Bill knew Bemuse Trout was a seafood restaurant, but something about that turn of phrase made his brain itch. The tense perhaps, or the idea of a grinning fish.
Still, the job was a twenty minute cycle ride from his and Sallys’ flat. Plus Bemuse Trout’s menu was fascinating to work with. The idea was that each dish was based around a pun (Don’t Be Shellfish, Cod Save Us All). He used to work in a place called VHS Noir, which mixed forties glamour with eighties decadence, and it was a lot better than that.
Some dishes Bill never worked on. These were written on the menu like a pun, but with no obvious point of reference. Meals like ‘Where’s The Salmon?’ and 'So, It’s Time For Trout.’
A chef named Anna worked at the other end of the gleaming kitchen. Bill only knew she was called Anna due to the odd person saying her name. She worked alone, cutting, chopping frying. The fish she prepared on were out of a cartoon, big and red, with long whiskers, and serrated, knife-like fins. Squid with thin slits for eyes, and enough wrinkles to cover an old man. They bled blue when she cut them.
She brought them to the restaurant in a wriggling cloth sack with faded ink markings, without any assistance from delivery men or porters. At the end of the day the scraps were never saved for stew, but returned to the sack. Sometimes they still wriggled.
Bill had to know where they came from. He told Sally he was off to the pub, and hid in the shadows outside Bemuse Trout.
He managed less than a glance at Anna when she left, that sack hung over her shoulder, when the ground fell out from underneath him.
Freezing water replace tarmac. Slippery things squirmed against his leg, and salt blinded his eyes and burnt his nose. His fingers clawed straight up, desperate to find anything to latch onto, and banged against unforgiving wood.
Strong hands grabbed the back of his shirt, and pulled him up into glorious but icy air. Without vision and through water blocked eardrums he heard someone say:
'What do we do Grandfather?’