$18.00 Hummus
Deep into a Wednesday night shift, Mindy lay on the couch in the doctor's lounge, straddling a bag of pita bread. Uncensored, she spooned heaping globs of hummus onto the bread, licking it off.
"Gross."
Danny lay down on the adjacent couch, pulling a blanket over his shoulders.
Mindy looked up from her bread, narrowing her eyes. "Don't judge."
"That stuff stinks." His eyes were closed.
"Get serious. I went all the way to the Lower East Side to get this stuff. It was eighteen dollars." She showed him the minimalistic Mason jar with the recycled paper label. "It's from Union Market." Her smile beamed pride. "Yelp dot com rates it New York's tenth trendiest grocery."
"Please stop."
"The artisanal bakery is out of control. This pita bread has chia seeds in it. Chia seeds. Like, the homemade grass pet, Danny."
"I never had one."
Mindy shoved her hummus'd pita into her mouth. "Staten Island is the worst." Fixing a piece of bread for Danny, she nudged his immobile shoulder. "You want some? It's late. You should eat more than that gross white chalk froth."
"It's a protein shake."
"Well this is protein from chickpeas, not some alphabet chemical. Here." She nudged him until he accepted the bread, taking a bite and balancing the rest on his chest. "Now shh, because this is the one movie Adam Sandler has made that warrants any sort of respect."
A minute passed.
"God, look at Drew Barrymore's hair. I had that cut in 1999. She and Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail seriously swayed me."
"You can't tell me to shh and then start chattering."
"Okay, chattering? You make it sound like I'm an old lady socializing after church. I'm relaying hilarious stories of my turn-of-the-millennium mistakes."
"Okay, but just shh, because you're talking over the dialogue."
"Ugh."
Silence fell over them as Mindy refocused her attention on The Wedding Singer playing on television. She and Danny, heavy eyed, sat transfixed on the film, letting the heavy weight of sleep relax their senses. Danny reached over to Mindy, sliding two more pieces of bread from the bag that rested on her lap. She had fallen asleep.
It was quiet without her commentary. Danny sat up, screwing the vacuum sealed lid back onto her jar of hummus. He knotted the bag of bread and, with a light, quiet step, put both in the mini refrigerator with a napkin covering them, onto which he scrawled M Lahiri.
He lingered by the couch, waiting to see if she'd open her eyes. The bright television reflected off of her glasses lenses. Slow and rhythmic breathing told him she'd fallen asleep. Looking around, with nothing else to do for the foreseeable future, Danny sunk back onto the couch. Part of him wanted to wake Mindy up, just to have someone to talk to.
Danny held onto the remote, willing himself to change the channel. Remote poised to search out Ghost Hunters or House Hunters or any sort of hunters, he paused at the dialogue on the screen:
"If you find somebody you can love, you can't let that get away."
His glance over at Mindy was brief and natural: a reflex. He exhaled loudly and flipped the channel.
She stirred. "Hey, don't change the channel. I got here first."
"You're asleep."
Mindy shifted and yawned. "Come on, Danny, I don't want to watch stupid OLN. Please turn it back."
"Alright, alright." Danny flipped the channel back. "There."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Can I have the remote back?"
Danny sighed. "I turned it back. Why do you need the remote?"
"It's a security thing. I don't trust you."
Suppressing a tight-lipped smile, Danny feigned agitation and tossed the remote back to Mindy. He tucked his arm under his head and listened as Mindy's breathing slowed again and she fell back asleep.
-fin.