If there was one thing that disgusted her on multiple levels more than any other, it was leftovers. And it just wasn’t because “leftovers,” by its very definition, meant something that no one wanted enough to finish in the first place. No, for Fabienne, it was so much more than that. It was how saving food and/or making it in such a way as to have leftovers inferred you were a broke ass, struggling for something as theoretically “basic” as having multiple meals a day. It was how every guy she had ever lived with had an almost unnatural obsession with “over”-making food so that there would be an excess quantity of, that’s right, leftovers. And while some part of her might have appreciated the “modernness” of these men who seemed only too happy to cook for her, it was as if the “catch” for that so-called modernness was that the things they wanted to cook were, well, disgusting. Nasty. Plebeian.

Take, for instance, Jerome. The boyfriend Fabienne lived with in Carroll Gardens from approximately 2006 to 2008. He loved to make chili. All the fucking time. And the main reason he liked to make it was because, “You can live off that shit for, like, two weeks.” Fabienne didn’t want to tell him that it was funny he should use the word “shit” to describe it, because that’s exactly what it looked and tasted like. As all leftovers inevitably did after more than a couple of days. The only leftovers that Fabienne could mildly tolerate was pizza from some corporate entity like Domino’s. That was a rare exception to her rule. A rule that all of her boyfriends were constantly trying to violate due to their own money issues. But somehow, whenever she turned her nose up at their foul offer to “just reheat some leftovers,” they would get upset with her. Turn their problems and insecurities around on her by invoking predictable slurs like “princess” and “spoiled”—the gamut of such related terms, really. This is exactly why, inevitably, leftovers would always end up being the root cause of her breakups with these men who so loved to cook in mass quantity and then live off the gross, increasingly congealed remains for the rest of the week—sometimes longer.

Fabienne could not live like that, and she didn’t care if it made her “stuck up” or a “rich bitch” in their eyes. Because she wasn’t. She just refused to eat in that way. It was anathema to her, and even if she were starving, she probably still couldn’t be force-fed leftovers (again, unless it was pizza from the previous night). Not only because she wasn’t “raised” like that, but because, to her, food presentation was everything. And there was no amount of “zhuzhing” that could make even the “finest” of cuisine look edible or appealing to her in its leftover form.

David was the boyfriend perhaps most vexed by her “snobbery” when it came to this matter, even going so far as to use her French name against her as yet another bullet point in his “case”—the one that insisted she was a “self-superior cunt,” and that no one had the right to somehow deem themselves “too good” for leftovers. That it was, in fact, her moral duty to consume everything “leftover” on the food front. David, of course, had grown up with the indoctrination that it was a sin to leave anything on his plate because “there are starving children in Africa” (in the baby boomers’ youth, it was “starving children in China”—yet, despite the geographical shift over the decades, the point remained the same: eat your fucking food, you ingrate!). This, Fabienne maintained, is what made him the most fucked-up boyfriend she ever had when it came to the arguments they engaged in about leftovers. More specifically, the ghastly kind that he made. His preferred recipe was chicken curry, his “interpretation” of which looked like beige dog food to her, and which she explicitly never verbalized any interest in eating. Nonetheless, he would always make a massive pile of it. In fact, everything he made ended up as a pile, a mound—practically spilling over the pan or pot he was using to cook it. Like he had taken his cooking lessons from Strega Nona’s apprentice, Big Anthony, who didn’t have a fucking clue about how to use her magic pasta pot, so, naturally, he ends up making the whole town overflow with pasta (which, to Fabienne, sounded like a gross nightmare rather than a gourmand’s dream).

While David might have mirrored Big Anthony’s quantity predilections in cooking, he was no “Big Anthony” in the boudoir—quality or quantity-wise. So when he got more adamantly on Fabienne’s jock about how she had to eat his leftovers, it was the last straw for her. Thus, once again, she found herself needing to abandon a domestic situation she initially (and foolishly) thought she would be comfortable in. Like it was her first time at the rodeo. And yet, Fabienne never seemed to learn. She always dove in headfirst when it came to her germinal romances, never allowing enough time to pass in order to realize how quickly it was going to curdle (no leftover pun intended). It was getting to the point where she knew that she ought to make it a prerequisite kind of question before she even dared to fuck someone she (thought she) was attracted to. Just demand straight up, “What are your thoughts on leftovers?” And if they didn’t reply with something to the effect of what Emily Post herself said, as late as 1968 (“I do not approve of taking left-over food such as pieces of meat home from restaurants… Restaurants provide ‘doggy bags’ for bones to be taken to pets, and generally the bags should be restricted to that use”), then she would have to move on. Quit while she was ahead, end it before it could even begin.

