Creative meaning raw octopus tentacles that wiggle when the waiter pours soy sauce on them. Creative meaning fermented fish paste as a topping, which must be an acquired taste, and plates arranged with shrimp heads staring up at us beside the main dish.
"Do we eat these?" I ask Gavin, as quietly as I can.
He prods one with a chopstick.
"I'm baffled," he admits.
There's large caviar that explodes between my teeth with a strong, fishy taste I don't enjoy. There's fish liver doused in squid ink.
And finally, there's the sea urchin. It looks kind of like a pale orange brain atop rice, and from the way it wiggles just slightly as the waiter puts it in front of us, I can tell I'm not going to be crazy about it.
"The final course," the waiter intones. "Noru's famous fresh-caught uni. Please enjoy."
I don't really want it, but not eating it seems incredibly rude. Gavin and I each take a piece and, after a pause, I put it into my mouth.
I was right.
It's squishy, slightly slimy and somehow the tiniest bit gritty all at the same time. It tastes vaguely like the ocean, but the way it coats my tongue makes it overwhelming.
Plus, it's squishy, very squishy, and did I mention squishy? It's my least favorite texture.
I swallow, then quickly lift my glass to my lips, washing it down. Across the table, Gavin's doing the same.
We lock eyes, still drinking, and he starts laughing. Then I start laughing, because we both just acted like children forced to eat brussels sprouts.
When we put our glasses down, he leans forward again, beckoning me in.
"Can I tell you something?" he asks, his voice low.
His face is only a few inches from mine, the closest he's been all night, and my heart is thumping like a bass drum.
This is for show, I think, over and over again. It's an act. You're getting paid.
"Depends on what you're going to tell me," I answer.
"I don't think I like uni," he says. "And when Valerie booked this date, I didn't realize it was for sushi, or I think I'd have requested something else."
I'm trying hard not to laugh.
"I think you just spent a lot of money on a dinner you didn't enjoy," I tease. "Maybe look up the restaurant next time?"
"No, I spent money on food I didn't enjoy," he says, his eyes still sparkling at me. "It's the best fake date I've ever been on."
My stomach flip-flops, and I try to cover it up by taking another sip of water and sitting back in my seat.
"Have you been on many fake dates?" I ask.
"Just the one," he admits.
"Then it had better be the best," I tease. "Though by that logic it's also the worst."
"If you're done talking yourself in circles, I'm trying to tell you I had a good time paying you to act as if you like me," he says.
We lock eyes for a moment and a small, slight shiver runs through me.
I'm not sure it's acting, I think.
"Thanks," I say.
13
Gavin
I pay the bill without letting Marisol see it, because frankly, I feel a bit guilty signing away that much money on a single meal. Even though I'm flush now, it's hard not to look at a restaurant bill in the mid-three-figures and think of how many weeks' food budget it would have been a few years ago.
She wants to know, of course.
"What if I guess," she says. "And you say higher or lower."
"No," I say, enclosing my credit card in the leather folder.
"How many numbers? Five? Six? Including decimal places," she goes on, her eyes laughing.
I glance at the bill again.
"All right, it's five, but that's all you're getting from me."
"So it's in the hundreds," she says. "Over or under five hundred?"
The waiter comes by and I hand him the check along with my credit card. He thanks me and disappears.
"I could have sworn I just said I wasn't telling you," I say.
"Is the first numeral odd or even?"
I take a drink of water and say nothing.
"Okay, is it prime?"
"You think I'm going to know off the top of my head whether a number in the hundreds is prime?" I tease her. "I'm a musician, love, not a calculator."
She laughs.
"I just meant the first numeral," she says. "Those shouldn't be beyond you, right?"
"It's not prime," I say.
She grins at me.
"Shite," I say. "That's it, no more questions. Why do you even want to know?"
"Because you don't want to tell me," she answers. "So the first numeral is two, four, six, eight, or nine, since one, three, five, and seven are all prime."
