In Short Measures by Michael Ruhlman

Author:Michael Ruhlman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-09-04T04:00:00+00:00

Two

When Frank, Nick, and Nick’s friend Noah returned from the beach, Karen had just plunged four lobsters into a giant stockpot. “Hose the sand off, please,” she shouted through the screened window overlooking the back deck. Nick and Noah talked so nonstop, and their conversations were to her so inane, she’d ceased to hear the content and only heard it as calming music. She knew exactly what they’d do. As Frank was using the outdoor shower, the boys would shower upstairs, put on old T-shirts and baggy shorts, and head into the woods or go look for sea glass on the beach until they got to the Watson cottage where, if they were lucky, Elizabeth Watson and her friend would be available to flirt with until she texted them to dinner.

The alarm on Karen’s phone vibrated and hummed, the lobsters having been submerged for seven minutes. Using tongs, she placed each lobster in the cooler that had held their lunchtime beverages and still had a layer of ice floating on top. After the lobsters had chilled, she took each to the heavy, moated cutting board and, gripping the blade of the knife the way Chef Garreth had taught her at a cooking class last spring, she drove the blade down through the orange head of the lobster, crunching down through its face, pounding the back of the blade with the heel of her left hand through the remaining shell. She spun the lobster, flattened out its tail, and drove the knife through the back shell and tail, splitting the lobster, then rinsing the halves beneath cold water and leaving them in the sink while she halved the rest. The way she now held a knife, being able to dispatch the lobsters with such authority, gave her a sense of being a capable woman. What else do we bring home alive to eat? she wondered. She couldn’t think of anything. Oysters maybe. She lifted the next cooked lobster, looked it in the face. Oysters don’t have eyes, she thought. Crack! went the knife through the neck and head of the lobster, splitting it.

When all eight halves were back in the fridge, the pot had been dumped off the back deck, and the cutting board had been cleaned of the green lobster innards—the kitchen pristine and cooled from the evening breeze—she undressed, donned a large bath towel, and walked the planks past dune grass for a cool, nude dip from the beach one hundred yards north of their cottage. Few walkers passed at what would then be the early evening. And she could see them from either direction anyway. But she usually waited till Frank appeared, clean in his loose white shirt and faded jeans and bare feet, bearing a sand-free towel to wrap her in. But only after he made her walk nude practically the width of the beach so that he could regard her from the moment she emerged, dripping from the ocean. He enjoyed the perky bob of her

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