"Do you think drinking saltwater counts as a kind of sushi?"
"Why on Earth would it?" She wrapped her chopsticks around a ginger-painted trilobite.
"It's the one element that all of the different varieties of sushi have in common. Nothing matches taxonomically or geographically except the medium of their habitat."
“That's a pretty weak justification," she replied. "Besides, saltwater is much better seared or blackened than raw."
He laughed. She didn't.
"Well," he struggled to fish an fumbled roll from his ramekin of soy sauce. "If you're heating it before serving, doesn’t that just make it sort of a brine, or a broth?”
"Not really. To sear it, you just toss it in a pan and flip it a few times so that it only cooks around the edges. As long as the center stays raw, it shouldn't actually boil.”
"Oh.” He gave up on the errant roll, which had dissolved into a pool of rice and mush. “I have to admit, I didn't realize that was actually possible.”
"I'm not surprised. It's not an art that's easily accessible above sea level. You need water that's been thickened by deep, oceanic pressure. The abyssopelagic stuff. Some of the less legit places will mix in a few drops of squid ink to fake the darkness, but the genuine article’s texture is unmistakable. It's what you might imagine biting into a raindrop would be, if it were composed entirely of surface tension. You can’t get that kind of water up here. Most of the restaurants that offer it are so far down that they have to be legally classified as research submarines.”
Though it all seemed absurd to him, his intrigue had eclipsed his doubt. "What does that even taste like?"
“It has this beautifully paradoxical flavor, like fire and water on your tongue simultaneously; but, to be honest, all that’s mostly masked by the salt."
Raindrops also show curious properties when prepared.
All kinds of hipster sushi joints like this one are opening up.
Powdered water is sometimes used to garnish seared water.
His business ‘card’ was a cube: six faces, six names, six numbers.
"There's more of me inside, just in case," he explained. "Break it open if you can't find who you're looking for."
"Do you think drinking saltwater counts as a kind of sushi?"
"Why on Earth would it?" She wrapped her chopsticks around a ginger-painted trilobite.
“Me and the other girls from the power plant, we come here after work all the time. Their special milkshakes are to die for. I haven't found a single flavor that I didn't like."
“Rose soda, huh?”
“Yeah. They have the original kind here, where the bubbles have thorns.”
“Doesn’t that hurt your tongue?”
“A little bit, yeah. And it always tastes a bit like blood as a result. But I love the texture.”
“I’m fairly certain that I was born in Lyonesse.”
“That’s in France, right?”
“No, you’re thinking of Lyons. Lyonesse is somewhere in Meinong’s Jungle.”
“Want to see a cool trick?” She leaned across the table, then whispered: “I’ll bet that I can unzip your whole wine glass without spilling.”
“That you can do what without spilling?”
“Just watch.”
“Want to see something cool? The ice cubes here have nine corners.”
I didn’t believe her at first, but after reluctantly removing one from my glass, I found that she was right. From any given angle, it looked like a normal ice cube, but as I rotated it between my fingers, I could feel an invisible vertex passing along my thumb. “Weird. How do they do that?"
“How’d you get thrown in Hell?”
“Didn’t get thrown in. I was born there.” He sipped his wine. “Both my parents were damned. They did their time in the inner circles, then got jobs, fell in love, and moved out to the suburbs. It’s not much different from the Earth that far out, if you can get used to the lack of a sky.”
“So, you used to be a sphinx?”
“Well, to be more precise, my head used to be part of a sphinx,” she replied. “The rest of me came from other hybrids and chimeras. My skull was attached to a lion’s body, but my torso came from some creature with an owl’s head, and my legs came from something else entirely that had ninety-eight more.”
“Have you ever experienced the Tetris effect?”
“I’ve heard it mentioned before. What exactly does it mean?”
“It’s what happens when you play Tetris for too long. The game continues in your head after you’ve quit. Blocks keep falling in your peripheral vision, and bursts of inner music prevent you from falling asleep.”