The waiter returns and hands me the credit card receipt in the leather envelope. I stare into space a moment, calculating the tip.
"If you need help I can figure it," she offers.
"I know what you're doing and I'm not falling for it," I say, and quickly write the tip, add the two together, write the total and sign it.
Then I put my hand flat on the leather folder containing the check, just in case, but she glances at the front door and looks somber again, nerves creeping back onto her face.
"You do exactly as before," I tell her. "Smile, walk through, sit in the car."
"I know," she says. "It's going to take some getting used to is all."
I stand and offer her my hand, and she takes it, hers small and soft in mine, though she grips me back with surprising strength.
She's just nervous, I remind myself. It's not more than that.
The hostess, whose face might have been transformed into a permanent smile via plastic surgery, has the valet retrieve my car while we wait inside the restaurant, away from the paparazzi on the sidewalk. When I see my Ferrari glide up, I thank her, squeeze Marisol's hand, and open the door for her.
The vultures are right there, black camera lenses staring like massive, dead eyes. They all shout questions, and they're all old hands at using my first name liberally, knowing how hard it is not to pay attention to that.
"Gavin, how's recovery?"
"Gavin, did you have a good dinner?"
"Gavin, who's this?"
We ignore them. A valet holds Marisol's door open and I see her in, not leaving until the passenger door is closed behind her. The vultures keep shouting as I walk around the car, cameras a foot away from me, maybe less.
I've got the urge to shove them out of my face and hear that satisfying crunch of delicate equipment on asphalt, but I resist.
I tip the valet. I get in my car, already purring, and I close the door, turning to Marisol.
"Still doing aces," I tell her.
She exhales, leaning her head back against the leather headrest, ignoring the cameras right outside the windows.
"Is it like this everywhere you go?" she asks incredulously.
I slip the car into gear and rev the engine. Paparazzi move out of the way, just barely.
"God, no, thank Christ," I say. "Valerie had us come here because she knows it's essentially an observation tank for celebrities. Most places I go there's a few curious people with their phones out, if anything."
I ease the car forward, quite careful of the men still taking photos, and drive the car down the street.
"That's why they've got the valet stand out on the street," I say. "Because the paparazzi are allowed on public property. They could easily move the valet stand into their parking lot and eliminate the entire song and dance, but then the restaurant wouldn't get all the free publicity and celebrities would go elsewhere to be seen."
"Oh," she says, and she sounds relieved.
I come to a stop at the traffic light on the Pacific Coast Highway and wait, blinker on to head back into Los Angeles. I can't say I particularly want to go home, but this is what we've agreed upon - one date, to Noru - and it's already a little past ten.
As I wait, my stomach growls. Loudly.
"I guess we should have eaten the shrimp heads," Marisol teases.
"I've got no idea what we were meant to eat," I admit, still waiting for the light to change. "And exotic cuisine is all well enough, but it just left me wanting a proper basket of nice, greasy fish and chips."
"I know where you can get that," Marisol says.
"Is this going to be organic-battered artisanal fish with hand-globbed ketchup and chips arranged in pleasing architectural formations?"
"It's a shack full of bikers up near the county line," she says. "Sound acceptable?"
"Lord, yes," I say. "Take me there."
The light turns green.
"Left," Marisol says.
Poseidon's Net is, indeed, more or less a shack, and its gravel parking lot is full of the sort of big, chrome-and-leather motorcycles I believe Americans call hogs. Parking looks haphazard, so I pull into something that seems like a spot and we get out.
It's a gorgeous spot. The restaurant is just inland of the Coastal Highway, and on the other side, the land slopes downward to a row of houses lining the shore and a strip of sandy beach. Though the shack itself is small, it's got a massive wrap-around veranda filled with wooden picnic tables and large, loud men wearing leather vests.
"This work for you?" Marisol asks.
"Beautifully," I say.
We walk across the gravel parking lot, and I take her hand. She glances over at me.