I got onto the subway car. I sat down in the only available seat, next to a very sunburnt, red-skinned man in a wife-beater and jeans. I immediately semi-regretted it. He apparently hadn’t showered or applied deodorant recently.
He turned to me. “Pretty cool on the subway,” he said.
I agreed. “Cooler than outside.”
He laughed. “I might just ride the subway all day.”
“That’s one way to stay in the air conditioning.”
“Cheaper than air-conditioning your house.”
I agreed, and there was a pause.
“I’m going to the Writer’s Guild at U of T,” he told me.
“Sounds interesting. What happens there?”
“It’s for writers. People who write poetry and fiction. They get together and critique each others’ work. I pretty much have to go there every Friday. This week, Maggie McDonald is going to be speaking. In honour of her, I bought 5 liters of wine and 10 pounds of smoke—“ I thought he was going to say “smokes”, but he continued “d oysters, and five different kinds of black olives.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“Yeah, and I got these!” He reached into his bag and pulled out a bag of tortilla chips. “They’re called ‘Scoopers’. You can see how you could put a smoked mussel into the center, like that…”
“Smoked mussels, I’ve never had those before,” I said.
“Smoked oysters, I mean,” he amended.
“I’ve never tried those either.”
My stop was announced, and I got up. “This is my stop, take care,” I said.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a pink-and-white box, which he thrust at me. “Here, take these,” he said. I looked at them. It was a box of smoked oysters.
“Why?” I protested, but he insisted. “Just take them!”
I got off the train and left the station, unable to stop laughing, with a pink-and-white box of smoked oysters in my hand. The city is such a strange place sometimes.
The smoked oysters were disgusting. But it makes a good story, and it was certainly a kind gesture.
