Service
I aimed freezing jets of water into the hinges of gnarled shells, splattering grit into the sink, wiping my pink fingers on a damp apron. The door ajar because people came in and out, dumped buckets of lobsters on the step, boxes of wine, we wanted to smoke anyway, whatever the weather, and if someone was passing they thought of something to say to us or wanted a drink. I carried dozens of oysters to celebratory tables or prised one open on a soaked tea towel and gulped it, spilling its brine over the stainless steel prep surface. This was in between taking an order for eight negronis and asking if the kitchen could do the cod without the clams, filling a bucket with ice, making a joke about spontaneous fermentation to appease a difficult man, curling a blue plaster over the knuckle that I took off while shucking in a hurry, half blind with a hangover, taking a quick shot with someone I liked who just stopped in to say hello, the cruel sun through the bamboo slats or, then again, the rain pummelling the tables, taking a quick shot with someone I didn’t like that much who had just stopped in to say hello, plating half a dozen for a good looking couple who had come from London just to eat here and invited me to have a threesome by writing a drunk love letter on the back of their card receipt, pinching thin strips of toasted nori like blades of burnt grass trembling in the breeze from the open door. This was in between various heartbreaks, last trains back from London drunk and jealous, wading with strangers into the tidal pool as the sun blushed the water, slapping us like newborn babies, too cold to talk. keeping one back for the end and then when the end came it was bad and I had to throw it, abandoning its body to a grave of wadded and torn blue roll, glistening, stinking like the disturbed matter in the crook of the harbour arm, saying good service, throat sore from smoking and from talking for hours, saying the same thing over and over again: you’re welcome.
Photo credit: Sophie Davidson
I’ve just lowered my pricing to the very least I’m allowed to charge via substack, which is £3.50 a month, or there’s a huge discount if you pay for the whole year. I’m hoping that this will help more of you to consider subscribing. Thanks for reading. Next week, a post for paid subscribers only: a 3000 word essay on nude modelling that I wrote for Harpers, but which they couldn’t print, because they said they didn’t have enough paper.