Page 62 of Enemies to Lobsters
But his kissing works. I’m starting to forget what I was so worked up about. Ike takes his time, and I let him. The “welcome home” kiss is becoming my favorite part of our day.
A while later—a long while later—he comes up for air, out of breath and grinning like he won. “I like you, Diana. We’ll figure out what’s real and what’s not later.”
Chapter 29
Diana
That doesn’t work.” Stevie, the authority on everything, tells Desmond. “It just helps you sleep at night.”
Desmond has a lobster propped up on its claws on Stevie’s counter. Its tail is in the air, and he’s rubbing a line down the creature’s forehead over and over. Do lobsters have foreheads? He’s massaging its top shell right between the eyes, fully focused on the task. Desmond needs a girlfriend.
Stevie is copying the method with her lobster, looking unconvinced. Ike’s lobster is still in the bag. Mine is in the tank at the market. I’m chopping romaine for a salad.
“See,” says the man fully invested in massaging a shellfish before he boils it alive. Desmond backs away with his palms out. “Voilà. She’s hypnotized. When she goes into the water she won’t feel any pain.” Amazingly, the lobster stays propped on its banded claws instead of skittering off the counter.
“How do you know it’s a she?” Stevie challenges, still working on her lobster.
“Because they’re on the same dating app. She swiped left after he swiped right,” Ike calls from where he’s mashing potatoes and laughing at his own joke.
Stevie and I laugh, which is a mistake. I’m trying not to breathe through my nose. Just the sight of the lobsters triggered a trauma response in my stomach. The smell is too much. Luckily, August isn’t here with his lethal shrimp dip tonight.
“Funny stuff, Ike. Funny stuff.” Desmond carefully lifts the sleeping lobsters between his index fingers and thumbs, carrying them over to the big pot of boiling water.
I can’t watch. I couldn’t watch last time, either. But I hear it. I shudder, my sympathy for the bamboozled lobsters killing my appetite.
“Did you guys know that lobsters mate for life?” Stevie asks as she washes her hands.
Desmond sounds surprisingly skeptical for someone who is currently massaging the forehead of Ike’s lobster. “Where did you hear that?”
“It was on an old episode ofFriends.” Stevie grins. “It’s true, though.”
“Friends…” Desmond mutters with a grin. “Okay.”
My knife clatters on Stevie’s yellow laminate countertop. I pick up the next item for my salad, pointing the cucumber at Desmond and Stevie to emphasize my every word. “You’re telling me these creatures are sentient enough to mate for life, and you’re boiling them alive?”
Ike looks up from his task, failing to hide his grin. His forearms are a work of art as he mashes those potatoes, but there’s no time for that. He knows me well enough by now to know my tone. The murder of innocents is happening in this kitchen.
Desmond grins. “There’s either sentient or insentient. Something can’t be partially sentient.” He sounds like Stevie right now, and I want to chuck this cucumber at his forehead.
“And don’t forget, we hypnotized them,” Stevie reminds me.
I snort. Sure. “So you’re okay with dragging a lobster away from her home, bringing her into an unfamiliar environment, massaging her, giving her a false sense of security, thenboiling her alive?” I repeat, chopping angrily now. This cucumber never stood a chance. I’m not thinking about how much the lobster and I have in common. I’m not.
Stevie laughs. “Not when you put it like that, weirdo.”
Desmond picks up Ike’s hypnotized lobster in my periphery.
Oh, heck no. Not on my watch. “Gimme her.” I gesture to Desmond with the knife.
He barks out a laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Unhand the crustacean.” I point my knife from the lobster to the yellow counter. “You know what to do. Put ‘er down nice and easy.”
This is my first lobster rescue, and I can’t believe I’m keeping a straight face. But I feel a strange kinship with this shellfish. She is me. I am her. I know I’m being nuts, but they’re really going to boil her alive?
Stevie is still snickering.
“I’d do what she says, brother.” Ike smirks. “And it’s okay. I had a huge lunch.”
