It’s All Been Done Before
These were not the first lobsters ever to be in a movie. They’d been on the job for almost fourteen hours, starting with their triumphant, if hungover, acquisition from a Chinatown market that morning. Kiran and Ciera had co-written the film. I was cinematographer, camera op, and craft services, because I lived with them, so I was there. And since I hadn’t paid March or April rent, there was a vibe that I should help out with anything that came up. Alicia was there, too, and appointed herself the lobster wrangler, making sure they were well-hydrated, spoken to fairly, never left for too long under the hot lights.
“If I have a beer, will anyone else have one?” Alicia asked, after we’d packed away the light and sound equipment, to be returned the next morning. I said I would. Everyone knew I liked Alicia, but no one, including me, acted on that information. The lobsters chilled in the tank habitat we’d set up for them. Consummate professionals, both declined a drink.
“Cooking lobsters is easy,” said Kiran. “You just boil them in a pot of water. And melt some butter.”
“We’re eating them?” Ciera could channel strong emotions easily.
“What else are we gonna do?” Kiran asked. “Throw them away? Live with them forever and ever?” I looked it up. Most lobsters lived between ten and forty years. We were not sure how old they were. They seemed older than us.
“Do you think a lobster has ever touched a beer?” Alicia asked. I took one of them out of the tank and brought it over to her, gently touched its claw to her bottle.
“Now he can die happy,” she said. “At least he touched something no lobster has ever touched before.”
“No way,” said Kiran. “You don’t think a line cook has ever boiled up some lobsters with a bottle in one hand?” If I didn’t owe him and Ciera $850 plus another $425 due in a few days, I might have told him not to yuck someone else’s yum.
We were a little restless, having crossed the line from completely exhausted to loopy. So, we loaded the tank into this granny cart we used for laundry and took them out onto the street. We held the lobsters up to mailboxes. We lowered them down to the sidewalk to touch a discarded medical glove. We stopped to get pizza, almost certain no live lobster had ever touched pepperoni. None of us had to get up the next morning. I refused to move back in with my parents in Windsor, even though that was technically an option, but the job hunt was getting dire. I knew my friends wanted me to stay. That they liked living with me. But I guess they didn’t like it more than they liked $850.
In front of the old Unitarian church, Alicia sat on the curb and lit up a cigarette. I didn’t bum cigarettes anymore, because it was like adding insult to injury, but if someone offered, I always said yes. Alicia passed a lit one to me, then lit another for herself. I wondered if she thought about it as a kiss via the game of telephone. Just one carcinogenic middleman between her lips and mine, distorting, “It feels like I love you,” into, “I don’t know why things seem so hard for you.”
“Do you think the lobsters want to get married?” asked Ciera. We took them from their tank again. We held them above our heads like boom boxes. Ciera sang “Amazing Grace.” We held them nose-to-nose. They were private lobsters; their display of affection was almost imperceptible.
“If I have a Fourth of July party,” asked Alicia, “will you guys come?” I was midway through counting to five so as not to sound too eager when Kiran said, “Alex might not still be here in July, right?”
After a pause, Alicia asked, “Oh, where are you going?”
“Yeah… no, I’ll probably be here,” I said. Ciera and Kiran exchanged a look. They didn’t want to kick me out. I guess it was a dick move for me to put them in the position of having to. But I hated the idea that our friendship was really just an expression of convenience. They’d be rolling around town with two lobsters and whatever warm bodies they’d been drinking with that night.
When we got home, we ate the lobsters. Kiran boiled them up, Ciera cut lemons into little wedges, and Alicia and I brought plates out to the porch, where we could almost see the sun coming up. As I ate, I watched Alicia watch the horizon, melted butter smearing her skin like the sheen on a bubble. These weren’t the first lobsters to touch the inside of my throat, my esophagus, whatever else comprises the passageway from on-set talent to literal crap. I hoped they died happy, though.
Julia Meinwald is a writer of fiction and musical theatre, and a gracious loser at a wide variety of boardgames. She has fiction published or forthcoming in After Dinner Conversation, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, X-R-A-Y, Bayou Magazine, and The Iowa Review, among others. Her work as a composer has been in productions across the US and Canada, and the cast album for her musical The Magnificent Seven streams on Spotify, Apple, and elsewhere. juliameinwaldwrites.com.
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