Fray Bento

The Blonde had been re-reading T S Eliot's The Wasteland all week, and I'd been teasing her about it, asking her how many times she needed to read the same verse before she understood it. She'd taken it well for the first thirteen seconds, and then thrown the book at me. I dodged, it shattered a vase of flowers, and I took the opportunity to get out of the house and go vase shopping while she carried on reading the poem and occasionally consulting the dictionary.
When I returned with a new vase she had a deck of Tarot cards out and was frowning thoughtfully at them.
"I think they're broken," she said, pointing at the Tower. "This one keeps coming out upside down."
"The Tower?" I said, putting the vase on the table and picking up the flowers from where they'd fallen. "A symbol of strength and fortitude, assailed by outside forces."
"Huh?"
"The lightning striking the tower is representative of the outside forces," I said. "When upside down, or inverted as Madame Sosotris would surely say, it indicates weakness and yielding, an ineffectual striking out at obstinate circumstance and the futile flailing of fists against outrageous fate."
The deck of cards narrowly missed me, hitting the vase and knocking it off the table, where it too promptly shattered.
"Shall we go and have lunch?" I suggested.
*
Fray Bento was an Argentine Sushi restaurant that my editor had been pestering me to visit for a few days now, and which I'd been procrastinating over. I was peripherally aware that Argentina was a South American country and probably had splashy coastal bits where fish might be found still fresh, but it was most strongly associated with beef in my mind. And the name of the restaurant was clearly intending to focus that assocation. When we walked in and saw the leather-covered banquettes and the mechanical rodeo horse I very nearly turned round and walked out again, certain that we'd stumbled into a steak-house by mistake.
If only.
The waiter seated us using the three words of English that he knew ("Heel!", "Sit!", "Beg!") and presented us with fish-shaped menus that were greasy to the touch. The Blonde, eager to show that she's not just a figure of physical perfection, thanked him in Spanish. He looked confused.
The menu featured some very classical sushi dishes, but looking closer I realised that I couldn't actually find any fish in them. The nigiri rolls were vegetarian, the sashimi turned out to carpaccio, and the Zaru Soba was served with Bovril rather than dashi. I waved at a different waiter and he turned his back on us, so I got the Blonde to flutter her eyelashes at another one. He hastened over.
"English?" I said, a little hesitant.
"Norwegian," he said in perfect English. "I suspect, however, that you were hoping to ask me if I were capable of speaking English."
"I was certainly hoping to patronise you more than you seem able to patronise me," I responded. "This menu, where's the fish? This is a sushi restaurant, and yet everything on here seems suspiciously beefy."
He nodded, much to my dismay. "Argentine sushi," he said slowly, carefully enunciating each word as though for a child, "Is a euphemism for beef. In the case of our chefs, corned beef. I'm told they corn it themselves."
The Blonde stood up and left without a word. She had a bad experience with corned beef when she was a child.
"I see," I said, aware that I still had a review to write. "Well, I guess that's better than buying in tinned corned beef."
The waiter's inclination of his head told me all I needed to know.
"Bring me whatever you'd personally recommend," I said, stressing the word personally.
He brought me the bill.