desk.  Now I have his complete
attention.  "What should I bring?" he asks as suddenly-
amused eyes gleam at me.

I resist the urge to ask him to share the joke with the
entire class.  I have a dinner to cook and my reputation
to uphold.  In that order.

"B.Y.O.B.," I tell him.

"O.K.D.K.," he intones solemnly.  He quirks one corner of
his mouth at me in a Morse-code version of a smile and
turns back to the grave task of establishing himself as
Minesweepers's once and future king.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Artichoke.  Rutabaga.  Cilantro. Monkfish.

Since my appetite packed its bags and left town like a
shiftless boyfriend in one of those paperbacks that aren't
mine, I wander through supermarkets savoring the taste and
texture of words instead. The more distinctive the word
the better.  Last week I went to the little Asian grocery
store around the corner and read the produce off to
myself.  Bok choy.  Yali pears.  Choy sum.  Shiitake
mushrooms.  I loved the way those compact syllables sat
heavy on my tongue.

In the Safeway "ethnic foods" aisle, I decide I'm going
to go Caribbean tonight.  Maybe the sharp flavors will
jump-start an appetite that's been MIA for four weeks now.

My appetite has always been a fickle, fickle thing,
flitting from yogurt with bee pollen to pepperoni pizza to
pungent Thai curries without ever settling down.  Other
people can rattle off a decisive list of food likes and
dislikes at a moment's notice.  I always end up sounding
like a consummate politician trying to please every known
constituency.  When I was five, Mom gave up on the idea of
making my favorite foods.  She just told me to put in
requests when the spirit moved me.

Promiscuous tastes aren't the problem this time, however.
Just the opposite. Everything turns into sawdust the
moment I put it in my mouth.  A few nights ago, I spent
fifty dollars on take-out in an abortive attempt to woo my
appetite back.  I violated dietary laws and UN treaty
lines with the orders I placed: sushi, Tandoori chicken,
enchiladas in a mole sauce, ribs with collard greens,
shrimp scampi, bulgogi.  The neighbors must have wondered
about the parade of deliverymen who showed up at my front
door.  Nothing tempted me in the slightest.  I had one
unagi roll, a bite of the enchilada, and a forkful of
angel hair pasta.  Then I gave the rest to the under-
nourished looking grad students next door.

These days, my stomach is clenched tight like a fist and
eating is a mechanical act I have to will myself to carry
out.

Eating with Mulder helps.  At lunchtime, I can choke down
a salad while he deconstructs the gender politics in Men
in Black and slips me his fries.  As odd as it may seem,
I've eaten some of my best meals on the fly with him.  One
time, on a case in San Francisco, we ate Hawaiian drive-
thru during a stakeout.  Spam and eggs never tasted so
good.  Maybe it's true that food is meant to be shared and
the company of good friends is the best seasoning of all.
Maybe Mulder is the missing all-purpose spice that will
restore food to its former flavor.

I fill up my shopping basket with goodies from distant
lands and head for the checkout lines.  Deep-brown
plantains.  Coconut milk.  Yellow-red mangos.  A bottle of
wine.  Lemons, limes, and tangerines.  For once my
shopping basket doesn't scream "Works-too-many-hours-
single-woman."  I'm broadcasting decadence this gray
winter evening.

The pretty brown-skinned girl at the checkout counter
smiles conspiratorially at me.  "I'm missin' the sun
today too," she tells me in an island lilt, bagging my
items with a brisk efficiency.

"You be sure to feed your man those mangoes slowly," she
winks.

I count out correct change with hands that suddenly shake.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

A flash of pale cream, a hiss of oil, and the sugary-sweet
smell of plantains mingles with the sharp garlic and heavy
coconut already in the air.  I'm nineteen again and back
in Max's small, dark studio apartment trying to read
Walter Benjamin while Max fries plantains in the kitchen.
He's playing bossa nova as he cooks, humming along
tunelessly to the melancholy strains.

