Saturday's Storyteller: Bad Shrimp International
Bad Shrimp International
by Belinda Roddie
Theirs was a relationship based on bad shrimp. Creepy looking shrimp. The kind of shrimp you'd find in a bad part of the freezer section in a grocery store that could never cook evenly in a pan. And no medicinal dose of garlic butter could make it better.
They had come from different countries to live a crustacean connoisseur's lifestyle. He was a Scottish fish-n-gamer, as he liked to call himself. She was a full-fledged chef. Scallops were her specialty, and after seeing many reality shows in which contestants couldn't cook scallops worth beans (no food pun intended), she was quite proud of that feat. Her concoctions were tender and buttery and just the right flavor. And every Brit who waltzed into her humble little restaurant loved them.
They had both decided to travel to the farthest part of the United States, in San Francisco. And that was where they met, in a Fisherman's Wharf market stand gone bad.
Standing in line for the shrimp sandwiches, the two foreigners looked more like San Franciscans than the American tourists waltzing around in logo-branded, Golden Gate and Alcatraz-themed fleece jackets and sweats. They both had dressed appropriately for a gloomy day of fog and mist, the bay swallowed up by white along the edge of the area. As he got his sandwich and took a bite, he could already taste the utter terror of the oceanic catastrophe within his tough pair of bread slices. He, in fact, spat out the whole wad, narrowly missing the feet of a New York teen.
"Mom!" the girl complained. "That guy just spat his food at me!"
He had not wanted to see a rotund tourist woman leering at him, so he stuttered an apology. But displeased with his thick accent, she muttered, "Damn illegals," and stormed off. Which of course confused the Hell out of him because...well, were the main illegals here Mexican? He was painfully white.
"I wouldn't have spewed the thing, in my humble opinion," he heard her voice behind him, and he straightened up quickly from where he hunched his back on the curb.
"Did you taste it?" he asked.
She winced. "Unfortunately," she replied. "You'd think they'd get it right."
"Must've picked the wrong stand."
"Yeah. Or gone for the crab." She held out a hand, the wisps of her posh Oxfordian accent still dressing the air in warm coattails. "I'm Hannah."
"Archie," he gruffly replied, shaking her bony wrist instead of her fingers.
To the side of them, an old man was throwing up the residue of his shrimp sandwich into the nearest gutter, far below where the pigeons could reach.
This week's prompt was provided by Paul Kilzer.
by Belinda Roddie
Theirs was a relationship based on bad shrimp. Creepy looking shrimp. The kind of shrimp you'd find in a bad part of the freezer section in a grocery store that could never cook evenly in a pan. And no medicinal dose of garlic butter could make it better.
They had come from different countries to live a crustacean connoisseur's lifestyle. He was a Scottish fish-n-gamer, as he liked to call himself. She was a full-fledged chef. Scallops were her specialty, and after seeing many reality shows in which contestants couldn't cook scallops worth beans (no food pun intended), she was quite proud of that feat. Her concoctions were tender and buttery and just the right flavor. And every Brit who waltzed into her humble little restaurant loved them.
They had both decided to travel to the farthest part of the United States, in San Francisco. And that was where they met, in a Fisherman's Wharf market stand gone bad.
Standing in line for the shrimp sandwiches, the two foreigners looked more like San Franciscans than the American tourists waltzing around in logo-branded, Golden Gate and Alcatraz-themed fleece jackets and sweats. They both had dressed appropriately for a gloomy day of fog and mist, the bay swallowed up by white along the edge of the area. As he got his sandwich and took a bite, he could already taste the utter terror of the oceanic catastrophe within his tough pair of bread slices. He, in fact, spat out the whole wad, narrowly missing the feet of a New York teen.
"Mom!" the girl complained. "That guy just spat his food at me!"
He had not wanted to see a rotund tourist woman leering at him, so he stuttered an apology. But displeased with his thick accent, she muttered, "Damn illegals," and stormed off. Which of course confused the Hell out of him because...well, were the main illegals here Mexican? He was painfully white.
"I wouldn't have spewed the thing, in my humble opinion," he heard her voice behind him, and he straightened up quickly from where he hunched his back on the curb.
"Did you taste it?" he asked.
She winced. "Unfortunately," she replied. "You'd think they'd get it right."
"Must've picked the wrong stand."
"Yeah. Or gone for the crab." She held out a hand, the wisps of her posh Oxfordian accent still dressing the air in warm coattails. "I'm Hannah."
"Archie," he gruffly replied, shaking her bony wrist instead of her fingers.
To the side of them, an old man was throwing up the residue of his shrimp sandwich into the nearest gutter, far below where the pigeons could reach.
This week's prompt was provided by Paul Kilzer.
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