Kissing Fish

“It wasn’t the last time I’d kiss a fish in the back of a Model T, but it was the last time the fish turned out to be a princess.”

I was used to Delilah making big claims under the influence of a few too many plastic cups of Baby Duck sparkling wine, but this one was a new one. I knew that Delilah hung out with me because I was a good listener and because most of her friends were dead.

That might seem a little harsh, coming right out and saying it that way, but Delilah was not young. She was “catching the lip of 92” was how she’d said it last Friday night when we’d gotten together. I wasn’t sure if the idioms Delilah used were real ones, or if she just made them up on the spot. You see, there is about 70 years between us, and I also didn’t have any friends. But not because they were dead. I just didn’t get along with people my own age, or any people, really. They expected too much of me, most of the time. They wanted me to understand their facial expressions, to predict what they were thinking, to make sustained eye contact, or follow through on plans. Nope, I preferred the ease of just dropping by Delilah’s and cracking a cheap bottle of bubbly and listening to her wild stories. Delilah told great stories. Like, really incredible stories. Unbelievable ones. And tonight was no different. Err, well, it was a little different. Tonight Delilah told me that tonight was her last night on earth.

Delilah had called me up in a tizzy, her words not mine. “I’m in a tizzy, Corbid.” (Yeah I chose my own name while drinking too much scotch one night, what is it to you? No I don’t know what it means or why I chose it. It just sounded good coming out of my mouth. That’s it.) “Corbid, you have to come over, I have to tell you the story I’ve never told anyone before I leave the planet.” Leave the planet she said, not die, which I found a little odd. Delilah was usually a straight shooter about things. She loved weird idioms, but if it was serious, she’d tell it like it is.

So that is how I found myself at my best friend’s house at 3pm, drinking Baby Duck and listening to the stories of Delilah kissing fish.

We were on story number seven. Delilah had started kissing fish as a toddler. Apparently her grand-pappy would take her fishing on the weekends, and he was known for telling a whimsical tale or two. When Delilah was three, he’d told a strange version of that story about how a talking fish gave some guy three wishes so he wouldn’t eat it and throw it back instead. Delilah had become obsessed with the idea of meeting a talking fish, and her grandfather couldn’t dissuade her from the idea. He tried to tell her other fairy tales, like the one about kissing a frog who became a prince, but Delilah had just mixed them up and apparently started kissing the fish that they caught, just in case.

I found it strange that Delilah had never in all these couple years of afternoon drinking, mentioned her penchant for kissing fish. I’d heard about her gay old days dancing in secret rooms with other “gals like me.” Delilah was queer when it wasn’t cool, or even legal and I felt grateful that she’d survived long enough to tell me her stories. Most of her friends didn’t make it. She didn’t like to talk about the awful parts anymore, she said. She wanted to spend her last years on earth telling the good stories, so I heard a lot about the dancing, the late night bridge parties, the roller-skating, Delilah had loved to roller-skate cuz it meant holding the hands of other girls so she wouldn’t fall down. It turns out a lot of girls were into holding hands and Delilah felt lucky that she’d met so many of them.

But the fish thing, Delilah had never mentioned a thing.

I was a little afraid that maybe she’d taken too much of her memory medication, or something, but I didn’t want to interrupt, and Delilah had always said that if it was her time to go, I should let her go. She didn’t want to spend her last days in the hospital, and “how would they find her,” if she wasn’t at home?

”a fish princess?” I say, “come on Delilah, you gotta be pulling my leg!” I liked to use idioms around her too, she loved it when I said old-timey things, it made her laugh at the dissonance of watching a twenty-something try to use turns of phrases that weren’t quite fit for my mouth. I liked it too. Her laugh is one of my favourite things in the world. I’d met her at one of those choir meet up groups when I’d been looking into how to make friends. I didn’t like the choir, but I loved to sing, and I adored Delilah. Our friendship had just stuck, and she could always get me to sing a sea shanty with her.

“Corbid. You wouldn’ta believed how beautiful she was! Her eyes were still kind of deep and black like a fish’s, but the rest of her…well she was shiny and vibrant voluptuous, like one of those maidens from the renaissance paintings. It was the renaissance, right? Or was it those damn impressionists? Who painted those gorgeous redheads lying on couches in fields? Corbin?” I shook my head, I didn’t know, nor did I want to interrupt to search it up on my phone. “Tell me more about your fish princess, Delilah, how’d it happen?”

