This Is the Best Fish by Nick Armitage

‘Why’d they shoot him?’ my friend said. I read further down the column in El Faro.

‘There doesn’t seem to be a reason. Argument. Money. Stupid tourist.’ I folded the newspaper and put it on the floor. The overhead lights were dim and made reading difficult. It was four am and everybody else on the bus was asleep. I closed my eyes, too, and I woke up when the bus stopped at a roadside café.

The two drivers sat at a table in the shade and ordered a Coke and a coffee each, and then lit cigarettes and watched the waitress walk away before they stretched and looked out over the terrace. They wore identical pistols in black holsters on their belts and it was hard not to look, so I walked to the terrace edge to look at the ocean. Below me, a boat was being landed in a harbour; a man had jumped out from the boat onto the sand and was dragging the boat in by a rope. Another man stood in the boat balancing himself against the ceaseless waves. In the bottom of the boat were two large fish and lying across them sticking out from the bow of the boat, was a gaff and this must be how the men had landed the fish.

They took one fish each and walked up the steep footpath towards the restaurant. As I watched the men struggling to balance the plump fish, I wondered how it might be cooked. I was expecting something simple and delicious, and I thought of other times and places where I had eaten fresh fish. In Nice I had eaten a bouillabaisse in a three-table café in the old market, in Paris I had oysters and lobster bisque at Bofinger, in New York a catfish dish at The Union Square Cafe, and later that same month I’d had a crab and lobster roll sitting on the jetty by the sailboats in Mystic.

‘Look at this,’ I said to my friend. ‘Look at these guys. Look at that fish. This is going to be great. This is going to be the best fish you’ve ever eaten.’

We sat at the bar and ordered beer. It was hot already; the beer was cold and served in the bottles, and the condensation from the bottles puddled onto the bar. After serving us our beer, the waitress cut bread and put it into baskets, and put the baskets down on the tables. When she put the bread down on the driver’s table she sat with them and one of them offered her a cigarette and they sat and smoked and talked for a few minutes.

‘I bet they eat here all the time,’ I said.

‘I think that they just eat, all the time.’

‘If they eat here it must be good,’ I said. ‘You don’t get that fat through a careful diet plan.’

‘They sit a lot though. All the driving.’

‘Why the guns?’

‘Bandits,’ he said. ‘Your guy from the newspaper. Who knows? Argument settler.’ When the waitress came back she put a basket of bread down in front of us.

‘Pescar?’ she said.

‘Si. Pescar.’

‘What?’ my friend said. ‘What did she say ?’

‘Do we want fish ?’ I said to my friend.

‘We want that fish,’ he said, and pointed to the men who were standing in the kitchen, the fish still on their shoulders.

The waitress gave the fishermen some money and a beer, and they dropped the fish onto a worktop in front of her. She poked at the fish with her finger and then lit a flame on the stove and put a large pan on top of the flame and poured oil into the pan. Then she cut the heads off the fish, and the fins, and then sliced the fish into steaks. She counted the people on the terrace and when the oil was hot she threw the same number of steaks into the pot. The two drivers were served first and they ate quickly and, when they had finished, they smoked again.

I picked up my food and broke a piece off and bit a piece off that but I knew the moment that it lay on my tongue it was no good. I put it back on my plate.

‘It’s hardly black cod and miso.’

‘It’s the oil,’ said my friend. ‘We need more bread.’

‘She’s fried it to death. How could she do that?’

‘It’s why the drivers are so fat.’

‘I can’t eat this. I had shark steak once,’ I said to him. ‘In Malta. At the Blue Lagoon. I’d forgotten about that. I think that was the best fish I’ve ever eaten.’

‘You haven’t eaten this,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘They might be insulted if you don’t.’

‘And what?’ I said.

‘We’re miles from anywhere. A Mexican jail is a dark lonely place to spend the summer. Or, they could kill you here and no one would be any wiser.’

‘You’d be wiser.’

‘They’ll kill me too.’

‘I’m not going to die for not eating this shit.’

‘You don’t know that. They do things differently here.’

The drivers stood up and announced ‘cinco minutos’. The shorter of the two came to the bar to pay and his pistol banged into my leg, and he gripped the handle to stop it moving. His hand stayed there.

‘No comiendo? No te gusta el pescado?’ he said looking at my plate.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Estoy enfermo.’

He told the lady to bag it up for him. We had a way to go and it would make a good snack.

‘Que desperdicio. Este es el major pez.’

‘No. No es.’ I said.

‘Estúpido turista,’ he said, and took the bag of fish and got on the bus.

‘What did he say? Stupid tourists?’ my friend said. ‘Is he gonna kill us?’

‘Maybe. He said that this is the best fish anywhere in the world.’

‘Then tell him it is.’

………………..

Nick Armitage is a short story writer. Recently his short story ‘Just outside  Finley New South Wales’ was accepted for publication by ‘Dreamcatcher’ magazine 39, and ‘Dog talk’ was published by Riggwelter Press. He also appears in ‘The New Village Square’  magazine & editor’s choice book.Currently he is writing a novel about a failed soldier who becomes a hitman.

Twitter: @nickarmitage