I'M KEEPING IT

" YOU'RE NOT ISRAEL, ARE YOU?!" She asked.

I felt cold fingers crawling up my spine. " What did you say?!"

" Jericho," Sienna said. " You must be Jericho, is that correct?!"

*

*

Sienna had driven me away from the hotel in her Mercedes. She believed the walls have ears and decided we should talk where we'd never be heard.

We arrived at a small Japanese outdoor restaurant where Sienna ordered Shioyaki and beer.

Shioyaki was simply salt-grilled fish on a stick.

" It may look like a simple ‘fish-on-a-stick," Sienna said as the waiter dropped the dishes on the table and bowed out. " But there’s more to shioyaki than meets the eye. The fish has been ‘salt-grilled’, a particular Japanese technique that sees the fish, usually heavily-salted mackerel, left to marinade overnight and then grilled over flames the next morning."

I picked a stick and opened my mouth to take a bite.

" Be warned," she said sharply. " Shioyaki is super salty. But it's perfectly accompaniment to an ice cold jug of