I can't concentrate.  Less than an hour ago I'd learned
for the first time what lips and tongues can really do.
Max is no tentative college boy overjoyed when he "gets
it right" by accident. He knows women's bodies, knows
mine almost instinctively.  I swear I can still feel a
phantom heat, a humming in my blood.

The sounds from the kitchen stop and Max is behind me.

"He who has once begun to open the fan of memory never
comes to the end of its segments."  A gentle hand works
itself under my hair and begins to stroke the base of my
neck.

"No image satisfies him, for he has seen that it can be
unfolded."  Erudite Max who can quote every one of the
writers we're reading this semester verbatim has worked
his other hand under the hem of my shirt.  He smells of
smoke and oil.

"And only in its folds does the truth reside."  A tongue
snakes its way into my ear.  A carnal memory hits me so
hard I can taste it.  "That image, that taste, that touch
for whose sake all this has been unfurled and dissected."
Benjamin gets lost somewhere in a pile of clothes and
unneeded sofa cushions.

Much, much later we discover that the plantains have burnt
to a crisp.  There's a trick to plantains Max tells me as
we eat ice cream naked in his kitchen instead. Regardless
of what the cookbooks say, you can only cook them over a
low heat, stirring constantly.  When left to their own
devices for too long, fried plantains burn to a crisp in
their own sugar.

That's a lesson for all times. Nietschze, Benjamin,
Derrida, et al, all the writers Max and I read in
Introduction to Modern European Thought, went the way of
the dinosaurs in my intellectual evolution, but I will
always know how to make the perfect fried plantains.

"Earth to Girl from Ipanema," Mulder waves a hand in
front of my face and banishes Max to the shadows.  "I'm
getting a little tired of just standing here and looking
pretty. Is there anything I can do to help?"

He's looking awfully pretty as he lounges against the
counter next to me, a potent blend of sexy slouch and
schoolboy jitters. He came straight from the office, so
I'm treated to the pleasures of after-hours Mulder.  No
tie.  Untucked dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
I'm torn between the urge either to throw myself at him or
snap at him to stop fidgeting.

Ever since he showed up forty-five minutes early, we've
been doing the funny, awkward dance that must be common to
those who frequent the borderlands between friendship and
Something Else.  I told Mulder to use his key and let
himself in because the coconut rice had reached a critical
stage, but I didn't let him hang his coat in the hallway
closet by himself.  I got him a beer, but I waved off his
offer to chop the plantains.

"The shrimp's done, the rice is cooking, and the
plantains are almost done.  I think we're okay."

"No vegetables Scully?" Mulder tries to juggle his empty
beer bottle, but stops himself before I have to say
anything.  He knows I'm not a big fan of potential glass
shards on my kitchen floor.  "I thought you were the
vegetable advocate in this outfit."

"I figured we'd live dangerously for once."  I let him
steal a half-cooked plantain.

"Who are you and what have you done to the real Dana
Scully?"  He moves off to poke around in the
refrigerator.  "Hey Scully.  None of your vegetables
match," he informs me from the depths of the vegetable
bin.

I feel vaguely defensive about my large, mostly empty
refrigerator.  "This from the man who owns cans of baked
beans dating back to the Bush administration.  Hasn't
anyone warned you about the dangers of botulism?"  When
in doubt, fall back on flippancy and the snappy one-liner.

Mulder resurfaces with an armful of green, leafy things
and starts performing some strange Mulder-ish alchemy on
my motley produce.

Reason #103 Mulder Keeps Unfolding Like a Flower: the man
improvises amazing salads. He takes a sad collection of
slightly limp greens, overripe avocados, bruised tomatoes,
and a can of artichokes and transforms them into a
culinary delight.

"You've been holding out on me," I tell him as he
presents me with the fruit of his labors.

"Holding out on you?  Never," he mumbles around a piping-
hot mouthful of stolen plantain.

"I'd always assumed your cooking skills were on par with
your navigational skills."

"You wound me to the quick Scully."  He tries to steal a
plump, garlicky shrimp.

I rap him on the knuckles with a spatula before he can get
to the shrimp.  "If you `sample' anymore of the food,
you're going to spend the rest of the evening watching me
eat."

