A Picnic Lunch With Ham Sandwiches & A Beatles Song Joel Allegretti
M
onica arranged the food in the cooler as if fitting together the pieces of a puzzle: the tortellini salad here; the cantaloupe slices there; the cashew brownies wedged between the pasta and the melon. Andrew had a yen for ham, so Monica had prepared three kinds of sandwiches: Black Forest ham with whole-grain mustard on pumpernickel, Virginia baked ham with mayonnaise on rye, and prosciutto with fresh basil and fig jam on Italian peasant bread. Herself a vegetarian, Monica had grilled slices of eggplant, sweet red peppers and oyster mushrooms and piled them on the narrow pallet of an oil-moistened baguette. She sprinkled sea salt on the vegetables, covered them with the oth-
er half of the bread, and laid the concoction in plastic wrap on top of the ham sandwiches. At the sound of the doorbell, Monica glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 10:30, not 10:29 or 10:31. That’s Chip, she thought. I wish I had it in me to be that punctual. “Come in!” she yelled across the room. The doorbell rang again. “Come in!” she hollered at the top of her lungs. Knocking followed. Monica walked the fifteen paces from the kitchen to the front door. “Didn’t you hear me shouting for you to come in?” she asked as soon as she saw Chip. “Good morning. It’s nice to see you, too.”
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