The Ushuaia brothers liked corn fritters with churned honey. Albemarle ate like a starveling, his jaw working like a coin press. Labrums ate like a thief, grinding like a gristmill, the corners of his mouth turned in. The eve before The Feast of Octave of St. Camillus the brothers starved themselves, the Sheepshead Inn heavy with stink and spoil. ‘…put that down…’ insisted Albemarle, Labrums’ fingers doughy with seed bread and churned honey. The proprietor of the Sheepshead Inn, a stout man with horned teeth, sat behind a window, all that separated him from a world of savage depravity. On the second floor the Chelmsford twins, Rood and Simon, ate purled mutton and boiled potatoes, the twins having arrived two days earlier for The Feast of Octave of St. Camillus. On the third floor, above the twins, the Meth sisters sat collecting their thoughts, a feat of such enormity (their parents, Eberth and Alva, never taking the time to explain to their daughters what thoughts were and how to collect them) they could barely keep their wits about them. On the fourth floor, at the end of the hall, lived a man with a weigh-anchor foot, his back covered in sores, his good foot bowed like a cudgel. He lived at the Sheepshead Inn year round, arriving for The Feast of Octave of St. Camillus in 1927, and finding the room to his liking, never setting foot outside it again.
The Ushuaia brothers (of Tito del Fuego) ate dinner at the cafe Les Deux Magots around the corner from the Sheepshead Inn. They ordered skillet-fried eel, a baguette and a bottle of Tic-tac, paying for their meal with 27 one $ bills and a ½ crown. As they were anxious to get ready for The Feast of Octave of St. Camillus they ate hurriedly, the youngest brother dropping a tail-end of fricasseed eel onto his lap, the oily meat staining his newly pressed trousers. The Meth sisters, Irma and Erma, ate an elegant, albeit delicate meal in the comfort of their room, pickled herring and glazed carrots followed by vanilla mouse with almandine treacle. The Chelmsford twins, Rood and Simon, dined at the cafe Les Deux Troas, a small but stylish taberna next to the Auvergne de la Fontaine. The cudgel-footed man ate a pork knuckle sandwich with Gibb’s hard mustard, a runny egg and a wedge of rotifers’ blue cheese.
The man in the hat watched the goings on from atop the Seder grocer’s awning, his cap titling on the top of his head. Tomorrow he would don his Rubicon cap, the one with the chicken feather hatband, and sit by his lonesome in the park beside the aqueduct on his favorite lattice-backed bench, counting capped off clouds and unmannerly ducks. When the sun had set, the sky a caramel otherness, he would pick himself up, dust off his hat and wander aimlessly home, his thoughts on funeral dirges and bargemen hymns.
The Ushuaia brothers (of Tito del Fuego) ate dinner at the cafe Les Deux Magots around the corner from the Sheepshead Inn. They ordered skillet-fried eel, a baguette and a bottle of Tic-tac, paying for their meal with 27 one $ bills and a ½ crown. As they were anxious to get ready for The Feast of Octave of St. Camillus they ate hurriedly, the youngest brother dropping a tail-end of fricasseed eel onto his lap, the oily meat staining his newly pressed trousers. The Meth sisters, Irma and Erma, ate an elegant, albeit delicate meal in the comfort of their room, pickled herring and glazed carrots followed by vanilla mouse with almandine treacle. The Chelmsford twins, Rood and Simon, dined at the cafe Les Deux Troas, a small but stylish taberna next to the Auvergne de la Fontaine. The cudgel-footed man ate a pork knuckle sandwich with Gibb’s hard mustard, a runny egg and a wedge of rotifers’ blue cheese.
The man in the hat watched the goings on from atop the Seder grocer’s awning, his cap titling on the top of his head. Tomorrow he would don his Rubicon cap, the one with the chicken feather hatband, and sit by his lonesome in the park beside the aqueduct on his favorite lattice-backed bench, counting capped off clouds and unmannerly ducks. When the sun had set, the sky a caramel otherness, he would pick himself up, dust off his hat and wander aimlessly home, his thoughts on funeral dirges and bargemen hymns.
No comments:
Post a Comment