While the lobster died, Rosie continued her sniffing around. She opened the pantry and seemed impressed with its level of organisation: one shelf for each day of the week, plus storage spaces for common resources, alcohol, breakfast, etc., and stock data on the back of the door.

‘You want to come and sort out my place?’

‘You want to implement the Standardised Meal System?’ Despite its substantial advantages, most people consider it odd.

‘Just cleaning out the refrigerator would do,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing you want Tuesday ingredients?’

I informed her that, as today was Tuesday, no guessing was required.

She handed me the nori sheets and bonito flakes. I requested macadamia nut oil, sea salt and the pepper grinder from the common resources area.

‘Chinese rice wine,’ I added. ‘Filed under alcohol.’

‘Naturally,’ said Rosie.

She passed me the wine, then began looking at the other bottles in the alcohol section. I purchase my wine in half-bottles.

‘So, you cook this same meal every Tuesday, right?’

‘Correct.’ I listed the eight major advantages of the Standardised Meal System.

No need to accumulate recipe books.
Standard shopping list – hence very efficient shopping.
Almost zero waste – nothing in the refrigerator or pantry unless required for one of the recipes.
Diet planned and nutritionally balanced in advance.
No time wasted wondering what to cook.
No mistakes, no unpleasant surprises.
Excellent food, superior to most restaurants at a much lower price (see point 3).
Minimal cognitive load required.
‘Cognitive load?’

‘The cooking procedures are in my cerebellum – virtually no conscious effort is required.’

‘Like riding a bike.’

‘Correct.’

‘You can make lobster whatever without thinking?’

‘Lobster, mango and avocado salad with wasabi-coated flying fish roe and crispy seaweed and deep-fried leek garnish. Correct. My current project is quail-boning. It still requires conscious effort.’

Rosie was laughing. It brought back memories of school days. Good ones.

As I retrieved additional ingredients for the dressing from the refrigerator, Rosie brushed past me with two half-bottles of chablis and put them in the freezer with the lobster.

‘Our dinner seems to have stopped moving.’

‘Further time is required to be certain of death,’ I said. ‘Unfortunately, the Jacket Incident has disrupted the preparation schedule. All times will need to be recalculated.’ I realised at this point that I should have put the lobster in the freezer as soon as we arrived home, but my brain had been overloaded by the problems created by Rosie’s presence. I went to the whiteboard and started writing up revised preparation times. Rosie was examining the ingredients.

‘You were going to eat all this by yourself?’

I had not revised the Standardised Meal System since Daphne’s departure, and now ate the lobster salad by myself on Tuesdays, deleting the wine to compensate for the additional calorie intake.

‘The quantity is sufficient for two,’ I said. ‘The recipe can’t be scaled down. It’s infeasible to purchase a fraction of a live lobster.’ I had intended the last part as a mild joke, and Rosie reacted by laughing. I had another unexpected moment of feeling good as I continued recalculating times.

Rosie interrupted again. ‘If you were on your usual schedule, what time would it be now?’

‘6.38 p.m.’

The clock on the oven showed 9.09 p.m. Rosie located the controls and started adjusting the time. I realised what she was doing. A perfect solution. When she was finished, it showed 6.38 p.m. No recalculations required. I congratulated her on her thinking. ‘You’ve created a new time zone. Dinner will be ready at 8.55 p.m. – Rosie time.’

‘Beats doing the maths,’ she said.

Her observation gave me an opportunity for another Wife Project question. ‘Do you find mathematics difficult?’

She laughed. ‘It’s only the single hardest part of what I do. Drives me nuts.’

If the simple arithmetic of bar and restaurant bills was beyond her, it was hard to imagine how we could have meaningful discussions.

‘Where do you hide the corkscrew?’ she asked.

‘Wine is not scheduled for Tuesdays.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Rosie.

There was a certain logic underlying Rosie’s response. I would only be eating a single serve of dinner. It was the final step in the abandonment of the evening’s schedule.

I announced the change. ‘Time has been redefined. Previous rules no longer apply. Alcohol is hereby declared mandatory in the Rosie Time Zone.’

8

As I completed dinner preparation, Rosie set the table – not the conventional dining table in the living room, but a makeshift table on the balcony, created by taking a whiteboard from the kitchen wall and placing it on top of the two big plant pots, from which the dead plants had been removed. A white sheet from the linen cupboard had been added in the role of tablecloth. Silver cutlery – a housewarming gift from my parents that had never been used – and the decorative wine glasses were on the table. She was destroying my apartment!

It had never occurred to me to eat on the balcony. The rain from early in the evening had cleared when I came outside with the food, and I estimated the temperature at twenty-two degrees.

‘Do we have to eat right away?’ asked Rosie, an odd question, since she had claimed that she was starving some hours ago.