"You know I like to watch."  His words are sly innuendo,
but his voice suddenly goes tender, shattering our
carefully constructed playfulness.

I can't meet his eyes, so I busy myself with pouring the
coconut rice into a blue bowl.  This isn't part of our
agreement.  We're like two Kabuki actors, Mulder and I.
We approach each other with stiff, measured steps and
offer `til-death-do-us-part loyalty and sacrifice, relying
on the elaborate carapace of our costumes and choreography
to keep us from touching too much.

Mulder turns away from me.  "I'll set the table," he
offers and I let him because I can't stand to hear the
disappointment in his voice.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

I've forgotten that, at the right moment, eating good food
is like a less-naked version of sex.

Sprawled on the floor of my living room with half-full
plates propped on our stomachs, we're caught up in the
sheer physicality of a well-cooked meal.  Mulder's eyes go
liquid as he swallows another bite.  His cheeks are
slightly flushed and his mouth gleams oil-slick.  Moist,
rumpled, and sensual, he looks like the centerfold for
some incredibly highbrow porn magazine for food
fetishists.

My body is thrumming from a mixture of nutrients and
sensory overload.  The three glasses of sangria I've had
can't be entirely responsible for the way my blood sings.
Astrud Gilberto murmurs plaintive, seductive nothings in
the background and I want to do nothing more than lie here
and play a desultory round of armchair Jeopardy with
Mulder.

"Who is Heisenberg?" Mulder says.  Ronald the preening
actor gets it wrong and Mulder takes another sip of his
sangria.  We decided to add some new rules to armchair
Jeopardy.  Everytime either of us gets a question right
that the contestants miss we have to take a drink.  The
three contestants tonight have earned a grand total of
$4000 and Mulder has gone through a third of the pitcher
on his own.  He's still surprisingly lucid.

"What is the Aeneid?"  I jump in before Debbie the lawyer
rings in.  She guesses, "The Odyssey."  I salute Mulder
with my wine glass and sip.  Onscreen, Alex Trebek looks
increasingly morose.

"Where'd you learn to cook like this?"  The sad Jeopardy
contestants are gone.  Ronald won with $2500.  Mulder and
I both get Final Jeopardy right.  Actors and Actresses.
This actor died before Giant wrapped shooting.  "Who is
James Dean?"

"That's a state secret Mulder," I'm a little alarmed to
hear myself slurring my "s's."

"Oh, but vee haf vays of making you talk Fraulein,"
Mulder puts his empty plate down, props himself up on one
elbow, and pokes me in the shin with his foot.

To forestall any further attempts at bad German accents, I
relent.  "From an old college boyfriend.  Max.  He liked
to read Rilke and cook Caribbean food."  It's funny how
easy it is to condense old lovers into a one-sentence long
description.

"A poet and a cook.  He sounds like a keeper." Mulder
watches me with a tipsy version of his intense
interrogation stare.  Somedays, when he unleashes that
still, intent look, I have a hard time focusing on the
actual suspect being interrogated.  It's impossible to
look away from those knowing, pinning eyes.

Right now, though, I'm not so sure I like being the focus
of all of this attention.

I shrug and deflect.  "Every nineteen year old should be
in a relationship with at least one suave, slightly older lover."

"Are you trying to seduce me Mrs. Robinson?" Like the
dexterous, fleet-footed Fred Astaire of dinner banter that
he is, Mulder moves the conversation to safer, more
impersonal territory.  He's still watching and assessing
though.  Maybe he suspects I'm a female Eddie van Blundht
or an Eddie van Blundht who's experienced a sexual
epiphany.  I try to suppress a snicker with minimal
success.

"Are you laughing at me Scully?" His voice is the low,
intimate rumble of late-night, nightmare-prompted phone
calls.

"I'm laughing with you Mul-ler," I'm definitely losing my
ability to enunciate properly.