Delilah’s fish stories had been disjointed, and not terribly clear. Around the age of twelve, her grandfather had died, leaving her delirious with sadness. She’d run to the lake and gotten into his boat and rowed into the middle and started fishing. Right away she’d caught this large silver fish she’d never seen the like of before. And when she’d taken the hook out of its mouth, it had started talking. “Kiss me!” the fish had said. And Delilah, who was used to kissing fishes just in case, well she did. And it turns out, that fish was a twelve year old princess of fishes.

That was the first time they met. The fish princess didn’t grant wishes as much as just wanted some human companionship. Fish were boring, she’d said, always pontificating about the light on the surface of the water, and waxing poetic about the waves. The princess fish, she wanted adventure, love and to see what the world beyond the water was like. But she could only stay a day at a time, and only once a year. So Delilah returned to the lake on the day her grandfather died every year, and spent a day with her fish princess.

Over the years they fell in love, and that is how Delilah came to be nineteen in the back of a Model T, kissing a fish who became a woman.

Delilah and the fish-woman spent a “day of heavenly bliss” before the fish admitted that she wouldn’t be able to see Delilah anymore. That she wasn’t being forced to marry some fish-prince-poet and that would make it impossible for her to change, and bind her magic to the waters.

Delilah and the fish had returned to the boat, Delilah distraught. And in the boat Delilah had cried so much that the bottom of the boat had become deep with her tears.

The fish-woman looked at the tears and had an idea. What if, Delilah became a fish, and went into the lake with her, and they could swim away together?

Delilah stopped weeping and thought long and hard about her proposal.

The fish-woman (her name was unpronounceable to human ears, so this is just what Delilah called her) and Delilah kissed until midnight, but at the last moment, Delilah second guessed herself and told her love that she couldn’t bear to be a fish for the rest of her life, and the fish-woman had turned back into a fish, and jumped off the boat and that was the last that Delilah had seen of her. Delilah had lived a weird and wondrous human life for those seventy years, and only had one regret. And it was a big one. She’d wished she’d become a fish.

Until that morning. She decided to do something about it. She’d made preparations, she’d written goodbye letters, she’d finished her will. “It’s all your Corbid, what little I have, this house, and my fancy dishes, but you have to do one thing more for me.”

Delilah wanted me to take her to the lake.

I put on some coffee, and I considered her plea seriously. She seemed mostly in her right mind. But she’d also said this was her last day on earth. Was she wanting me to help her die? Was this fish story just a fancy way to get me to put her overboard without guilt?

I sobered up, and I looked into Delilah’s warm and deep sparkling eyes. I tried not to cry at the idea of my very best friend being gone. My only friend. I knew this day would come but I had been hoping for another decade of bad wine and good stories.

But best friends do what’s best for each other, and Delilah was committed. Today was her grandfather’s death-i-versary and the one day she might be able to see her fish-love.

So I drove her to the lake. We found her grandfather’s boat tucked where she’d left it seventy years ago, no worse for wear, and we got in and rowed to the middle of the lake. The sun was setting and there was a fuzzy pink glow everywhere. Delilah put her hook in the water and let it down. She was quiet and determined. We sat for an hour like that.

“Sing with me Corbid? She always liked a song.”

So we sang a little sea shanty her grandfather liked to sing with harmonies and everything, just like she’d taught it to me that first day we met at choir.

And, the fishing rod began to bend, a little at first and then more, and Delilah wasn’t strong enough to reel, so I reeled for her. I slowly but with strength brought the fish up and towards the boat.

It was big silver fish, pinkened from the rosy glow, and I looked at Delilah, and her eyes were making salt water and I knew this was the fish.

I lifted the fish, who wasn’t struggling at all but who seemed to lean towards Delilah. Delilah caught it gently in her hands and deftly removed the hook, looked the fish in its deep dark eyes, puckered up and planted her mouth on its mouth.

For a moment I believed everything she told me, but I watched as the fish stayed a fish, and part of me broke. I had so wanted it to be true. I closed my eyes for just a moment to stop myself from weeping.

When I opened them, there were two fish at the bottom of the boat, and one of them had eyes that sparkled with a life lived with magic and no regrets, not a single one.

I threw those fish in the water and as I turned my back to row home I could hear two voices, in harmony, singing that sea shanty we’d just sung, and I didn’t turn around but lent my voice to their chorus and let myself weep tears of joy at having known one of the best people in the world.