She said she had a headache. Hmmmm. Tomorrow night, then? Okay, she said. She really did have a headache today and would see me tomorrow. Great. I believed her about the headache. I had had one myself before I went oystering. I spent some time working my way through my cookbooks, trying and failing to put oysters and duck together in one dish. I couldn’t get the tastes right in my mind, and my cookbooks seemed to agree. So things sometimes go, in the cooking game. But there are always other possibilities. I took some of yesterday’s scallops, put them in a layer in a baking dish, covered them with fresh dill, a quarter cup of sugar and a bit of salt, and squished them down hard with a little plate topped by an old flatiron held in place by big rubber bands. I put the dish in the fridge to meld. A sort of scallop gravlax. Would that be gravollops? I only had a little over twenty-four hours to blend the flavors, instead of the seventy-two I would have preferred, but it would still be good when Zee arrived.
