The Blue Sunfish

I looked out the window behind her. "It may have stopped raining. I've got an umbrella and a leather jacket upstairs. After being locked up in a jet for nine hours or so, I'd love to stretch my legs, even if it's raining a little."

She smiled. My heart melted. I picked up my glass of sturm.

"Tell me about yourself Rose."

She exhaled a little before starting. "As I said I'm thirty-six. I was born is Zurich. My father was a chemist and my mother was a pharmacist. When I was nine, my parents moved the family, including my little brother," she lowered her head a little, "to Rochester, New York. I grew up in the United States, moving three times as my father changed positions and companies. I graduated from High School in Portland, received my Bachelors and Masters in Marine Biology at Oregon State, I did my PhD and some post-grad work at Heidelberg, and for reasons which are still a mystery to me was offered a professorship here in Vienna."

"In Ichthyology?"

"No. That's more or less what I did my thesis in and it remains a hobby, a true love for me. Now, I teach and do a little research; it's all about sustainable aquaculture, now. An expedition to Ontario will be a personal scientific endeavor. Nothing to do with the University at all."

"Wow."

"How about you?"

"I'm a painter," I said with a smile and a flourish of my hand.

"Really?" A bright smile washed across her face.

"And decorator."

"Oh!" She clapped her hands together as she burst into laughter.

She was lovely, especially when she laughed.

"It's true..."

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to laugh."

"It's a practiced line. I got you."

We both laughed for a moment. I picked up my sturm and took a sip. "But it is true. I have a small crew. I work in and around the Toronto area. I live just outside of Toronto. I do mainly commercial painting, offices, restaurants, schools, that sort of thing."

"It must be very satisfying and relaxing."

"Oh no, not at all. It's a bizarre combination of intense boredom and high stress with a side order of sleep deprivation."

"Sounds a bit like science." She had an odd droop to the left on her lips.

"And then," I continued, "there is the unyielding assault on your senses from the work environment which is a heady combination of noxious fumes and bullshit... and then you have to fight the constant urge to absolutely murder your co-workers and colleagues."

"Ha! Ha!" She clapped her hands together. "Definitely science!"

I laughed, too. What a gorgeous creature. She picked up her glass and took a sip. I didn't see a wedding or engagement ring.

"Tell me about your family." I asked her.

She held the sturm in her mouth for a moment before swallowing and putting the glass down.

"My parents have both just retired, sold their house in Portland and moved into a condominium unit in Naples, Florida. Just about as far away from Portland as they could go."

"What's wrong with Portland Oregon?"

"Nothing. You've got to like wet and crazy, though. I think the point for them was, I live in Vienna, there's really not much in Portland for them."

"Oh, where's your brother then?"

Suddenly her face changed, "He died at a very young age."

Ouch. What a fucking idiot I am. "Oh, I'm sorry."

There was a slight pause, "No, it's quite all right, you couldn't know." Her eyes were cast downwards.

After the awkward pause I asked, "So, your parents didn't move

back to Switzerland or here with you?"

"My father says he can't afford to go back to Europe."

"Florida is nice."

"Well, after nearly thirty years, both he and my mother have fully integrated into American society. They're US citizens now, staunch Republicans."

"Are you, too?"

"Republican? No. I'm a-political."

"No, I mean a US citizen."

"Thankfully not. As a teenager I defied my parent's wishes and stubbornly held on to my Swiss neutrality. That turned out to be a blessing, as I would now be firmly in the grasp of the IRS."

"Very true." The woman clearly was whip-smart.

"My parents became US citizens, mainly so that they could vote. I've never had any interest in politics, US or otherwise. Growing up, I was immersed in fish and nature. I still am."

"So you were a nerd growing up?"

"Absolutely."

"Are you married?"

She jolted at the question. "No, never married."

"Why not? I mean you're a beautiful woman. Obviously, very intelligent. You've got a good job with a steady income."

She gazed the space above my head with a bit of a sardonic smile on her lips, "Growing up, no one wanted to date the goofy little nerd-girl with a foreign accent, no breasts, glasses, drab hair and a space between her two front teeth. Now, men get intimidated by Doctor Di Donato, who still has no breasts, drab hair and a space between her front teeth."

"Ah, tits are for kids, besides for me, it's all about the nipples." Why the fuck did I just say that? I was blushing. She was shuffling in her seat, probably uncomfortably. "I'm sorry," I blurted out. Why was I being such an asshole?