Mercurial as ever, Mulder steers the conversation into
still and deep waters.  "This was lovely," he says,
gesturing at the assortment of bowls, plates, and glasses
scattered wantonly across the floor.  A tsunami of emotion
sideswipes me as we finally lock eyes.

"Anytime," I tell him.  Mulder's eyes go soft and wide.

There's a long stretch of silence before he pulls himself
into a sitting position.  He's wearing his "Let's-go-
look-at-crop-circles-in-Idaho" expression. "Hey Scully,
do you have any summer clothes lying around?"

I'm so surprised I can only manage a stunned, "Huh?"

Mulder gathers plates and bowls and heads towards the
kitchen.  "There's only one way to end this evening."

"With you playing dress-up in my summer clothes?"
Sometimes it's hard for me to be gracious after I think
I've made a fool of myself.

"I figured we'd save that for another day." He comes back
into the living room to collect more dishes.  "When I was
little, my mom always let us play summertime once every
winter.  When the weather got too cold and depressing,
we'd turn the thermostat up to eighty for a night, run
around in summer clothes, drink lemonade.  You know you
want to Scully."

I hope I've had enough sangria that the sight of Mulder
channeling Will Smith and singing "Summer, summer, summer
time" in a falsetto will magically erase itself from my
mind.

"Only if you promise to stick to Elvis impressions from
here on out."

"Go put on some summer clothes Scully.  I'll clear the
dishes."

As I head towards the bedroom, Mulder breaks into a truly
terrible Billie Holiday impression: "Summer-tahhhm a-a-a-
-nd the liv-in' is eeaa-sy."

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Now is the winter of my discontent made glorious summer by
Mulder family tradition.

Sitting in the middle of my living room in grubby shorts
and a Naked Coed Alien Lacrosse T-shirt courtesy of the
Lone Gunmen, I sip lemonade and eat a grape Popsicle from
the box of Popsicles that mysteriously materialized in my
freezer.  A pile of mango peels and cores lies between
Mulder and me.  I didn't feed him slices of mango like the
girl at the checkout counter suggested I should.  I'm too
wedded to subtext for that.  But, I couldn't help watching
him as he sucked every scrap of mango from the pit. Freud
would have had a field day.

I'm drowsy and warm and sated.  The apartment feels like a
sauna.  In a gesture of pure extravagance, I cracked open
a window so that a little of the sharp, cold air could
temper the heavy warmth.  Mulder lolls on his back, eyes
closed, wearing his unbuttoned dress shirt, undershirt,
and a pair of running-shorts that somehow ended up in my
dresser.  Maybe we should open an X-Files on laundry with
a migratory impulse.

I can picture a young Mulder, limbs akimbo, finally still
and quiet in the simulated heat of a winter night.
Samantha would be nearby playing jump rope because it's
summer and that's what little girls do in the summer.
Mrs. Mulder sits in a rocking chair and pretends to be an
announcer for the Red Sox because summer isn't summer
without baseball.  "He's rounding third.  He's headed for
home."  For one night, the three of them inhabit a brief
and shimmering cocoon of unconditional love.
I stretch my legs out and pretend to bask in the sun.
We're two kids in a primordial sandbox tonight.  Some
post-modern version of Adam and Eve before the fall-all
glorious, blazing erotic innocence.  I curl up on my side
inches away from Mulder.  I don't need fig leaves in this
temporary Eden.

An arm curls itself around my waist loosely.  There's no
demand in Mulder's touch.  He's issuing a promissory note
that I can collect on anytime.  He curls himself around
me, an elegant quotation mark in search of his mismatched
mate.  He whispers something and it takes me a moment to
make it out.  "O love, be fed with apples while you may."

I fall asleep secure in the knowledge that I have.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Author's Notes:

Just a few citation issues that walk the thin line between
homage and plagiarism:

1) The lines about the "fan of memory" come from Berlin
Chronicle by Walter Benjamin.
2) The line "O love, be fed with apples while you may" is
from a poem by Robert Graves by way of A. S. Byatt's
Possession.
3)  The idea of summering in winter comes from Pages for
You by Sylvia Brownrigg.