The most important part was the heat.
It wasn’t burning like the cost of forgetting sunscreen at a community pool and choosing instead to run through chlorine puddles and swim with open eyes despite humans not being built to see what happens under the water's surface. No, not burning like a birch struck by the lightning of a dry summer storm, that blazes up like a flaming pyre and offers something to the sky. No, this heat was a slow roast. It was the crabs that didn’t realize they were being boiled. It was a hike as the sun reaches midday without water. It was the fact that the sun still touches the earth from so far away. It was...
“Good morning,” she said as she slid into the seat in front of him, smoothing the fabric of her dress down before folding her hands neatly on the white tablecloth.
He straightened in his chair, putting his leg back on the floor from where it had rested on his knee. He stared at her for a moment, bringing his hands up to the table and fidgeting with them before finally saying: “I’m... glad?”
He spoke with the apprehension one would use to defuse a bomb in one of those B-grade action films.
“What are you glad about?” she giggled, covering light pink lips with a manicured hand.
“That...” He hesitated. “It’s a good morning...?” He picked at the edge of a laminated menu.
The man who came to take their order clutched a yellow notepad in his hands. He smiled at the woman with like an old friend and when he spoke -- though he addressed both -- he only spoke to her.
“Hello, I'll be helping you today. What can I get started for you?”
“Oh, I am positively starved.” She smiled looking at him so intensely in the eyes.
“An excellent choice,” he said as he wrote something down on his notepad. “Would you like anything to drink with that?”
“Yes, the weather is wonderful,” she replied.
“The bartender will be thrilled.” He paused to write something again. “How about you, sir?”
“I’ll have the... Garden salad,” the man responded, squinting to look up at him despite the sun blazing over the waiter’s shoulder.
“Pardon?” They asked in unison, heads swiveling to stare into his eyes.
“The... The garden salad. On the menu? That’s what I would like.” He was sweating now, though he was sitting in the shade.
The waiter and the woman exchange a questioning glance, followed by a large silence before the man spoke again. “You know. The garden salad. With the spinach and vinaigrette?”
More silence.
“I think he needs some time to think,” she finally said, smiling at the waiter apologetically.
“Of course!” He said, tension draining out of his shoulders that the man hadn’t noticed before.
“Well then.” She smiled again, looking back towards the man. “What makes it a good morning?”
“...What?”
“You said you were glad it was a good morning. What makes it a good morning?”
“No... No... I didn’t mean that...?”
“Why would you tell me something you didn’t mean?”
“No... I didn’t... Say that.”
“Did you not say it or not mean it?”
“Here we are.” The waiter was back with a large platter full of small blue crabs. He set it down in the middle of the table.
Some of the crabs were boiled red. Others retained their blue color and moved across the plate. The living crabs swarmed over the dead ones.
Crabs are omnivorous scavengers. It is their nature. Everything that followed was natural.
One blue crab locked eyes with the seated man. It took another living crab’s claw in its hands and ripped the shell from the muscle of the claw such that it hung there, limp.
The way that the crab consumed the other was neither violent nor grotesque. It meticulously hollowed the other one out, pulling muscles connected by sinew and nerves from deeper within its body out of the hole where the claw had been.
All the crab needed was an opening, a small imperfection in the armor, and she could take everything she wanted out of him.
When she was done, all that was left was a husk that hardened in the sun.
As the rainless storm began and thunder echoed over the water below, the woman stood up and smoothed the wrinkles out of her dress.
The most important part is the heat. The most important part is the summer lighting. The most important part is the woman in the blue sundress with the perfectly manicured nails.