Read Online Last Notes from Home by Frederick Exley - Free Book Online
Authors: Frederick Exley
Ads: Link
reached under the tray separating us and with the latent homosexuality so indigenous to the Irish again patted me lovingly on the thigh. “My dearest friend in all the world. If he should die before me, Lord forbid, may God have mercy on his immortal soul. Give him the check.”
As I red-facedly stood up to reach into my pocket for the money (O’Twoomey had, after all, ordered the drinks), Jimmy popped off his first in one gluttonous gulp and Ms. Glenn was explaining to him that though he had chosen to sit in the economy section with his friends, Jimmy himself had first class accommodations and hence his drinks were included in the price of his ticket. Unfazed and watching me with amused smug skepticism, as though he doubted my financial ability to negotiate the five-dollar transaction, he promptly told Ms. Glenn to give me my money back as he was just testing “boyo Frederick here to see if he lurves me.” He then told her to go forward and get the money from “whatziz-whozit, Padre Maguire or whoever in creation’s damnation he is.” Jimmy said that Maguire would pay for everyone on the tour, including his “new and lurverly friend, Frederick.”
‘That little culchie’s got a whole gunnysack full of twenty-dollar bills and they’re all mine!”
Jimmy threw his head back and roared. As Ms. Glenn began her turn to start toward the bulkhead and Father Maguire, Jimmy abruptly demanded to know what we were having for dinner. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Stopping jokingly in midturn, rather as if O’Twoomey had hurled an obscenity after her, Ms. Glenn turned back, widened those great gray vacuous eyes in amused irony, laughed, and said that dinner was a long way off. Soon we would have a sumptuous breakfast of choice of juices, scrambled eggs with ham or link sausage, toast or rolls with marmalade or jelly, a Danish if we chose, milk, and coffee. This was to be followed by “a super movie, Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson? then dinner, then Honolulu. Frederick and I, Jimmy assured her, wanted no bleeding mushy scrambled eggs, least of all did “we” want to view any “arsinine Hollywood flicker with a bleeding Limey named Robert ‘Med-ford.’” We were going to have ever so many “bird’s drinks,” some lurverly talk, after which we would be famished. So what, he again demanded of Ms. Glenn, was for dinner?
Ms. Glenn’s face reddened in stunned helpless sadness, excessively timid sadness, and I couldn’t help remarking how much this ruefulness, on the face of a girl airline-trained to an effusive near-nauseating ebullience, lent her a truly alarming beauty. Oh, Jesus Christ, O’Twoomey, I wanted to bellow at him, I don’t give a shit if you’re the bleeding prime minister of the Republic! Would you for godawmighty sakes leave the poor girl alone so she can do her job? Ms. Robin Glenn had by now explained the dinner choices in steerage were chicken luau or manicotti. Neither of these holding any meaning whatever for this porcine bleary-eyed potato-gobbling Irishman, he now demanded to know what was in them. Almost on the verge of tears, Ms. Glenn explained that chicken luau was a delicious dish of chicken fried in shortening, after which it was all mixed lovingly with spinach in a hot cream sauce made from coconut milk to create a casserole.
“Coconut cream?” O’Twoomey cried with shrill derision. “You mean it’s a bleeding Hawaiian dish?”
“Yes.”
Ms. Glenn was by now so intimidated that her affirmation made me recognize for the first time the validity of that cliché about people speaking mousily. Her voice was a demure peep. In the grand manner O’Twoomey threw his big hairy Irish head regally and haughtily back and proclaimed, “But I do not eat bleeding wog food! And manicotti?”
“Manicotti…”
Ms. Glenn hesitated, compressing her lips in touching bewilderment, and I could see she really didn’t know what manicotti was. Her distress and frustration verged on the
As I red-facedly stood up to reach into my pocket for the money (O’Twoomey had, after all, ordered the drinks), Jimmy popped off his first in one gluttonous gulp and Ms. Glenn was explaining to him that though he had chosen to sit in the economy section with his friends, Jimmy himself had first class accommodations and hence his drinks were included in the price of his ticket. Unfazed and watching me with amused smug skepticism, as though he doubted my financial ability to negotiate the five-dollar transaction, he promptly told Ms. Glenn to give me my money back as he was just testing “boyo Frederick here to see if he lurves me.” He then told her to go forward and get the money from “whatziz-whozit, Padre Maguire or whoever in creation’s damnation he is.” Jimmy said that Maguire would pay for everyone on the tour, including his “new and lurverly friend, Frederick.”
‘That little culchie’s got a whole gunnysack full of twenty-dollar bills and they’re all mine!”
Jimmy threw his head back and roared. As Ms. Glenn began her turn to start toward the bulkhead and Father Maguire, Jimmy abruptly demanded to know what we were having for dinner. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Stopping jokingly in midturn, rather as if O’Twoomey had hurled an obscenity after her, Ms. Glenn turned back, widened those great gray vacuous eyes in amused irony, laughed, and said that dinner was a long way off. Soon we would have a sumptuous breakfast of choice of juices, scrambled eggs with ham or link sausage, toast or rolls with marmalade or jelly, a Danish if we chose, milk, and coffee. This was to be followed by “a super movie, Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson? then dinner, then Honolulu. Frederick and I, Jimmy assured her, wanted no bleeding mushy scrambled eggs, least of all did “we” want to view any “arsinine Hollywood flicker with a bleeding Limey named Robert ‘Med-ford.’” We were going to have ever so many “bird’s drinks,” some lurverly talk, after which we would be famished. So what, he again demanded of Ms. Glenn, was for dinner?
Ms. Glenn’s face reddened in stunned helpless sadness, excessively timid sadness, and I couldn’t help remarking how much this ruefulness, on the face of a girl airline-trained to an effusive near-nauseating ebullience, lent her a truly alarming beauty. Oh, Jesus Christ, O’Twoomey, I wanted to bellow at him, I don’t give a shit if you’re the bleeding prime minister of the Republic! Would you for godawmighty sakes leave the poor girl alone so she can do her job? Ms. Robin Glenn had by now explained the dinner choices in steerage were chicken luau or manicotti. Neither of these holding any meaning whatever for this porcine bleary-eyed potato-gobbling Irishman, he now demanded to know what was in them. Almost on the verge of tears, Ms. Glenn explained that chicken luau was a delicious dish of chicken fried in shortening, after which it was all mixed lovingly with spinach in a hot cream sauce made from coconut milk to create a casserole.
“Coconut cream?” O’Twoomey cried with shrill derision. “You mean it’s a bleeding Hawaiian dish?”
“Yes.”
Ms. Glenn was by now so intimidated that her affirmation made me recognize for the first time the validity of that cliché about people speaking mousily. Her voice was a demure peep. In the grand manner O’Twoomey threw his big hairy Irish head regally and haughtily back and proclaimed, “But I do not eat bleeding wog food! And manicotti?”
“Manicotti…”
Ms. Glenn hesitated, compressing her lips in touching bewilderment, and I could see she really didn’t know what manicotti was. Her distress and frustration verged on the
Similar Books
