"Taste this."

Caleb stared at the plate of food Adalia de Lorraine set (slammed) before him; as always, he found it unidentifiable. He had learned, however, not to ask questions, no matter how much he wanted to know what it was he was tasting. For all he knew, and probably for all she knew, too, he could have been allergic to the latest mixture of herbs and foreign ingredients she put together.

So, questionless and informationless, he cut into the lump of meat (he thought -- he hoped) that sat on the plate, decorated with bits of seasonings and sauce. With time, he had also learned the proper sized bite to take. It had to be small enough that, if he were allergic (or just didn't like it), he wouldn't flat-out die; at the same time, it had to be big enough to satisfy her needs for a lab-rat. He found that half a spoonful or a thumb-nail sized cut of solid food normally did the trick. He was well trained, he knew. Slap a collar around his neck and call him Sparky. He could beat out most of those championship Shepherds and Retrievers at Obedience Trials.

Upon taking a small bite of the (still unidentifiable) food, he gave her the feedback she needed: a sincere thumbs-up followed by a "that's good, real good." And it was, if one was into foods that could have been concocted from anything. He supposed he was. He would have gladly eaten the rest of the plate, had she not snatched it from under his nose.

Dali walked away with the plate in hand, throwing (at least, it sounded like throwing) it into the sink. The garbage disposal ran, grinding the leftover of gourmet-esque food into bits of purée. He listened; pots and pans clanged against each other as they, too, got tossed brutally into the sink. He wondered if she handled her own stuff like she did his. The garbage disposable continued to run, eating up all the rest of the batch of food. It was like her own routine. He was used to it.

"There are starving kids in Africa, and you're going to toss that all out?" Not only that, he added in his head, but she couldn't even just toss it out -- she had to grind it out, making it as if she never cooked there. No remaints of food in his kitchen. He sighed.

"There are also kids with AIDs in Africa, but you don't see me caring about that, do you?" Dali called out from the kitchen, her voice loud enough to carry itself through the walls and over the racket of clanging pots and garbage disposal sonets.

"But, you're not contributing to the epidemic. You may as well have just took a gun to a handful of Africans' heads."

"How do you know I'm not? Contributing, I mean. I'm obviously gun-less."

He chose, smartly, not to bother answering that. In fact, he wondered why he even bothered. Well, surely she didn't have AIDs. If she did, he supposed, at least it would have all been even. Killing kids with hunger, killing them with HIV-AIDs. Slightly frazzled, he decided to change the subject back to her food.

"It was some good stuff," he called.

"I know it was. I'm thinking of presenting it at The Restaurant."

He wondered why she never referred to it by its name, but always as 'the restaurant.' He supposed that, perhaps, she didn't want to be associated with something that wasn't completely hers. Plus, it disattatched her of any liability if the food was dreadful. In her mind, he supposed. Caleb sighed. She was confusing.

"You should."

"I shouldn't." He blinked.

"But you just said --"

"I said I was thinking. Then I just decided that it would be a stupid move. When I've got my own, then the world can have it. Until then, it's under-wraps."

She made it sound as if she kept her recipes in a vault at some high-security bank. He looked at the kitchen, where she stood, out of view. She probably did.

"Oh. Are you close to your own restaurant?" The more he thought about it, the more he found it interesting the way she referred to this future in which she owned her own food business. It was as if she were two different people; Adalia the cook, and Adalia the ...

He wasn't sure what the "normal" Adalia de Lorraine was. But, he knew quite well that they were two different people. Quite like Jeckyl and Hyde, minus the evil murder sprees (he hoped).

When she lurked in the kitchen, her hair was neatly pulled back into a bun where no locks fell out of place. She actually had an attention span and high concentration levels. She was professional.

He looked back at the kitchen door, where she stood, wiping her hands off on a dish towel. Caleb craned his neck slightly, looking at the tower of dishes that resided in the sink. He'd learned not to expect clean dishes -- but still, one could hope, couldn't they?

He watched as she made the transformation into the crazed twenty-one-year-old. She had let down her hair into a tangled mess of a bun and threw off the apron into a heap in the corner. He'd end up throwing it in the wash later on, he knew.

"Sort of." Dali shrugged. He stared blankly at her for a moment before he remembered he had asked her a question.

"Oh."

She looked at him, eyes narrowed slightly as if he was a car and she was thinking about buying it from the ratty old dealer. It made him feel uncomfortable, and she probably knew that. He had learned, on top of everything else, that she always seemed to have alterior motives.

