On The Sound
2023; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 131; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/sew.2023.0002
ISSN1934-421X
Autores ResumoOn The Sound Lydia Conklin (bio) The lobsters were disgustingly large, their meat—like the rubber gaskets from espresso machines—packed into candy-red shells. Nick chewed as best he could, rocking the flesh between his molars until it was soft enough to navigate his throat without suffocating him. Ace, the hostess with white-blond hair and a husky voice, and her boyfriend, Kell, had purchased half the necessary lobsters at twice the weight. For none of the flavor and tenderness. Classic mistake. Kell had bragged through the afternoon about his preparatory research, brandishing a Post-it with ratios and cooking times. Taste this shit now. Nick would’ve spoken up—he really would’ve—but of the ten guests that weekend, he was the most remote from Ace and her sprawling glass house on the wild side of the island, and the least pedigreed. Ace had been married at seventeen, divorced at twenty when her parents died in a Cessna crash, and she bought this house out here, for herself, for parties. She worked in legal aid but was flush with inheritance as the single kid of licorice moguls. So even if [End Page 23] her job paid less than his, still, he’d never fit in. He hadn’t attended Horace Mann or Yale but a tiny, cut-rate Catholic high school in San Francisco, then UMass Boston. But even if he’d only risen in the coffee world, who was to say that was any worse a theater than banking or parentally funded do-gooding? Some coffee elites even considered him an artist. Still, he shut up about the culinary choices and quietly gnawed muscle with his lobster partner, an ogre named Toph. “Fucking top-notch,” said Toph, flies visiting his buttered chin. “I guess,” said Nick. Lobsters routinely live to be over one hundred years old. Nick hoped this one hadn’t lived that long, only to end up overcooked and masticated by Toph’s gummy smile. “What are you chatting about, babe?” asked Ace from across the porch, holding her pale bangs off her forehead. She was policing conversations around the table. “These kick-ass lobsters,” Toph said. “Sick,” said Ace. “New guy, your curls are stunning. Where did you get them?” Everyone laughed. “I want one right here.” She twirled a finger up from the top of her blond head. Nick bit down hard on his tongue, turned away. “I’m always asking my boss but he’s like, get your own. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?” Nick held firm to the table’s edge, like it might float up without him. Everyone was looking at him, mouths ready to laugh. He wanted to die. “He doesn’t want to talk.” She mugged a sad face that looked too real. “Hey everyone, after dinner let’s play Sardines.” “It’s too dark,” said Kell. Ace had been pitching Sardines all day, dropping the game into every crack in conversation, from the rubber rowboat to the infuriatingly epic cooking process. But now night had fallen. Nick had foreseen, from the outset of cooking, that [End Page 24] these people didn’t have it together, that they’d beat the life out of the meal before they deemed it ready to serve. He’d tried to take over, pushing aside the fancy coffee samples he’d gifted that had gone ignored, until Kell freaked out that the lobsters were crying. “Holy fuck,” he’d said. “Listen to them.” A redheaded girl, whose name Nick kept forgetting, wept. “Somebody stop them,” she cried. “Let’s order pizza for god sakes.” She was so pathetic, leaned over like that, desperate for Nick to comfort her. He could’ve soothed her and then fucked her, had he wanted to. “That’s just the steam passing through the shells,” Nick said. Kell sagged in disappointment, but the redhead cried harder. After dinner was ready, the group was further delayed by pre-meal Adderall, snorted off the backs of the crustaceans. This was another blunder, as Adderall suppresses appetite. Everyone took forever picking over their food, and now that they were finally finishing, it was nearly...
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