A man at a bar offered me a pickled egg from a jar. He wasn’t an employee, and there wasn’t a menu.
They danced like dissected eyeballs in obsidian liquid, without identification or purpose and I told him that I’d never tried pickled eggs but I wouldn’t turn down free food.
I fished futilely for the oblong spheres in their dark, encompassing sea of brine, remarking that these retrieval skills must be lost on my generation.
“Git ya some salt and pepper.”
I sat down and took a bite and told the man he’d converted me. When he turned his back, I ate Jess’s too and told her to act cool.
Before we left, the bartender made us sign a petition to remove “Georgia on My Mind” from the jukebox. We consented without question and walked into the cold.
“I can tell you two share everything,” she had said.
