Proportion Prompt Response

He texted me at work, “I’m going to cook for you tonight. Maybe some pasta. Be prepared.”

I wasn’t sure how to read the 'be prepared.' I guess I read too much into it. Clearly, I was not prepared for the smell of burnt pasta when I came home after dark, nervously opening the door, announcing in a louder than normal voice, “Hey, I’m home.”

I guess it’s only on TV where they sprinkle rose petals on the floor and have Barry White on in the tape deck in the background and oh, here he comes, look at him in his beefy shirt, about to sweep me away and dump me onto our downy, beautiful mattress, but WAIT. Before that, we have a lovely five-course meal, some fresh-baked bread. Mmmm. Followed by some a nice platter of cheeses imported from Romania. And then the main course, the pièce de résistance, the famed pasta. Beautiful, freshly strained or however it is they do pasta. Topped with those littleneck clams I love. Balanced by the lightest touch of alfredo sauce and complemented by this heavenly Sauvignon Blanc that could only have come from the Wine God guy from up above. And julienned carrots. Because you can’t possibly screw up julienned carrots, and if all else failed from my dream of dreams, then at least he could cut some carrots and put them on a plate.

But here he was, fiddling with the remote. With the smell of burning pasta hovering over us, which if you haven’t smelled it before, is like the smell of babies in a toaster.

“Heya hon. I rented Scent of a Woman cuz I know you like the Chris O’Donnell guy.”

That did not explain why our apartment smelled like burning infants.

I motioned to the pot on the stove.

“Oh yeah, I had to go Radio Shack. The remote wonked out on us. And I couldn’t switch it to widescreen without it.”

He went back to the prayer card-sized manual for the remote. In the background, Al Pacino stalked around on screen, looking very much like a runway-thin giraffe. My fiancé muttered to himself, “Maybe it’s not the right code…”

So that’s how I ended up with a full-screen version of Scent of a Woman being paired with the noxious scent of dead children in my apartment.