On this evening filled with foreboding in early September of 1969, the beautiful mystery woman Daphne has met up with an old acquaintance at a barbecue at Big Jake's ranch, just a few miles away from a town called Disdain...
(Click here to read the previous episode of this “meaty, beaty, big and bouncy” {Harold Bloom} epic from the battle-scarred Remington portable typewriter of Larry Winchester; go here to return to the beginning.)
“Darling,” said Daphne, “look who’s here.”
Dick looked up, his mouth full of collard greens and salsa.
“It’s --”
Daphne made a tortured moue, opening her eyes wide in supplication, she was so bad with names --
But Dick gulped and said, “Enid.”
“You remember me,” said Enid. She, like Daphne, held a bottle of beer in one hand and in the other a crockery plate heaped up with smoking beef.
Dick stood up, wiping his hands on a paper napkin.
“Of course I remember you.”
“Oh, don’t get up. We’re not back east.”
Enid went around the table and sat down opposite Doc Goldwasser.
“Hi, Doc.”
“Hi, Enid.”
“Hi, Hope,” said Enid.
“Hi, Enid. I read Wide Sargasso Sea.”
“Good. Did you like it?”
“Very much. I identified with the heroine.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dick was still looking at Enid, flabbergasted. Daphne had sat down across from him. She reached over and tugged his arm and said, “We’re going to take peyote with the Indians.”
“What?”****
Squitters now sat to Enid’s other side. He was already drunk.
“Oy, Enid --”
“Yes?”
“I wanna feel your bum.”
“Write a song about it, buddy.”
“I just might do that, love.”
His hand fumbled its way under her jacket. He loved Enid’s bum. Had some bleedin’ meat to it. Not like all these bleedin’ London birds living on a diet of crystal meth, Cuervo and Woodbines.
“Derek, darling,” said Enid.
“Yeah love.”
His mouth was smeared with barbecue sauce and she could see dribs and drabs of it in his stringy mud-colored hair.
“Do you want me to knock you clear off this bench and then put my boot-heel in your face?”
“Nah.”
He drew his hand away and picked up a beef short rib. He tore off a bit with his jagged little yellow teeth and then leaned over and addressed Hope.
“Oy, love, what kind of music you like?” Hope turned her large dark eyes to him. “I mean,” he said, “you know -- pop, trad jazz, folk, acid fuckin’ rock --” Her mouth opened ever so slightly, but she said nothing. “You know,” said Squitters. “Music?” She stared, her eyes two black holes. “Reckon ya like folky stuff, right? Bit o’ Crosby, Stills and Nash. ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’, di di di dit. Bit o’ Nick Drake, Tim Buckley. Phil Ochs, sit by me side, come as close as the bleedin’ night. Fred Neil, been searchin’ for the bloody dolphins in the bleedin’ sea --”
Hope turned away as if she hadn’t heard a word, and gazed toward the barbecue and its glowing coals and rotating butchered beef.
Squitters, blinking and chewing, continued to stare at her.
Her dress was printed with thousands of tiny zinnia -- yellow, orange, scarlet and purple against a white background. Her exquisite black silk mantilla lay over her small shoulders and her face and her arms were the color of moonlight on still mountain lakewater.
Derek leaned over toward Enid.
“Bit of a fuckin’ la-di-da, i’nt she?” he whispered.
(Continued here.)
1 comment:
Squitters and Hope come from different milieus. He'd probably do better when he wasn't eating but Enid certainly got him to heel.
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