"Nunca compres gambas de un maletero de un coche."

Way back when, when el Andaluz and I started dating, we were sitting in a sidewalk cafe* when he turned to me, a very serious expression on his face, and said, "Nunca compres gambas de un maletero de un coche."**

He said it the way the D.A.R.E. counselors in elementary school told us not to take the free samples from drug dealers. 

“What?" I asked. "I mean...who would do that?"

He gestured at the rusty van across the street, where a man was busy setting out Rubbermaid tubs full of shrimp on the sidewalk. A line of the curious and the hungry (for a good deal) started to form around the van. 

At the time, I never ate seafood*** and therefore was at low risk of falling for the slick pitch of a car trunk seafood salesman. But I thought it was rather cabellero of him to advise me of this heretofore unknown danger.

Just then, a pair of policeman turned onto the street. Shrimp Man jumped into his van and sped off, leaving behind an entire tub of squirmy crustaceans on the sidewalk. The police confiscated the bucket of shrimp, for the evidence locker, or perhaps lunch.

*Actually just sitting on the curb, drinking a forty out of a paper bag. (What can I say? We were students, and it was the old Alameda de Hercules, way back before the Ayuntamiento de Sevilla started their gentrification projects.)

**“Never buy shellfish out of the trunk of a car”

***I was that kid who wanted to buy the lobsters at the grocery store and return them to the sea. As an adult, I still have to give myself a pep talk before eating anything fancier than a fish stick. But I have grown to like certain things, like boquerones fritos, and tolerate others, like chocos.