Back To Nature

Five minutes is all it took. Five minutes, and I’d already caught three fish, each gorgeous and huge and iridescent as pearls. Had I stumbled into a dream, some fishermen’s heaven? I cast in again, pulled a beer from the cooler and cracked it open, lit a smoke, tossed the match. Christ, I hadn’t even set up my chair yet and had already yanked three trophies like it was nothing.

And here was another bite! Unbelievable! I set down my beer. The tip of my rod was twitching like a telegraph when I arced it back and felt the hook set deep. My drag started to whine as the fish darted for the duckweed. I let him run, played him a few feet, then let him run again. I could already feel him tiring.

I was sucking in line at a mile a minute when this guy in a tuxedo appears. “You can’t fish here,” he says.

“Why not?”

“This is a koi pond.”

“So.”

“In a restaurant. You can’t fish in a restaurant.”

This guy, Raoul his nametag said, was totally wrecking my concentration. I focused on the line, trying to reel this thing in. But it was a real monster. Four pounds at least.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you leave. This is not—”

“Can you, like, just be quiet for one more minute. I’ve almost got this thing. Here, just take my cigarette.”

“I will not.”

“Whoa! You see that?”

Raoul hesitated, squinted. “Was that a jump?”

“Jesus H. yeah. This puppy’s got springs.”

The maitre’de took a step closer, but said nothing.

“There now, he’s getting tired. You see how my line went slack? He’s just waiting for me to finish the job. And there he is. That’s him wobbling the surface.”

“He is a big one.”

“Here, give me a hand. Grab that net.”

Raoul retrieved the net.

“Go on. You can’t net him from up here.”

Raoul climbed down to the pond’s edge, nearly tripping on a Buddha, stopping beside a hedge of potted ficus. His black patent leather shoes shone in the foyer’s light. “Just scoop him up?”

I tugged the cigarette from my mouth. “You gotta get him headfirst.”

“Like this?”

“No, you gotta get right in there. Get it down in the water.”

Scoop and pull. Raoul jerked with surprise. He stood with a look of childish disbelief, the fish twisting and twisting in the net. And god was it beautiful.

I bit down on the cigarette and grabbed him by the gills. Lifted him up. The sombitch must have weighed five pounds. Above the music drifting in from the lounge, I said, “So what do you think?”

“He is stunning.”

“Want to hold him?”

“Can I?”

“Hell, you helped. He’s half yours, far as I’m concerned.”

I wrenched out the hook with my trusty rusty pliers and passed the fish over. Raoul grasped him admiringly by the tail, letting him hang there like a prize pheasant. Which reminded me. I pulled two more beers from the cooler. Cracked one open, passed it along. “You like fresh duck?” Took a sip.

“I love it,” he said.

“Ever go huntin’?”

“Never.”

He handed the fish back and I opened my knife, squatted down to the water to clean him. “Meet me at City Park at nine.”