Cowboy Baby Daddy

“Why doesn’t he answer?” Martin demands.

I just shrug my shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” Wilks says. “I must have been mistaken.”

Martin eyes him, but slowly unclenches his fists.

If Wilks knew exactly how ferocious Martin can get, and how close he came to getting his ass kicked by a senior citizen, he probably would have run out of the store screaming.

Never—and I mean never—mess with a fishmonger.

“Eh,” Martin says, “it’s all right. What do you need?”

“What do I need?” Wilks asks me, and I’m about ready to kick his ass myself.

“Monkfish,” I tell him.

“Monkfish,” Wilks repeats. “Fresh monkfish.”

“Now you’ve done it,” I mutter in Wilks’s ear as I walk past him for a better view of the action.

“You think I sell anything that’s not fresh?” Martin snaps. “You think I sell garbage?”

“That’s not what I—”

“I build this business from nothing. Everyone who comes in knows I sell the freshest fish in the city. This is why I’ve been here 35 years. Why are you so stupid?”

I can’t contain my amusement completely, but I try to keep my snickering at least somewhat quiet.

Wilks hears me well enough, and it’s not doing his confidence any favors. He’s got to come to some sort of détente with Martin, though; otherwise the old fuck won’t sell to him.

This is one of those baby-bird-out-of-the-nest moments. I’ll step in if Martin starts swinging. Other than that, Wilks is very much on his own.

“That’s not what I meant,” Wilks says.

He’s getting frustrated, but he’s not mad yet. The key is in finding just that right dose of anger. It has to be enough to convince Martin to chill the fuck out, but it can’t be so much that it just escalates the situation.

Let’s watch.

“You come in here and tell me that I call my customer the wrong name and you tell me that you want fresh monkfish when there is no other monkfish that I sell!”

Martin’s screaming now, and I’m laughing my balls off.

Wilks tries to reason with him, but he’s not getting through.

And then, like a miracle, it happens.

“Listen, you ornery old prick,” Wilks starts, “you know very well that I wasn’t saying your fish wasn’t fresh, I was just repeating what Dane told me to get when we came in here! Now, you can put it back in your pants and make a sale or you can keep screaming and lose a solid customer! Now, what’s it going to be?”

He hit all the relevant points, and with the exception of insisting the proper form of my name, he didn’t go overboard.

You can’t teach that.

Martin’s face grows a few shades redder, but in the next moment, he’s got Wilks in a bear hug that’s sure to ruin the latter’s nice, clean shirt.

When Martin finally drops the new executive, he turns to me, exclaiming, “This one’s got the eggs! Ha! Reminds me of when you first started coming in here.”

Now, let me make something clear: we are not the only people in the fish market, not by a long shot. Martin’s been in business this long by being the best, and every chef who even thinks of working with seafood in this town knows it.