Grizzly

Omar, my ex, had an inordinate love of cured salmon. He'd go on these month-long binges, eating nothing but salmon on a bed of vinegared rice.

"Neeeeshburuu....!" he'd lumber over from the futon with bared teeth, taking a swipe in my direction with his bear paws. "Neeshburu, we must keeeeep the salmon coming."

The onset of his salmon craze came at a bad time. He had lost his job for several months. And with only my modest income, a good percentage of which went toward his excessive salmon and dry-cleaning habits*, we were fast running up against pecuniary difficulties. He was a big man with a big appetite.

In an effort to economize, I bought sashimi-grade salmon from reputable markets, stocking up the refrigerator with so much fish one might suspect I was keeping a pet grizzly in my apartment.

One night, I came home from work to find him standing nude in the kitchen with the refrigerator, door swung wide open. In his one hand was a Styrofoam tray with shredded bits of plastic film still clinging to it, and in the other hand was a one-pound slab of fish. "Dinner?" I asked. Before I could say any more, he bared his teeth in what I called his hermit-crone smile and the shoved the entire salmon slab into his giant maw.

Remember Diana and that guinea pig from the TV miniseries "V"? Yeah, it was just like that.

-------------
*It was pathological. The man would dry clean just about anything.