The War of the Roses

Trying to stand, she fell back. Her knees gave, but she followed a beam of daylight from the partially opened door and dragged herself up the stairs. The kitchen was a shambles. Avoiding the wreckage, she staggered to the bathroom to survey the damage to her body. There were some bruises visible on the side of her head. A crisscross of cuts ran over her thighs. The blood had caked and there were welts and bruises on her arms. Her scalded hand smarted.

But the physical pain paled beside her anger. She had no illusions about what had occurred. The bastard had booby-trapped the kitchen. As she cleaned herself and suffered the stings of antiseptic on her cuts, she felt an irresistible urge for revenge. As she had suspected when she had locked him into the sauna, she knew she had the capacity to kill. Without guilt. Without remorse. Hadn't he attempted to mortally injure her by tampering with her kitchen? By making it a weapon?

After her thirst for revenge came determination, a hardening of the will beyond anything she had ever experienced before. 'You will never stop me,' she told her image in the mirror.

She -cleaned up the kitchen as best she could and, using tools from his workshop, pried out the plugs and disconnected all the appliances he had tampered with, including the electric stove. One sink was still operating. She did not call an electrician. There was no time. Besides, surveying the situation, she decided that she could still prepare the dinner without using any of the appliances, although she had to go to the store and buy a hand-operated meat grinder and several slicing and grating gadgets.

'Fuck technology,' she whispered to the mute appliances, checking carefully to be sure that the gas stove and oven had not been tampered with. Miraculously, the gas stove had escaped. She would need that.

As she worked long into the night, she felt a grudging admiration for labor-saving devices that had been created for the benefit of the modern woman. The irony, she knew, was that these devices had been invented by men, making women obvious conspirators in their own destruction. Such thoughts kept her attitude positive and her resolve unweakened. She reveled in her independence, her creativity, her resourcefulness.

She slept in her clothes and with one hand on the handle of a cleaver, knowing that if he gave her the slightest opportunity she would use it on him. The surety of that knowledge brought odd comfort. She heard him come into the house, but he had not paused, bounding up the stairs to his room, in his wake the sound of Benny's nails clicking on the marble foyer. To further fortify herself, over each entrance to the kitchen she had stretched a taut line, on which she hung pots and pans, set to make a loud clatter at the least provocation.

She lay on the cot, eyes open, listening for the slightest sound. Let him come. She was ready. . . .

At dawn she was up again, putting the final touches on the foie gras, pounding the dough for the puff pastry in which she would wrap the beef fillet. By midmorning she had filled the clamshells with the makings of the crab imperial, readying it for the oven. The fillet was now being partially cooked in the oven, prior to its being coated with foie gras, wrapped in pastry, and decorated. The vichyssoise was already safely tucked away in the refrigerator.

She had kept her head. She was proud of that and when the three servants showed up - two white-gloved waiters and a maid - she felt the euphoria of victory. Nothing was impossible.

She sat at the head of the table like a presiding magistrate. She had carefully dressed in an old Galanos and had brought in a hairdresser to do her hair. Her guests, echoing her own thoughts, pronounced her beautiful and she felt high-spirited and witty, joking with the Greek ambassador on her right and the Thai ambassador on her left. She had high expectations that the after-dinner toasts would offer exaggerated compliments to her charm, her looks, and, most important, to her culinary ability. Mr. White, the Washington Post food editor, asked explicit questions about each dish and seemed gready impressed by the details she provided.

She sensed how impressed they were with the house, its possessions, the lovely silver and china displayed on the table. The beef Wellington was perfect, and she was certain that some supernatural force had intervened to assist her.