The waitress approached the table where Lorenzo and his wife were celebrating their wedding anniversary. She unenthusiastically served the plates and, without saying a word, went on her way.

“Did you have sex with her too?” Emma asked, noticing the hostile service of the beautiful waitress.

“Stop it, of course not.” Lorenzo replied, raising his head from the carefully arranged crème brûlée’s topping with powdered pistachio base, crushed graham crackers, edible flowers and mint leaves. The chef’s forest composition of the dessert was further accentuated by ten thin and short cinnamon sticks inserted into each dish specially for them. — “It’s a disease, honey, don’t make me regret opening up to you.”

“Ten years you lied to me! You slept with her, didn’t you?” Emma raised her voice which was now loud enough to attract the attention of other guests, her euphoria of being in the top-rated restaurant in the city long gone.

Lorenzo’s stomach tightened. He couldn’t stand Emma’s piercing stare any longer and looked back at the dish, the beauty of which didn’t help to divert him from contemplating how much more of this public humiliation he had to endure and the thought that he, in fact, did have sex with this particular waitress. She used to work at the cafeteria where Lorenzo liked to go to write. He never mentioned his wife when he described himself as the best selling author of books she never heard about.

“This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening,” Emma murmured, pulling at her hair with both of her hands, ruining the two-hours worth of stylist’s work — “Please tell me this is some kind of a messed-up thing for your new book.” She said in despair, two black holes around her teary eyes.

“Of course not.” Lorenzo’s pupils dilated and he was already lost in his own thoughts. — “The man felt as if he stood in the middle of the labyrinth, failing to find the way out of the predicament he found himself in.”

“You are not doing this right now,” Emma recognized her husband mentally drafting his new book. She used to love it. She met him at one of his book signing events and was a fan of Lorenzo’s romantic prose, but ever since the wedding, she couldn’t stand her husband’s stories about characters falling in love and cheap sex-scenes. Especially now that he confessed to being a sex addict. — “You piece of shit!“ She grabbed the plate and threw it in her husband’s face.

Lorenzo fell from his seat and hit the ground. He looked absently at the silhouettes above him while thinking how this dinner, once extended into a novella, will break the two year hiatus and revive his failing career.

Emma knelt beside the idle body of her husband, unaware of the internal bleeding in Lorenzo’s brain which kept producing images of his literary comeback.