I told her, “I like weird stuff,” and she didn’t immediately leave.

In fact she said, “Mmmmmm,” because her mouth was full of calamari rigatoni, and then, “I like weird stuff, too.”

I leaned toward her and kept my voice down so the other diners wouldn’t hear. “Yeah? Like what?”

Fred opened his apartment door at Shady Maples Retirement Home to a crime scene; someone had fiddled with his knick knacks. All residents at Shady Maples were given one small end table and a smidgen of wall space to display their memories. The halls were filled with old ceramic Christmas villages, poodles made from plaster, and all the precious moments of life carved out of stone. The scent of moth balls and musty yellowed newspaper articles filled the stale morning air.

Jason was a charming and attractive lawyer working at one of the biggest firms in America. He was almost everything a man could wish to be, except for one thing, he was dead. Rick, meanwhile, was a cleaner who was plump, socially awkward and who had just discovered a corpse in the kitchen while mopping the third floor of the office.

There is a hum and my phone skitters an inch or so across the table, bumping into a pastel yellow beachhouse perched on wooden stilts above a vista of scenic rolling dunes.

It’s Marc, asking if I’m down for brunch tomorrow with his cousin who’s in town for a music festival.

With a sigh, I text back to say I can’t afford to keep going to brunch in the middle of the week, by means of the waffle, dollar sign, and sad face emojis

Dear Mr. Loaf,

Can I call you Meat? I’m writing because we share an affinity for renaming ourselves as grub. You were once Marvin and became so much more. Likewise, I want the culinary glory of nomenclature from foodstuffs.