All This Could Be Different

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

The two of us were sipping very hot coffee and trying my first oysters at the Milwaukee Public Market, which Tig said was modeled on the apparently famous Pike Place Market in Seattle. At MPM, you walked about the warehouse perimeter, where many little shops and markets huddled, you got your tacos or cheese knife or lobster roll and carried it upstairs, where there was seating. One stall sold a canvas bag of pink crystalline salt with grandiose writing about the Himalayas for twenty-five dollars. Only in America, I thought. St. Paul’s, which we were patronizing, had a little bar where they served food. The oysters on crushed ice. A bowl of lemon wedges, doll-size bottles of Tabasco. These are revolting, I said. Remind me of pussy a lil, honestly, Tig said, tipping her head back. Don’t have them with coffee, Jesus Christ, the oyster guy said. Please. Take these— He pushed toward us two glasses of white. On the house, he said. Only because I can’t stand it. Tig laughed even louder, took five dollars out of my wallet, and dropped them in the tip jar.