New York-Style Hungarian Stew

NEW YORK-STYLE HUNGARIAN STEW In the darkest corner of her living room, she waits to eat. A stone’s throw away, her ex lives with their kids, his goulash wafting reek into her open windows. Through the one in her master bedroom, the man could easily catch sight of his successor swaddled in goose-down, identical in color to the old comforter she could see, if she cared to, just beyond her window, on the bed where she’d been fed, “I’ll cherish you always.” Abutting that room, the den with surround- sound TV, where the vulgarian had charmed the panties off her during commercials, turning up his volume so she could grasp every syllable of his accented endearments, his excuses. Adjacent, their son and daughter’s rooms (now, with suitcases the children bring back and forth each weekend); and down the hall, the state-of-the art kitchen where her louse ex still plays chef. How she’d wished he’d played spouse with as much know-how and gusto. Oh, how he’d cooked and cooked their goose, served it up every chance he got, till she got good and fed up and fled to an old flame in a brownstone across the way — where, at this very moment, she sits with the stench of the dish her ex is, no doubt, cooking to death, and the essence of her Crock-pot stew cooking up a storm, inextricably mesh.