Back to Issue 11

Grace Campbell
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Flounder
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​He has one of those rich dads who wanted to teach him the value of a dollar, so David got a job in the kitchen of the catering place and worked his way up which is how come the dinner he has made me is, at least in my mind, supposed to be really good. Only it is fish, which I haven't expected and I just can't get with fish, can you blame me?
 
I eat four bites. It tastes like when I used to do little experiments with Elmer's Glue, like stick a whole bottle in the freezer then cut it into tiny slivers. Which, of course, I ate. So I know what I'm talking about here, mostly on a textural level. But it has taken really long for David to make the fish. During which time we have gone through a seven course meal of wine, wine, wine, wine, wine, wine and wine. Which is how come the fish goes into his stomach without making a bight in the buoy line of the gaze so obviously anchored to the hem of my miniskirt. Which is how come we end up on the couch.
 
You could say I get up from my seat again and again to walk across the room and switch the cd so David can watch me in my skirt. Or you could say I do it to draw some space between me and the fish, because it's not like I can hide it under my plate and mash it down, which worked pretty well back in the Elmer's Glue days. You could say that the whole reason for the fish and the wine and the music and the skirt is the plain fact of the couch. Though you could argue that I might have changed my mind about the dinner had I known it was going to be fish. And I might have changed my mind about the couch had I known David would put his hands on me, saying I bet you think I won't do this and me laughing under the broiler coil of his face, starting to say I bet you won't--
 
--but inside the space of a malbec hiccup, David's hand is working its way up me because David knows the value of a bet. The labor causes his face to collect little colonies of strained sweat like the descaled surface of the who-knows-what-kind of sea fowl as he pulls it from the heat blast of four hundred degrees Fahrenheit and pronounces it done. Were it any other enterprise, I would move to wipe the mark of his effort from its written place on the wall of his forehead but he guessed wrong about the fish and I guessed wrong about the couch and when you hide your no under your dinner plate and try to mash it into oblivion it's not really a no, is it.

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Grace Campbell was born, raised and educated in New York. She's a co-founding editor of Black River Press and a nonfiction reader for 5x5. She is a 2018 June Dodge Fellow at the Mineral School and was a finalist for the Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest through Split Lip Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gravel, Spry, Two Hawks Quarterly, New Flash Fiction Review, Jellyfish and others. She lives and works in Olympia, Washington.
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