My short-short story Hush, Puppy is a victory lap for anyone who’s ever been railroaded into eating in a restaurant they can’t afford. Welcome to the resistance!

Just published in the anthology Tiny Moments Vol. III from Bronze Bird Books,  and an Honorable Mention winner in the Women on Writing Spring 2023 Flash Fiction Contest.

 

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I can’t afford this lunch. Can’t afford the extravagance of some formerly-alive plant or animal that will sit on my tongue for a few moments, then leave via the other end of my body tomorrow. But it’s that tongue that’s the problem. Speak up!

Too late. I’ve followed my co-workers like a timid puppy into this rarefied eatery. Why am I here? Not quite an existential question, but on the way there. I need this job, this promising new start. So like any puppy, I submit to the training, the grooming, the attempts at bonding by well-meaning colleagues who take too much for granted. They chatter casually about how pleased they are that the bistro has survived the Covid pandemic, that they’re supporting a local business!

This place doesn’t have a “Please wait to be seated” sign just inside the door. If you come here, you’re expected to know that you don’t “Please seat yourself”; you wait your ass. Just look at the huge matching pots of orchids flanking the door like bouncers. The cork flooring suggesting that yes, you will order wine with your meal. What does it say about me that I’m more worried about saving face with people I barely know than about saving money for necessities like, say, rent? Aren’t my professional creds enough to stand up to politely declining a lunch? Couldn’t I have fabricated allergies and warned that I’d be limited to ordering tea and enjoying their company, later sneaking the emergency Clif bar I keep in my purse?

Now we’re seated in the red leather booth and being presented with the kind of menus I hate—prices listed in plain double digits, no dollar sign or decimal.

Pear and gorgonzola rice salad, 18.

Boudin Blanc sausage and Tarbais bean cassoulet, 21.

Dutch herbed fries with red beet garlic aioli, 14. (“We don’t serve ketchup.”)

What I want isn’t on the menu. Tuna melt, 6. I send a silent plea out to the universe: Help me. And there, under Appetizers, it appears: hush puppies. “Sweet potato hush puppies!” I warble. “Why, I never see hush puppies outside of the South, and never made with sweet potatoes!”

At 8., they’re within my slender realm of affordability. The waiter will narrow his eyes slightly, the hush puppies and “tap water, no ice please” will net him less than a two-dollar tip. “That can’t be all you’re having!” cry my companions, who just ordered seafood putanesca, 21. and halibut cheeks with black lentils, 24. Sipping my acqua di rubinetto, I wonder: would they change their order if they knew that “putanesca” means prostitute?

Tucked into the pages of a book I plucked from a Little Free Library last week, I’d found a postcard emblazoned with an arc of old-timey lettering: Greetings from the Resistance. The colors of that lettering are startingly similar to this menu. Suddenly I feel sturdier. There are so many nuanced ways to say “no.”

“Hush puppies are a rare treat for me. And they’re very fitting,” I reply, closing the menu, then catching my error. “Filling, I mean. They’re very filling.” They’re both, I realize, and smile. Hush, puppy. No need to say more.

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