In a noon meeting, Oleg, one of the engineers, wrote in the Zoom chat that his camera was off because he was eating lunch.  

I said, “But we love watching you eat, Oleg.” 

My work friend, Wendel, said, “Turn on the camera. Let us live vicariously.”  

Oleg, like many of our male coworkers, had a wife who used to send him to work, back when we worked in an office, with bagged lunches, like a schoolchild, only the contents of those bags were like nothing my mother ever packed for me. Grilled paninis; turkey, swiss, and tomato on flaky croissants. For dessert, there’d been zucchini bread, pound cake with berry coulis in its own tiny storage container.  

Now that we worked remotely—thank you, pandemic—I asked those guys for lunch reports. I said, “What’s on the menu today?” I challenged my male coworkers to communicate the contents of their lunch using nothing but emojis. Sometimes I requested pics. 

Oleg responded with a straight-faced emoji, the one that is supposedly neutral, that is anything but.  

After some cajoling from Wendel and me, Oleg turned his camera on and held up a forkful of steaming lasagna. Then his square blackened. 

I said, “Not so fast. What about dessert?” 

We watched long elegant fingers hold up a plate of tiramisu, its creamy white surface freckled with cocoa powder.  

Wendel and I oohed and aahed.  

Oleg blushed.  

After everyone else left, when it was just me and Wendel, I said, “I wish I had a wife.” 

Wendel said, “You have a husband. Stop being greedy.” 

I groaned. “That’s like telling someone to shut up about being hungry because they’re in possession of a peanut.” 

“Ouch,” Wendel said. 

“Sorry,” I said. “I just wish that someone would cook for me once in a while.” 

I’d reached the age at which practically every woman I knew was a good cook. Cooking was to wifehood like music lessons were to childhood. Someone had to learn to cook if your family wasn’t going to eat trash day in and day out, and usually, it was the women who took up the mantle. Even if we were shitty at it to begin with, by the time we reached our mid-forties, we’d honed our skills.  

Some days I didn’t mind cooking; I even took pleasure in it. But other days I felt tired. I felt resentful. 

Wendel said, “Well, I would happily feed Oleg.” His face went dreamy. 

“Meh,” I said. Oleg was attractive. Those elegant fingers. That chiseled chin. But I already had one man, and one, it turned out, was too many.  

“What really confounds me is The Badger,” I said. That was our nickname for Bob, one of the project managers, on account of his working his conservative politics into meetings, not to mention his thick neck. “He has a wife who feeds him well, too. What do you think she gets out of it?” 

Wendel frowned. “Gross.” 

“Speaking of gross.” I held up my stale Doritos. “This is practically all I have in the house, unless I’m going to suck on frozen peas.” 

Wendel said, “What’s going on over there? Why don’t you have food?” 

“I’m on strike,” I said. “It’s also a game: how bare does the pantry have to get before Scotty takes it upon himself to do the damn grocery shopping?” 

“Fun game.” Wendel shook his head.  

I reminisced about the one perk I missed from our days working in an office: complimentary snacks. Back then, neglecting to grocery shop or cook didn’t exact such a heavy toll because Carol, the receptionist, a woman who shuffled around the office like walking was a terrible burden, was always replenishing those snacks. String cheese, yogurts, fruit. Crackers and granola bars. Carol stocked reinforcements in the Snack Closet, a room she kept locked most of the time, though occasionally she forgot. On one shelf, between individual servings of mixed nuts and industrial-sized boxes of microwave popcorn, there’d even been bottles of wine, not that wine was ever on offer in the employee kitchen. I used to imagine the VPs drinking straight from those bottles as they danced amongst piles of money after the rest of us were dismissed for the day.  

Wendel said that all this reminded him of something: A guy he knew complained to him recently that his wife used to be energetic during sex, but these days she mostly just lies there like a cold fish.  

“Cold fish?” I felt my muscles stiffen.  

“Right?” Wendel said. “So particular.” 

“What made you think of that?” I said. 

“Because we’re talking about food. This woman is always hosting fancy dinner parties for which she makes every damn dish herself. Coq au vin. French macarons. Last time around it was hand-rolled sushi. I had a hard time keeping a straight face.” 

I said, “Maybe sex is her one opportunity to rely on someone else to do all the work for a change.” 

Wendel raised his eyebrows, then said he had another meeting he needed to get to.  

I finished out my workday, which consisted of three more Zoom calls and responding to half a dozen Slack threads. I closed the door to my home office to keep out the cat, who early in the pandemic knocked over my monitor and vomited all over it. 

Scotty wouldn’t be home for at least another half hour. His office called everyone back a year ago. He’d complained about it, but also, between office snacks and proximity to dozens of restaurants, it meant he wasn’t starving all day.  

I opened the refrigerator, I opened the pantry, I opened the freezer. Tucked beneath that bag of frozen peas, I found a single vacuum-sealed piece of cod leftover from a long-ago Costco run.  

I baked that cold fish in the oven while, in the microwave, the frozen peas spun and steamed.  

The fish wasn’t particularly good. It tasted about how you would expect fish that had been neglected to taste.