It began all with a sliced piece of meat. She had smuggled some of that fantastic prosciutto from Parma and decided to cut it like Gino, her secret loved one, the man who helped her wrap the illegal meat into his own pajama pants. It had been a long f, she had had plenty of Chianti, she barely managed to lift the smuggled meat onto the table.
She wanted to make it real, it was supposed to be a Gino moment.
She put the large object onto her pink marble table and took good aim. With one hand on the handle, and the other on the end of the large blade, she cut through the "skin" of the animal part, revealing the salty dark red core. Oh, delicious sin. She closed her eyes. She smelled the intoxicating aroma of the delicacy. She slit the second slice, as thin as humanly possible, with same attention, same slow speed, same micro movement. She was pointing the blade away from her body and so the tiny piece of meat fell behind the large pig leg.
She reached over the collect her culinary masterpiece. In front of her was just the table, the Prosciutto, the knife still in her hand. She leaned over, around the salty object. Nothing. She looked under the table. Nothing.
Where was Orange, that crazy hungry cat?
She was too tempted and too hungry to look for anything or anybody now.
She cut another little slice. Same technique, same results. The meat fell out of sight and disappeared just like the two previous pieces. She could be dreaming. She could be just imagining this. In front of her, a large meat object with a deeper growing cut.
She cut again, this time the risky way. Holding the slice, not letting go, she held in her hand her little trophy. Gino and her would slice them just like this and then each one of them would start at either end. He was obviously not here now and she was not crazy about the not all pretty fat rim he liked to eat, and so before she ate her snack, she hat to cut it into shape. She wanted the pure red meat, the pure hemoglobine drug for herself.
The sharp knife went through the white rim like through butter. The moment was here, she was to close her eyes, she opened her mouth...
there... on the surface of the pink marble table, the pieces of fat were sucked as if they were drops of water on a sun dried sponge.
She took a step back. This could not be normal. She quickly ate her piece of meat and touched the surface of the table. It was a very smooth surface, polished, warm. It felt quite nice. It was an expensive table. It had been a gift from Wolfram, her past boy from 2002. They had been quite obsessed with things designed. Well, she thought it was a gift from him. He had left the table for her, when he left to go back to Germany, overnight.
The fat was gone. She licked all of her fingers. She would now try to cut herself another slice of ham. Again, with high precision, off came a little slice of time cured pork. She put all of it on the table.
The slice, as if were a tiny model of a torpedoed ship, sank into the surface of the marble tabletop. This was not normal.
She laughed out loud, such a surreal illusion.
She cut another slice, put it on the table. It sank much quicker than the previous ones, it seemed. Another slice, same effect. This looked like a perfect trick to be presented on a morning show.
She drew her hand again over the table surface. Warm marble. Soft and smooth and warm as if the sun had given the stone something of a body temperature. She moved her nose closer to the magic "make the meat disappear" spot. Could she still smell the meat?, would it be neutral marble fragrance tone?
The table smelled like a delicious plum.
How could a marble table smell like plums. She loved plums, they were in fact her favorite fruit, but she had not bought any for weeks, they were not quite in season.
Her senses were quite obviously playing some elaborate tricks on her. First the disappearing meat, now the fragrance of plums... She moved even closer. Now it was the knife, the large piece of meat and her, leaning over the table, holding herself up with both hands, moving her nose just millimeters above the reflective stone surface. Plums. So rich, so fresh, such juicy fragrance... oh, how incredibly strange. Her tongue gave in, she had to taste the table.

The table surface was completely smooth. It was a thick slab of pink marble on quite thin and interesting legs. It was a very unusual design for a piece of furniture only because whoever had created this piece, must have been obsessed with taxidermy. Attached to one of the shorter sides of the tabletop was the tail of an orange striped cat. The animal part seemed to come straight from the marble. A very odd design.
There was nobody here to ask about the secret of this cat's tail. The previous owner of the apartment had left it, just stopped paying rent, disappeared, gone.
She might have not even returned from her trip to Italy?
These were the moments when the super wished he lived here in the building. Nobody heard the woman move away. He would have caught her. He would have al least made her leave an address. She really did not seam to care. ONly the piles of mail gave away that she was gone.
All that she left in the completely bare apartment was this strange table... obviously too heavy to carry down the stairs all by herself at night?
The super was done with the apartment, there was no need to clean or even sweep. He leaned over the table like a field marshal and looked out of the window. Just a few more weeks and he would be able to retire. He was a bit tired of this suddenly thankless job. Before the recession there were the good tipps, the friendly, honest people. Now tenants would just move out without as much as a word.
This city was getting expensive, rude, dumb.
At least there was still somebody in the building who knew how to prepare his favorite dish, a home made beef stew. Actually, it almost felt as if delicious steam were rising from this strangely warm pink marble table he was leaning on...

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I like stories about tables, and tables in stories. The one above was inspired by a drawing by Funtime Ben, from the Fun Tree House... (Hope he does not mind...)
Take a look at his... Killer Table. (A Subway drawing!)
: ) Thank you for the kind words, Ben.