Fisherman's Cove
My girlfriend is starting to realize how often I am not paying attention at all. She came down with the flu the other day, so she called me.
“Hey, so I thought I was getting better last night, but I woke up feeling terrible,” she said. “Do you mind picking up some medicine for me?”
I said of course.
“Thank you so much. Oh, and before you get here, can you also get me some soup at a little place around the corner? It’s called Fisherman’s Cove. They have this amazing chicken and vegetable soup. Can you bring me some? It’s at the plaza. Yellow awning. You’ll see it.”
“For sure.”
“Thank you!”
I went and got the medicine. Then I walked over to the plaza. I could see Fisherman’s Cove up ahead. Yellow awning. Now, somewhere between that moment 100 feet away from the restaurant and the moment I walked through the door, I completely spaced out. Next thing I knew I was walking through the door of…a restaurant. I looked around. The place genuinely looked pretty fisherman’s cove-ish. I don’t even know exactly what I mean by that, but it did. It was also totally empty. I walked up to the guy at the counter.
“Hey, do y’all have that soup?” I asked. “The one with the chicken and vegetables?”
“Yes, we do!”
“Oh, great!” I said. “Can I get one soup to go?” He said sure, and within a few minutes I had a container of hot chicken and vegetable soup in my hands.
So I headed over to Hayley’s place to give her the soup. She was in bed. I went to the kitchen and poured the soup in a bowl. I also found a container of rice in the bag that the guy gave me at the restaurant.
“Do you want this rice, too?” I asked.
“Oh, the rice and peas?”
I squinted at the rice.
“Yup. Rice with peas.”
“You can leave it on the counter.”
I went to her room and gave her the soup.
“Thank you!”
“No problem. I’m so sorry you’re sick.”
“It’s okay. Thanks so much for going over there for me.”
I started to walk back to the kitchen.
“This is the Fisherman’s Cove soup?” she asked from the bedroom.
“Yeah.”
“With the yellow awning?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You sure?”
“I mean…yeah.”
“Hm…okay! ”
A little while later Hayley walked into the kitchen.
“I so appreciate you getting that soup for me,” she said. “It was really good. But…it wasn’t from Fisherman’s Cove. You got it from the Mexican restaurant next to Fisherman’s Cove. You walked into the wrong restaurant.”
“No, I didn’t. I got it from Fisherman’s Cove.”
She started to laugh.
“Babe, it’s fine! For real, the soup was really good! I’m just saying…that soup is from the Mexican restaurant. It came with Mexican rice. I think you just weren’t paying attention.”
I wasn’t. I knew that. I started laughing, too.
“Look,” I said. “I saw the sign, I walked over there. And yeah, I spaced out for a few seconds. But I swear, it looked fisherman’s cove-ish! And they had the soup! It wasn’t like I asked for the soup, and the guy was like, ‘Oh yeah, we have soup.’ No. He knew I was looking for the soup. There was no confusion. He hooked me up! That had to be Fisherman’s Cove. It had to be.”
“No, it was definitely the Mexican restaurant,” she said as she opened the fridge and grabbed the rice. “This is Mexican rice. Fisherman’s Cove is a Jamaican place. Jamaican rice and peas is a whole other thing.”
“That rice does have peas, though,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It does. I looked. I saw peas.”
“Where?”
So I started digging through a plastic container full of Mexican rice in search of peas to try to prove to my girlfriend that…oh, I don’t know. That I still do pay attention sometimes? That I’m not a liar, because I swear I saw peas in this container 20 minutes ago? Who knows. I was just hoping to find one pea. And then I did.
“Look! That’s a pea. Right there. That’s a fucking pea!”
Not that this helped me at all. If I’m honest with myself, I remember considering stepping back outside the restaurant after I had walked in, just to make sure I was in the right place. But the wallpaper at the Mexican restaurant was gold, which is close to yellow, which I knew was the color of the awning of Fisherman’s Cove next door. And in the moment, that was good enough for me. “You know, maybe I should go back outside and make sure I didn’t fuck this up,” I thought. But then I was like, “Nah. I’ll go check in with this guy up front and see what the chicken and vegetable soup here is all about.”
And I’m telling you, the guy was stoked on their chicken and vegetable soup. Right then, I knew I was at Fisherman’s Cove. I was not. But like, I knew I was. I don’t know. I guess I’m insecure about the fact that I was unable to complete a simple task for my sick girlfriend. I do think the Mexican restaurant next to Fisherman’s Cove is cooking up some fire chicken and vegetable soup that is flying under the radar in the Newkirk Plaza chicken and vegetable soup scene. No disrespect to the chicken and vegetable soup at Fisherman’s Cove. I just haven’t actually tasted it yet because I accidentally got soup from another place, which happens to be next door and also has delicious chicken and vegetable soup. Just ask my girlfriend. She said it might even be better than Fisherman’s Cove. Could she have said that just to be nice? Sure. But I also tasted it. It was great. So was the rice. And the peas. Well, the pea. Singular. Fuck. I’m a good boyfriend, right? Damn, I suck. Whatever. The whole point of this was to say that if you’re ever at Newkirk Plaza for the chicken and vegetable soup at Fisherman’s Cove, but you accidentally walk into the Mexican restaurant next door, just roll with it. Theirs is really good, too.