Asparagus

The beautiful thin spears of asparagus turn bright green in the cast iron skillet, in the quarter-inch of furiously bubbling water—the color at which they must be plunged, still crisp, but giving, into icy water to keep them from cooking further (even out of the pan, off the heat, which must say something about all kinds of things).  I remember the young woman from Florida, sitting at 3:00 in the afternoon in a New Orleans bar with her husband, both drinking bright blue cocktails, picking blue jelly beans out of the crystal bowl on the bar in front of us.  My friend from Random House and I are just getting lunch after packing up our remaining books at the close of the exhibit hall the last day of MLA, the second to last day of the year—a quick lunch before he leaves for the airport, back to New York, back to scarred Manhattan.  She has worked for an alligator farm, she says.  I'm wondering about vegetables in the South, since all I've seen on menus is creamed spinach, potatoes au gratin.  "Oh sure," she says.  "We have lots of vegetables in the South.  We grow vegetables, in Florida."  The bartender sets down two more blue drinks, the color and clarity of island swimming pools.  "I've got a really easy recipe for asparagus," she tells my friend.  "You just open the can, and 
drain it . . . .”

—Christie