But she forgot all of her resolve the night she met Evan at some horrible art show in Bed-Stuy. The two eventually went back to Evan’s apartment (Fabienne didn’t have a place of her own to offer, as she had just moved out of the ramshackle she had shared with David and was currently couch surfing until she could find something more permanent). It didn’t take long before a few glasses of wine led to a few fucks as the night continued. In the morning, she awoke to a sandy-colored cocker spaniel licking her face. How had she not noticed him at any point during the past six hours, she couldn’t say. But there he was, licking her awake and waiting expectantly for her to react. Suddenly, Evan was looking even better to her than he did before: he had his own apartment and he had a dog. What more could a girl ask for of a “metropolitan man”? And just when she thought her answer was “nothing,” Evan called from the kitchen to indicate that there was, in fact, something more she could ask of him: breakfast.

“Are you awake in there?!”

At the sound of his master’s voice, Percy, as she found out his name was from his collar, went bounding toward the kitchen, leaving Fabienne to collect herself a.k.a. put her clothes back on so that she could join them both. To her initial delight, she saw that some steaming coffee had been poured into a Texas Chain Saw Massacre mug for her. She approached it, seeing Evan’s back still turned to her as he fried something in a pan on the stove. Hearing her presence, he turned his head and grinned. “Morning, Sunshine.” Although the routine seemed a little too “down pat,” she still allowed her heart to swell—right before it was dropkicked at the sight of a telltale Styrofoam container that had been left slightly ajar next to the stove.

All the erstwhile “goodwill” in her face immediately fell away as she asked, “What are you making?”

Evan beamed. “I’m giving you the last of my delicious leftovers. Huevos rancheros from one of the best restaurants in the neighborhood.”  

Fabienne looked briefly from Percy, as though he might understand her annoyance (but, of course, any dog would be elated to have some leftovers), then back to Evan. She took one quick sip of her coffee and then calmly said, “Evan, I don’t give a fuck if you offer me motherfucking leftovers from Nobu, okay?”

Just as she finished saying this, Evan proceeded to plop the huevos rancheros onto a plate and stare at her blankly. “What are you talking about?”

“I. Hate. Leftovers. I just do. And I think I should leave right now if that’s going to present some kind of issue or self-righteous field day for you.”

Evan continued to regard her with expressionless stoicism before finally smiling again as he took a bite out of the leftovers he had originally intended to give to her. “It’s no issue at all, Fabienne. I’m happy to make you something…fresh.”

She almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Really?” Then she remembered that Evan appeared “moneyed,” so it only made sense that he wouldn’t be offended in the same way that some of her previous, more strapped-for-cash boyfriends were.

He nodded. “And I better do it quick because you’re going to need your strength for some of the other things I have in store for you today.”

It was then that Fabienne’s briefly reignited joy was stamped out anew when she had another jarring realization: Evan was a morning fucker. As made further apparent by how he then proudly showed her the hard-on that was bulging through his boxers. Oh Christ, she thought. If it’s not one thing, it’s a-fucking-nother. She wasn’t about to “sing for a non-leftover breakfast” by committing to some kind of time-sucking fuckfest when she had other shit to do.

“Uh, actually Evan, I just remembered I have a doctor’s appointment. It took me forever to get it, so I really should go.”

Evan’s face fell. “Oh. Anything serious?”

Fabienne headed for the door and grabbed her coat from the rack (because Evan was so theoretically perfect that he was even organized enough to have a coat rack). “I guess it depends on the results,” she returned ominously, hoping that he might assume she had some potentially transmissible disease and never contact her again. In fact, before he could ask her anything else, like, for instance, what her number was, she dashed out.

She didn’t stop walking at a rapid pace until she was all the way out of his building and down the block. Maybe she had “thrown away” the potential for the best relationship of her life. But then again, she reminded herself, how good could things have really been with a leftover lover and a morning fucker?