"How long have you and that girl been apart?" she asked, an eyebrow raised.

"I - what?" Caleb blinked, though knowing full well what who "that girl" was that Dali was referring to.

"The one with a stupid name who sounds like she should become a priest. How long?"

"Adalia, women can't become priests. It's a guy's job." He slouched back in his chair, sighing. "Seven months. Six or seven, something like that."

The cackle-like laugh she contributed to the matter surprised him quite a bit. "I know fully well that you probably have it down to the day, to the hour, to the minute."

"Why does this all matter?" She was beginning to exhaust him. He wondered what she was like as a child; did she have nannies? If she did, they'd probably be gone in a day. Was the sister like this? If she was, then god bless the parents.

"The Black One said something about The Priestly One calling you." She shrugged, inspecting a nail and appearing wholly uninterested in the whole situation. She was good at that, he noted. "What did she want after 'six or seven months' of Splitsville?"

He felt a headache coming on. They were frequent ever since he met her. "She left a message, that's all."

"Uh-huh. I'm sure that's all." Dali dropped her hand to her side, looking around for the telephone. "Aha!" She managed to make that one word rather sing-songy. Caleb let out a heavy sigh as she walked (no, it was more of a prance, really) over towards where his telephone resided, nestled next to a lamp and a notepad with a pencil.

She kneeled on the nearest couch, leaning over the side of the arm and inspecting the phone. She prodded the various buttons, wondering which one would play-back a message which, for all she knew, could have been non-existant at this point. "Where's it at?" she muttered, glaring at him.

"Where is what at?"

"The bloody message! I want to listen to it." She had a highly condescending tone he thought; like he should have known that's what she was scuttering around for. She was always scuttering, so much so that the events that required the action became blurred together. He sighed. "There's a little notebook here, and I'm assuming you'd use it to take little message notes with the little pencil. You're so weird. No wonder you're single, Whealdon. Your flat looks like it's lived in by your mother half the time." He blinked, absently running his hand through his hair. Unexplainably so, he got a nervous-anxious sort of feeling whenever she talked non-stop like this (which was often enough). He watched her flip through the pages of the notebook, disregarding most of them and stopping to look at a few of them which, for one reason or another, held her interest for more than a millisecond.

"Ha," she said, smiling at him. "I found it!" And she had, much to his displeasure. He didn't want her digging into his personal life like that. Caleb sighed, falling back into the comfort of the couch. He did, however, steer clear of her and leaned up against the opposite arm.

She was kneeling, now, with both legs tucked underneath her. The notepad has found its way back into its spot, right beside the telephone. Dali tilted her head to the side slightly, looking at him. She thought about Faith Rydelle as she stared. She had only seen one picture of her right after she left Caleb. It was a left-over that had managed to survive the post-break-up demolition. Although, she mused, with Caleb it was hardly a demolition. He probably had boxes tucked neatly away under his bed. She made a mental note to find them one day.

Dali remembered, though, the picture very clearly. It was one of Caleb and Faith together. A tourist must have taken it for them, as they were hugging and smiling in that happy-couple sort of way. She thought it to be cheesey and, upon discovering it, told him so. He had reddened and put it face-down against the chestnut shelf it had resided. She glanced over out the corner of her eye, just to see if it were still there. It wasn't. She sighed.

"You ought to call her back and tell her yes," she said, looking intently at Caleb. His eyes were a pale green colour that reminded her of celery stalks at some times and springtime grass at others.

"What?" he asked, an eyebrow raised.

Dali rolled her eyes. "Don't play stupid, Whealdon. I'm saying you should get back together with her. It's what she wants. I'm a girl, I can read between the lines."

He blinked slightly. "I didn't think you liked her."

"I don't have to like her for you to do so." She stood up, hands on hips. "Really, though. You should tell her you miss her. You do, I can tell. You've got that look, you know?" She smiled faintly. "You always look sort of miserable, but not quite. Like you know what you want, but think you can't have it." Dali sighed heavily, shrugging. "You want Faith and she wants you."

Caleb kept silent, opting to say nothing. His eyes stared, almost blankly, at the carpet.

"You deserve to be happy, you know. You really do."

He was taken aback by this sudden personality change she underwent. Jeckyl and Hyde at their greatest. Caleb watched as she walked away, opening the door and waving her fingers in a half-hearted goodbye.

"Bye!" she said, offering a quick smile before shutting the door behind her. He stared at it for a moment before standing up.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew he couldn't have her.