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Oysters For two please, I say, my friend will be here any moment and I feel rather good as I forget the old hippy I was, but no longer am, in my one good suit, shining cufflinks, silk tie, polished shoes. Yes, at the bar is fine. I sit amongst the Savile Row suits and a glass of champagne please, I say, before I know I have said it. I sip the champagne, savour the bubbles, and hear the briny crack of oysters as they are opened miraculously at the bar by a man with flashing tentacles for hands. The oysters find themselves on plates with ice, bread and butter, Tabasco and other accessories on their short journeys to the deeps of their customers’ guts. Ah, Elie, I say, sit down. It’s great to see him, with his bald dome, youthful face and round tortoiseshell glasses. He looks every inch the successful French publisher but underneath Elie is an old hippy like me. A bottle of house champagne please! and Elie says, let me! No, I say, this is on me, my treat, please. The old hippy me winces as this other me speaks as if one does this every day and twice on a Friday. Our oysters come slurping in their wicked marine juices, alive and plump in their dark-silver mineral shells. The champagne slips down my gullet like liquid velvet. I imagine each bubble in my throat as a tiny £ sign and my pleasure increases because I have consumed so much. Elie says, look, sorry it didn’t work out but when you write the next novel, I’ll try again, Paris is so... His elbows are together on the table, and he opens his hands slowly like a fan. His insouciance irritates, as if this gesture swims most days in the Parisian swell of good eating. But the first tender oyster tickles my tonsils with the essence of sea life: Elie, my friend – we laugh. I find myself smiling at the very pretty Thai waitress; after the fourth oyster I smile again and do you know she smiles back, but which me is she smiling at? Anyway, after the sixth oyster and third glass of champagne she is definitely smiling at one of me and who cares which? More oysters please! I command. I am a secret agent penetrating
the very bivalve core of the establishment. And I do and he does buy the second bottle of champagne and it’s
only Wednesday. I wish there were someone at home to benefit from
my tumescent love – perhaps that gorgeous Thai waitress? She
probably thinks I’m one of them. Little do you know, my dark
angel: ‘First we’ll take Manhattan, then we’ll
take Berlin’ as General Leonard Cohen puts it. And Elie says, your writing is so good, it will happen soon, really – try another agent. He picks his tooth with a toothpick.... Oh thanks Elie, I think, with your second detective novel, one academic book, publishing job, wife from L’école Normale Superieure, Paris flat, Dordogne house. Yes, thank you, Elie Robert-Nicoud, Monsieur Establishment. My god, I feel fantastic when I stand up, whoops!, fantastic. I go for a strong hard piss, like a fireman’s hose on full pressure. I sidle up to the bar to pay the bill. Do I have enough cash? How
much! My face remains like stone and on the back of the bill I write,
Let’s go out: phone number? The good oysters burble inside me and the sea-soul taste returns. Thank you, thank you, life is weird life is great. I am a big plump oyster with a gorgeous mollusc’s phone number itching like a pearl under my shell.... [from Ambit 171] Back to first piece of fiction
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