El Patito Feo

TAILS OF MANHATTAN
by Woody AllenMARCH 30, 2009

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dejar caer dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster langosta. Trapped off atrapados fuera the coast of Maine, he was shipped enviado to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh elegante Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognizedhim. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae antena perking up animandose.
“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed aturdido by the mystical slam-bang postmortem autopsia that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.
“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.
“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s goingon?”
“We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”
“Lobsters? This is how I wind up acabar after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”
“The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled se desplomo over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel circulo. For years he was a Yale professor. Mypoint is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”
Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a mensch hombre who deserved merecer to relive life as a soaring inmenso eagle aguila or ensconced instalado in the lap regaso of some sexy socialite getting conseguir la alta sociedad his fur pielesstroked acariciar , come back ignominiously vergonzosamente as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate destino to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked horneado potato and dessert. This led llevo to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from thecatering abastecimiento business, came back after a fatal stroke ataque as a stud segmental horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred pura sangre fillies potrancas for high fees honorarios. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into convencer Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.
At that moment, who walked into therestaurant and sits down at a nearby cercana table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter amargo and agitated before, now he gasped jadeo as his tail cola started churning produciendo the water like an Evinrude.
“I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping cortar rocks, making license plates placas,somehow slipped out salio of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore costa dinner.”
“Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M.’s rings and bracelets.
Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux reflujo, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled irritado to a fever pitch amor en juego.
“Tell meabout it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”
“Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted vocifero. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally,after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P.S., I had a myocardial miocardio infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”
“With me he played it coy timido,” Silverman said, instinctively instintivamente frisking cacheo his carapace carapacho for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor inversor. The more he put me...