John T.’s piece a few weeks ago about the pick-a-prize lobster tank reminded me of a murder mystery I heard once.
A man I know, whose biography I desperately want to write, is a serious player in the superluxe hotel world. But 35 years ago, he was the manager of a modest tourist place in Niagara Falls, the kind of place with a “Continental” restaurant on the top floor, and while he didn’t actually tell me this, I’m guessing it was also the kind of place with a waterbed in the bridal suite, or maybe a champagne-glass shaped hot tub. Those are pretty sexy. Hey, it’s Niagara Falls.
Anyway, the restaurant got itself a live lobster tank, then a rare thing to find, let alone in a den of Canadian erotica. Everyone was happy about this—the chef, the hotel, the newlyweds, hell, maybe even the lobsters. I mean, what a view! Have you seen it? It’s pretty awesome, all that water.
Then the lobsters started dying. First it was just one or two (“Er, tonight we have a lovely lobster bisque special…”) but then it started to get ugly, not to mention expensive and creepy. Hands were wrung and calls made. Recriminations flew. The lobster supplier sent out a crack team who took vials of tank water and checked them for pH levels and oxygen and…I don’t know, sharks? Whatever, they were a crack team, and they knew what they were doing. And they didn’t know what was killing the lobsters.
But there they were, alive one day, floating around like so much flotsam the next. This went on for weeks, and peoples’ nerves were getting to them. The chef thought they should just can the lobster program, get rid of all this bad karma. The servers wanted to hold a séance. The newlyweds were sick of bisque specials, and one couple ran away, screaming that their champagne-glass hot tub started to fill itself with lobster stock. (Ok, that didn’t really happen.)
One night, after working late, my friend finally stumbled into the elevator to go back to the room he called home. Exhausted, a couple of nightcaps in him, he pressed the wrong button. The door opened, and for a moment not realizing where he was, he stepped into the restaurant to find the floor covered, inexplicably, in lines of tape. Snapping to attention, he turned and saw the entire cleaning crew huddled in the corner, their faces blanched with fear. He wondered if he should be afraid, too, and jumped when he felt something hit his foot. It was a lobster! He shrieked. There was another one, and another, and a half a dozen more. The lobsters were out of their tank! He ran, instinctively, over to the cleaning crew for safety, but they backed away from him. Why wouldn’t they protect him, a fellow man, from this marine menace? Well, it probably had something to do with the pile of cash they were crowded around. That’s when he realized: They were racing the lobsters. They were racing the goddamned lobsters to the death!
It wasn’t long before customers started asking about what happened to that lovely bisque they used to serve.