“Oh, I have! But that’s not even close to what I thought it meant.”
“Cherries aren’t technically berries, you know.”
“Wait, what?”
“Berries don’t have pits.”
“Well, what about cherries that contain themselves instead of pits?”
“You know, like those little Russian dolls.”
“The kind where you break them open, and there’s a smaller one inside?”
“Yeah. One of these days I’m going to split in two, and a smaller, bloodier version of me is going to crawl out of my midsection. That’s what I have to look forward to in life.”
“You know, most men are frightened by my compound eyes.”
“Honestly, I think I like yours better than the normal kind,” He shrugged. “Those weird me out up close. The pupils look like holes through a person. It’s unsightly.”
“Well, that’s a breath of fresh air, I guess.” She speared a chunk of calamari with her fork, then dipped it in horseradish. In the restaurant’s dim light, her countless lenses blended together into uniform curves of indigo. “Try going to a job interview looking like this.”
“I can’t figure out how to turn down this umbrella.” Clara fidgeted with the handle and spokes, feeling for some sort of toggle that just wasn’t there.
“Well, if you press this button here, it’ll collapse and fold back up-“
“Do I really look that dumb?" She huffed. "I'm trying to turn it down, not off. I only want to filter out all these low-quality raindrops." She continued searching in futility for a few more seconds. "Wow, it really doesn't have a filter, does it? Why would anyone want an umbrella that only has one setting?”
“I’m sure you get this all the time, but I have to ask.”
“It’s about the sound coming from my chest, isn’t it?” Every word she spoke was punctuated by muffled clicking, thumping, and the occasional chime.
“Yeah. Is it a medical thing?”
“That’s putting it mildly.” She took another sip of her martini, then: “When I was fourteen, my left lung and rib were surgically replaced with a fully-functional typewriter.”
“Pannasosia?” Her date narrowed his eyes. “There’s no way that’s a real state.”
“It’s as real as it needs to be, I suppose.” She sipped at a spoonful of wild rice soup. “The whole place is an underground lake, save for a few aquifers and caves. It’s actually pretty big, but not many people live there.”
“Hmm.” He thought back to memorizing the state capitals in middle school geography, all those annoying songs they had him memorize. Alabama and Alaska, Arizona Arkansas… “I can’t say that I’ve heard of it. You sure that it’s not a Canadian province or something?”
“You’re not seeing my shadow because I ate mine in the womb.”
He didn’t exactly believe her, but then again, she really didn’t have one. “Is that normal?”
“It’s not very common, but it happens.” She ran an index finger around the rim of her wine glass. “Have you ever tried umbratarian cuisine, my dear?”
“So, what’s the weirdest thing that you believe in?” Her hands were busy sawing through a thick cut of swordfish. After a few rough dates, she figured that she would lead with the question this time. “I’ve got a doozy, but I want to hear your story first.”
“Well.” He put down a forkload of farfalle. “Sometimes, you know… I guess I remember things from my childhood that couldn’t possibly have happened. It's made me wonder if this is actually the universe that I was born into.”
She sighs. This is how her last date ended, too. “Do you really want to make this more awkward than it is?”
“Well, as an atheist-“ he had to get that part in. “I really feel that we should get this out of the way. Make sure that there’s nothing too weird for me.”
“Alright.” She takes a deep breath, then:
He let her pick the appetizers on their second date, and in turn, she ordered the peach pit fondue.
“I love this place. They only use peaches with bottomless pits here,” she explained. “Birds that peck into them in the wild often lose their beaks, if not their entire heads. It takes a chef with real skill to craft them into something that humans can safely swallow.”
“Wait! Doesn’t that hurt your hands? At all?”
She pays her date no mind, however, and continues unscrewing the light bulb from its socket in the lamp hanging over their table. It eventually comes loose, but never loses power; the glow continues as she balances it between her long fingers. “I learned this trick back in college,” is her only explanation. She then taps it against the edge of her plate like a hardboiled egg, forming a loose webwork of cracks along its shell.