My
girlfriend got this idea she had to rescue a white crab. Set it free. We were
drunk. I still had a fake knife in my head from Tina’s party. The waiter put
the crab in a Styrofoam container and looked at us like we were crazy. All the
way to the car I could hear the faint clicking of its claws inside. It was
nearly two in the morning by the time we parked at Jacob Riis Beach. For a few
minutes we just sat there in the car, smoking, listening to the creaking sound
of the Styrofoam as the crab pushed against the rubberband. It must have been
nineteen degrees, the sand as hard as asphalt all the way to the freezing
ocean. My girlfriend knelt down, opened the Styrofoam slowly, like some kind of
guardian crab angel. I had to kick the box to get the thing motivated, and then
it slowly raised one hairy white claw, another. For a few minutes, it just
hunched there doing nothing. Then it headed, with long pauses, back to the
glittering city.
Matt
Marinovich
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy