Just before David got out, the taxi driver confessed that he wasn’t actually a taxi driver. The car they were driving belonged to his son, he filled in for him that night. That explained things for David. He already couldn’t understand why the driver asked random passers-by for directions and why both the navigation system and the self-driving mechanism remained untouched.
David watched the taxi from the pier. He would have wanted to know what the driver’s occupation was if he hadn’t filled in for his son. Probably something you didn’t need many manuals for, something you didn’t need to know the difference between ‘General Settings’ and ‘Other Settings & Privacy’.
Although the shops had closed by now, a handful of people were walking the pier. David thought it was casual passers-by. If his information was correct, a ship would arrive at a quarter past eight with a particularly valuable cargo.
He liked fish. He usually bought sardine cans or salmon in the supermarket for his cat, and bought trout for himself. The signs at the refrigerator said it was wild fish, but David could hardly believe it. In his memory, wild trout tasted different. Fatter and saltier. He suspected that wild fish and farmed fish had recently merged and could therefore now be called the same.
His cat had belonged to Alice. He initially felt little for the beast, despite their shared passion for fish. That changed when Alice suddenly decided to leave him and her cat after four years. She did tell him not to take this personally.
“But it is allowed.”
In a way, the cat softened her departure. In a way, he still had a piece of Alice. A slice in the shape of a pet.
David looked at his watch, he was much too early. That happened more often. Alice had once said that she didn’t have time to wait with him because he was afraid of being late. According to her, waiting was a wish to slow down time more and more – until you finally stopped.
Exactly at 8:15 pm the fishing boat moored. It was small, about twice the size of the taxi. On board was an old man in a thick winter coat. He seemed pleased.
“Did you catch anything?” asked David hopefully.
“Just some sardines and salmon,” said the fisherman, tying his boat to the dock with a line. “There are no more fish in the sea these days.”
“How much do you want for the salmon?”
The fisherman looked at him appraisingly, as if he knew several answers were correct.
“How many do you have?”
David showed some bills, enough to feed the cat for a week.
The fisherman nodded curtly and took out the salmon from a white tank. Before David could stop him, the fisherman pulled the eyes out of the fish with tweezers.
“It makes him seem less real.”
As if it were a custom that would bring him good luck, he threw his eyes over his shoulder into the water.
This is the third winning story of the NRC Summer Writing Contest for which participants wrote a fragment of the imaginary dystopian novel Myopia.
#Wild #farmed #fish #cat