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lay, and invisible to her downward gaze, fulfilled his most profound dream, thereby obliterating any chance that anything of an intimate nature could ever happen again, for his sake, and for hers.
    This chilling thrust was their first, and final, act of love, the culmination of what seemed like decades of lust-infused conversations disguised as culinary banter. By his flowery descriptions they were to one day ascend to the very heights of fleshy bliss, her eggs joining to his cum in a dance of love and merriment. But instead, she had just unexpectedly offered her body to him in the walk-in, unceremoniously, as though she herself was an ingredient that could be found and unwrapped for his delectation. She was warm at first, and then cold, and then colder. He had entered her without a word, and pressed his flesh to hers, forgiving and then forbearing, until she smashed a multitude of the eggs over which she was draped, first with her fingers, and then with her face.
    In a matter of moments, he was done, and so were they. Their eternity was extinguished like the lives that by this act had become runny yolks that drooled for wealthy Fabergé Restaurant clients, instead of wonderful, winged creatures pecking the ground seeds to nourish litters of eggs in sumptuous nests.
    From his seeds, to her eggs, and from her eggs, to their death.
    That was years ago.
    It seemed to both of them as though this ghastly scene was recreated each time they looked into each other’s gaze, and when the inevitable image was played back before his mind’s eye, he would slouch in shame and she, in turn, would shudder in disgust. And they would mourn the past. And he would tell a joke. And she would laugh. And he would see the past. And so would she. And they would return to the realm of the living.
    “I, Jess, do hate insects.” Nate made this forceful declaration on his knees, without even straining his long neck. Now he raised himself up again to his full 6’ 6” stature and grinned a sardonic look as he glanced down to her crouching existence. From Jessica’s perspective, Nate’s freckled, reddish skin, orange hair, and green beret-turned-chef-hat made him look the very part of a giant carrot. Erect before her that afternoon, he nonetheless looked inspired. And, as always, he looked sad. She had bent down to him in pity and understanding, and now she rose back up again, with knowledge and the strength to move on.
    The “they” to whom Nate referred, she knew from the many versions of this scene that she’d witnessed over the past four years, were Nate’s creatures of affection: lobsters. These lobsters were now imprisoned in a small cage in the walk-in, but in the course of the shift, they would be released to satisfy the culinary lust of clients who were ready to savor some of the most expensive flesh on the dinner menu. Lobsters, whose natural fate—and even the lobsters themselves probably knew this—was for nothing other than fickle currents and the magnified vision of the heavens seen through the ever-agitated surface of the Atlantic Ocean from which they’d been so unceremoniously plucked. These were the chosen ones, those who had not as yet decided to exit the lobster traps that they’d so effortlessly entered. And so, when the ‘fishermen’ had arrived to raise the traps up to the surface, the single act of their fishermanly profession, these chosen lobsters were careened onto the shore for the short trip to local restaurants.
    To a chef who’d cooked a lot of them, lobsters do indeed look like the “insects” that Nate had called them. But to those in the know, these were clever and resourceful beings, as comfortable in ocean currents as on the slippery coastal rocks that demarcated their breeding ground. But, alas, many of the captured lobsters were known to contain huge sacks of delicious, green eggs, the delight of the Fabergé Restaurant gourmet set, those elite beings who carried with them that discrete but powerful