There was a slight smile to her lips as she slowly responded, "Well, thank you for sharing that with me."

Oh fuck. I could feel the blood flushing my head.

"I'm sorry," I took a deep breath while gazing at that lovely creature smartly dressed in a blue jacket trimmed with gold, "I guess I'm being intimidated by a beautiful woman... and... I'm just... transforming into a... bubbling idiot."

"Now you're trying to flatter me."

"No. Yes... I don't know." Sweat was breaking out on my forehead.

"Don't worry yourself, Kevin, a girl couldn't get much flatter than me." Blue fingernails parted her jacket front as she pushed her flat chest out.

"Oh god!" I looked down at the table as I grasped my skull with my fingers. "I'm sorry, Rose."

"Why?"

"I'm just...."

"It's the effect I have on men." I looked back up to her, she continued, "Don't worry. It's not you. It's me. Perhaps now you have a glimpse as to why I'm not married. In a potentially romantic situation, men just want to run away from me." She held her hands, palms up, in the air.

I took a deep breath, "We have a potentially romantic situation?"

"I'm single. You said over the phone that you don't have a significant other. I'm thirty-six, you're...early forties?"

"Forty-two," I answered.

"With your nipple remark I can assume that you're heterosexual, you've stated that I'm good looking in spite of my... breasts, I find you very attractive, too, the rest is all neurotransmitters and hormones doing what they are supposed to do."

I sat shocked looking at the woman. I know my jaw was slack.

Her eyes dropped down as she lifted one hand in the air, "There I go again. I'm sorry."

I broke the awkward silence, "Well, Rose. I must say I'm really looking forward to having dinner with you tonight." I held a wide smile on my face as she looked up.

Her face lit up in a bright, devilish smile.

Sex was definitely on the menu tonight. Ho-lee-fuck!

"Fifteen minutes, you said?"

"Yes, fifteen or twenty. It's a well-known restaurant called Figlmuller."

She was wearing a nice white blouse under her blue and gold jacket and a pair of black slacks. I, on the other hand, wore black Dockers and a grey, collarless, long-sleeved pullover type shirt.

"Am I dressed okay for the restaurant?"

"Oh yeah, it's casual," she answered with a dismissive wave of her hand. She checked the time on her cell phone, "We should leave fairly soon."

"Okay. Thank you for the drink," I drained back the last of the sturm, "and let me just pop up to my room and I'll get my jacket and umbrella."

"My pleasure," she said. She twirled her manicured finger to the waiter as I stood up. Inviting her upstairs with me, at this moment, may have been a little too forward, even though she, or rather her mystery benefactor, was paying for the room.

As I came back down, she was putting a collapsible umbrella back into her oversized purse/bag.

Without sitting back down I said, "Madam, lead the way." I swept my hand towards the hotel's front revolving glass door. And off we went.

It was raining very lightly as we made our way outside. The wind was blowing a little. Vienna's Stadtpark was directly across the street from the hotel. Rose and I both held on to my umbrella as we made our way across the busy street and into the park. I had to crouch a little to make up for her height, she was a whole head shorter than I was, even though her black leather ankle-high boots had a bit of a heel to them.

"Nice little park," I said as we passed a life-sized gold statue of a violin player, surrounded by an ornate white marble arch.

"One of the Strauss' I think."

"Cool."

"Vienna is the city of music."

The paved walkway gently meandered through the park. The extensive lawns hadn't recovered from winter, and matted brown leaves lay under the clumps of trees. There were ample park benches, all wet from the rain. There was some sort of a canal off to our right. Paths took off from ours. We passed numerous little statues and busts of famous whiskered men. In the rain, I had no interest in finding out who was being commemorated. All-in-all, it kind of reminded me of Manhattan's Central Park. Well used and well loved.

We emerged at the opposite corner of the park. There appeared to be a small public washroom and a woman selling flowers, just beyond the entrance. We whisked up a busy street with all manner of small upscale shops and cafés, stopping to peek at the fancy windows of desserts or crazy tri-coloured men's leather shoes. They weren't tourist shops. Clearly, Vienna was a well-to-do city, at least the part that we were walking through was.

