Do You Like Shrimp?

I received an unexpected phone call earlier this afternoon. After extracting my iPhone from a pants pocket, I first glanced at the screen, surprised to see EDDIE displayed.

He probably wants to ask me about getting a haircut sometime this week, I guessed.

“Are you busy right now?” he opened.

“No, I’m just checking my email,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Could you give me a ride home? The bus to Middleton doesn’t leave until 2:30.”

“Is there something you want to pick up here?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.

“I’ll explain later,” he replied, as if concerned that one of his roommates might be eavesdropping.

As I drove to his apartment, I played a variety of scenarios in my mind, all of them having to do with a disagreement among or between roommates, some of them not directly involving Eddie.

Maybe two of his roommates aren’t getting along for whatever reasons, and he just wants to escape the tension this rift is causing.

Naturally, I preferred this story to one in which Eddie is the culprit.

Eddie’s calm demeanor led me to discount any serious breakdown incivility among the group of four friends. He hadn’t sounded particularly disgruntled or aggrieved during our phone conversation. No quavering voice. No repeated sighing.

That’s because there's an element of bizarre humor to his story.

Mike, one of his roommates, has been eating a lot of shrimp of late, which he stores in a small refrigerator of his own that is kept in the shared living area of the apartment. For reasons that no one can fathom, the refrigerator now gives off a most foul odor.

“Imagine what it’s like to like in a place that smells like a rotting whale,” Eddie explained.

I didn’t ask how him how he learned to recognize the odor of a rotting whale.

Perhaps I wasn’t listening as closely as I should have been or else Eddie was a little scattershot in the telling of his story, but it took me awhile to put all the pieces in place. At first I thought he was referring to the regular kitchen-sized refrigerator that is furnished with the apartment. Then I assumed it was just the interior compartment that had turned stinky, at which point I was going to suggest the use of a box of baking soda. Wrong on both counts.

“I even used some Lysol and cleaned out the refrigerator yesterday but the smell is just as bad as ever,” Eddie noted.

I assumed this activity took place while Mike was out of the apartment.

At the halfway point of our drive home, I abruptly gestured for Eddie to stop talking.
“I swear, I caught a whiff of the smell of shrimp right now,” I exclaimed. “Your story has me imagining things.”

Keeping one eye on Midvale Boulevard, I reached over with my right hand and grabbed the hood of the sweatshirt Eddie was wearing and pulled it to my nose.

“Maybe I should wash this thing when we get home,” I suggested. “I think it’s carrying a hint of shrimp."

Initially, Eddie, Ben, and Nick thought some good-natured kidding would help Mike to understand the need to take action, but he has either become oblivious to the problem or simply refuses to acknowledge it.

Shortly before Eddie and I reached home, he received a text message from Nick and chuckled while reading it.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, wanting to be in on the joke.

“Nick says ‘the apartment smells like death straight up’.”

“Whoa! I can see why you want to spend some time away,” I said.

A roommate meeting is scheduled for sometime this evening. As far as Eddie, Ben, and Nick are concerned, the only solution is for Mike to get rid of his refrigerator. And to impose a ban on shrimp.

I look forward to a full report later this evening.

Oh, and while Eddie was hanging out in the family, watching Law & Order reruns, of all things, I washed and dried his hooded sweatshirt, along with a few other items that had accumulated in the laundry basket.