Two days later, Matt, Ken, and I went back to the same restaurant. If the waitress recognized us as the freaks who ate several pounds of raw fish on Tuesday, she didn’t let on. This time, we approached the menu with caution. We enforced a two-item limit on ourselves, and only broke that rule once.
Then tragedy struck. The waitress emerged from the kitchen with the bad news — they were out of quail eggs. Out of quail eggs! My heart fell at the news, and Ken had to make do with only three of the four tobiko-and-quail-egg sushis that he’d ordered.
At that point we took matters into our own hands. What was a sushi night without an adequate supply of quail egg? We paid the bill and set out into the darkened streets of Vancouver to begin our search.
It was close to the corner of Main and Hastings that we were approached by a scruffy type in a trenchcoat. “Weed, hash, quail egg,” he muttered. “Weed, hash, quail egg.” This was the very man we were looking for.
I stepped into a darkened doorway with him, while my brothers lingered inconspicuously under a lamp post. “How much?” I asked.
“Two for twenty.” He peered at the other two through narrowed eyes. “Hey, you’re not cops, are ya?”
“Naw, we’re not cops. We just want some eggs.” I pulled out a twenty to show him I was serious. The sight of money bettered his fears, and in a smooth, practiced gesture, he took the twenty and slipped a couple of fat dime bags into my palm.
“Pleasure doing business,” he grinned and in a second, he was gone. I rejoined my brothers who still loitered inconspicously. They were by far the most inconspicuous persons on that particular street.
“Hey,” Matt said. “People here are really friendly. They keep calling me ‘bud’.”
“I got the stuff. I think we should get out of here,” I suggested.
After walking a couple of blocks, I felt it was safe to examine what I’d paid twenty dollars for. Tucked safely inside the tiny bags were eggs. I peered closer. They were blue. The bastard slipped me robin eggs, not quail eggs!
We thought about going back, but it would be too risky. Defeated, we trudged home as rain started to spatter from black clouds. There would be no more quail egg for us that night.