LETTER 52
The Recipe
A fictional letter from Management.
Written
Management lifted the lemon cake out of its plastic box and put it on a plate.
At lunch, Ruth took a second slice.
“Could I have the recipe?”
“We can write it down.”
She found a pencil. We turned the empty box over beneath the table.
“Lemons,” we said.
“How many?”
“It depends on the lemons.”
Ruth waited with the pencil against the paper.
We read the ingredients again. There were things we had never bought separately.
“Perhaps the shop could tell you,” we said.
“Which shop?”
We gave her the address.
“Good. I pass it on Thursdays.”
She folded the paper and put it in her pocket. Then she carried our empty plate to the sink.
“Leave that,” we said. “It’s ours.”
We washed it, dried it and took it back to our desk.
Management