Eventually, Rose turned us into what was once a narrow alley, now lined with more shop windows and store fronts. There is was: Figlmuller, Seit. 1905, the u having the two-dot umlaut over it. Through the big windows decorated in two-tone green, it was quite obvious the small restaurant was busy. I was impressed with the copper kitchen exhaust ductwork carefully snaking its way up the building above the slightly ajar fancy glass and wrought iron kitchen door. We waited in the small main doorway vestibule until a middle-aged balding waiter dressed in a black tuxedo checked Di Donato against a written list produced from his inside tux-jacket pocket. In a slightly Germanic accent he smiled and said, "Yes, one moment please."

Two minutes later we were seated at a small wooden table and each handed a menu. Naturally, we ordered the Wiener schnitzel. The same balding waiter said, "It is pork," smiling.

"That's fine," I replied glancing over to Rose. She nodded her head smiling.

We also ordered a potato salad and a small salad to share. I let Rose pick the white wine; it was all foreign to me.

In no time, wineglasses and a clay wine holder and wine appeared at our table. In a flash, the wine was opened and a test amount was poured into my glass.

"It's fine," I said after taking a sip. The waiter charged our glasses and whisked off.

Rose and I clinked our glasses together smiling, "Cheers." The white wine was crisp and refreshing, very nice.

The waiter returned with a white plate emblazoned with Figlmuller logo containing our cutlery and paper napkins decorated with green leaves and the restaurant's logo.

"This is all really cool," I said as I gazed around the restaurant. Not everyone was eating schnitzel. Everyone was clearly enjoying themselves, though.

"It's a Viennese institution. They claim to have created the Wiener schnitzel."

"Wow."

"I'm not sure that their claim is entirely true," she said. "They may have popularized it. My understanding is that schnitzel is traditional veal, which is flattened and coated in bread crumbs then fried in oil, was originally a Byzantine dish, brought to Europe by the Moors, adapted by the Spanish, re-adapted again by the Milanese in Italy and then finally arrived in Vienna. Whatever it's provenance, I have to say the Viennese, perhaps the Figlmuller family, have raised the simple dish into a form of art."

"Okay, now I'm drooling."

A few moments later the waiter reappeared with two large plates bearing the Wiener schnitzels, each topped with a lemon wedge. The golden schnitzels were bigger than the plates themselves!

"Wow!"

Rose was laughing.

The waiter was back with two bowls, one for each of us, also emblazoned with the cursive script Figlmuller logo. The kitchen had thoughtfully divided the potato salad and the fresh salad between the two bowls. The potato salad was warm with fresh chives, the green salad was a combination of watercress, thinly sliced cucumber, grated carrot and cherry tomatoes.

The schnitzel was amazing: tender wafer-thin meat within a uniform slightly crunchy breadcrumb coating, fried to golden perfection.

"Is this ever good," I mumbled with schnitzel in my mouth.

Rose was smiling as she replied while slicing, "A visit to Vienna would simply be incomplete without a visit to Figlmuller's."

The schnitzel, the side dishes, the wine, the restaurant, the city itself and indeed the beautiful woman in the colourful jacket sitting in front of me, was simply outstanding. It was as if I had died and gone to heaven.

We ate quietly for a few minutes.

"I'm a little confused about the blue sunfish. I have to say I've never seen a blue one before, but I do know that they're sometimes called bluegills."

"Sunfish are within the family Centrarchidae, which includes what are popularly called bass, are quite diverse throughout North America. Their genus name is Lepomis."

"So why are you unsure if it's a new species or not. I mean its frikkin' blue, right?"

"Oh, its blue colouration is not the issue; in each of the species, colour variation can be quite remarkable. There are regional and environmental differences that can and do have a profound colour impact amongst each species. Even individuals within a confined environment, say a lake or a pond, exhibit subtle differences. Fish are no different than people, or trees for that matter. When maples turn colour in the fall, there is a variety of colour between individual trees and individual leaves."

I finished chewing my piece of schnitzel before I asked, "So if it isn't colour, then what is it about the fish that has caused the speculation of whether it's a new species?"

She had sliced and ate a piece of schnitzel herself. With her knife she subtly motioned for me to give her a moment so she could swallow. "In the sunfish family, and indeed all fish the determining factors are things like the number of spikes on the dorsal fin, spikes on the anal fin, the shape of the caudal, the tail, the number of rows of scales above the lateral line, ratios of body length crisscrossing the fish, that sort of thing. Colouration or colour markings tend to be secondary consideration when distinguishing species. Now, of course we can do a mitochondrial DNA analysis. And then we study the morphology of each species. A fish prevalent throughout the southeastern United States, for example, can have a similar but slightly different differentiation in southern Florida, to the point that we scientists agree that it should be classified as a separate species, a new phenotype."

