A few weeks ago, I was walking to the hospital for a physiotherapy appointment. It was a dry day, and I was walking by a canal. I was on the phone with another hospital about an MRI scan when I saw a large eel. Believe me, I don't want to talk about this any more than the average person.
It was long, transparent, and had a thick girth to it, like a lime green jello snake. I told the nurse that I had to go, hung up, and approached the eel. It lay motionless. The water bank was two sidewalks and a crosswalk away. How did it cross the road? Why did it make this decision at all? Was it following someone? I never got the answers to these questions, and weeks later - today, actually - I walked by that same place, but it was gone. I've been thinking about it almost every day. I've asked everyone I know if they have ever seen an eel like this, but nobody seems to know just what the fuck I'm talking about.
This year, for Valentine's Day, Jeff and I decided to book dinner at a small hole-in-the-wall type of Italian restaurant which boasted a small 'mama's kitchen' with seasonal dishes and only rave reviews. When we walked through the little door, the owner shook Jeff's hand and directed him to his table. As I took my coat off, he asked Jeff what he would like to drink, and when Jeff suggested that his wife would take a look at the menu first, the owner nodded at him and walked off. He then returned, holding a phone in his hand. He read us (Jeff) the specials of the day, and when I asked why the beef ragout was crossed off the menu, he slid his phone across our table and pressed play on a video that had been paused. It showed him, accompanied by construction workers, walking through the restaurant covered in rubble and glass. Sunlight shone on to the shards that remained in the door frame. "There was a break in last night," he explained, "So there is no beef ragout." We raised our eyebrows in polite shock. "They no take money or wine," he continued, then walked off, leaving us with the only logical conclusion that the thieves took all of the beef ragout. Moments later, he returned, adding "But we have a heart-a-shaped-ah tortellini instead". We agreed to the tortellini and ate our meals watching him approach each table, phone in hand, met with wonder, shock, and empathy from couple after couple. It had been raining all week, which made the story even more confusing, and for the rest of the evening we tried to understand the point at which the story stopped being plausible. When we asked for the bill (having refused dessert), the owner replied:"You have a somewhere to be?" We said yes, leading any normal person to believe we were incredibly horny, were that normal person not to realize that our favourite baklava shop was closing in just fifteen minutes. Back home, we had peppermint tea and baklava, and Jeff told me not to ruin the moment when I asked, for the millionth time, if the entire story had been a facade.
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