"I thought a separate species is when they can't mate with each other."

"Ah..." she held a piece of schnitzel on her fork, "you've hit a sore spot amongst life scientists." She popped the piece in her mouth, chewed for a second or two and added, "We can't agree what separate species means."

"What?" I held some potato salad on my fork.

She swallowed. "We consider lions and tigers as separate species, right?"

I nodded with full mouth.

"But if they do mate," she continued, "we call them ligurs. What about life forms that don't reproduce sexually, like bacteria?

I swallowed, took a deep breath and cut some more schnitzel, "Okay, I get your point. So what is it about the blue sunfish that has caused such interest?"

She stabbed at some salad but held it in her fork. "That fish's caudal fin resembles sunfish that are found within the Mississippi watershed and waters southward. Yet the number of dorsal fin spikes suggest a Great Lakes watershed species. The opercular flap suggests a megalotis but the colour is wrong. Megalotis' opercula is red. That fishes' is black with no margin as found in the Northern sunfish peltastes or the common pumpkinseed, Lepomis gibbosus and a few others. My first thought was that it was a L. cyanellus or a marginatus, but your nieces' fingers in the photograph conceal the number of anal fin spikes, but that's almost irrelevant..."

"Rose," I held up my fork, "sorry I don't speak nerd. I'm just a simple painter. I understand blue and red."

"I'm sorry, Kevin." She popped the forkful of salad into her mouth, chewed for a moment and said, "The point is, I need to find the fish. One photograph alone isn't enough."

"The perspective on the photo was made to make the fish look bigger," I took two quick chews and then held out my hand separating my thumb and forefinger about two and a half inches, "it's only this big."

"That's okay, size doesn't matter," she instantly answered and then turned beet red.

"No! No!" My face was flushing, "That's not what I meant; I'm good!"

"Really?"

I put both my hands, still holding knife and fork, onto the table, looked up, took a deep breath and said, "I'm sorry."

She paused. She was blushing, too. She took a deep breath and said, "It's me. I'm sorry. I tried to warn you. It's just what I do inadvertently. It's almost like having Tourrette's."

We managed to finish the excellent Wiener schnitzel dinners without further embarrassment. That skinny little woman managed to eat all of hers. Reluctantly, I was forced to leave a small wedge slice of mine. I was stuffed to the bluegills.

As we made our way back to the hotel, first through the maze of streets and then though the park itself, the skies suddenly opened up. Had we still been on one of the streets we could have found some refuge from the torrential rain in the doorway of one of the shops. Not the case in the park itself. My umbrella did a complete inversion in the blowing wind. She managed to retrieve and unfurl hers before I was able to flip it back to umbrella shape, albeit with a broken spoke. I gave up and got under Rose's umbrella. On the way out of the park I dumped my broken umbrella into a litter bin.

To add insult to injury, as we waited for the light to change crossing the street in front of the hotel, a car whizzed through a deep puddle sending a minor tsunami wave crashing down on us. Instinctively, I jumped back, missing most of it. Rose did not. She got soaked, head to toe. Had I not jumped, I would have shielded her, to a degree at least. I felt an ass.

"I'm drenched!" She exclaimed as we made our way through the revolving doors into the lobby. "Absolutely drenched."

She was.

"And cold," she added. She stopped dead in her tracks, turned to me and said. "Kevin, I know this is going to sound completely inappropriate, but I need to go up to your room and get out of these clothes. I'm sure the hotel will be able to put them into a dryer."

"Let's go."

As I swiped my room card in the elevator, I couldn't help but think how delicious the whole situation was.

"You know, it's all your own fault, Rose."

Her teeth were chattering as she pressed her elbows to her chest while she held her big bag and wet umbrella. She looked up to me with a what-the-fuck this-isn't-funny look to her face.

I held out my hand, "You dressed like a fish and you landed up getting wet."

"Clearly a cold-water species," she answered without missing a beat.

She went straight into the bathroom clutching the big white terrycloth robe that was hanging in my closet. "Shower," she chattered as the door closed.