I spent yesterday afternoon at the Princeton University Art Museum, and then, at the Triumph Brewery, sipping amber ale and sampling the assortment of wurst on the Octoberfest menu, and I was reminded of a scene I wrote more than thirty years ago, set in a German restaurant, the menu featuring the Best of the Wurst.
Although that manuscript has never been published, over the years I have pirated several characters and scenes. In the excerpt below, you may recognize the first appearance of Greta, the waitress with tourette's syndrome who figures prominently in my last mystery, It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Murder. You may also recognize a reference to Timothy and to a psychiatric hospital which eventually became the short story State Home for the Holidays.
Anyway, for those of you who are interested, here is how the scene was originally written more thirty years ago:
Ms. Crandall was delayed at the hospital (everybody’s got a boss and hers decided he needed to see her progress notes that afternoon). By the time she got to the house, the ambulance had come and gone. Christina answered the door, a half empty bottle of Cuervo gold in her left hand and a Miss Piggy hand puppet on her right.
“You’re late,” Ms. Piggy announced petulantly, as Ms. Crandall stood in the doorway. “Timothy’s gone forever.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t get here any faster.” Ms, Crandall explained to the hand puppet. “My boss decided to check my paperwork. Do you want me to leave?”
“No, you came all the way out here to see moi, you might as well come in.” Miss Piggy invited her in and offered her a drink. “Besides, I’m getting tired of talking to her.” Miss Piggy pointed with her snout at Christina who had retreated to the living room and another glass of tequila.
An oversized social worker, an overwrought mom and an oversexed hand puppet - they made an odd threesome sitting on the living room floor, drinking and exchanging girl talk.
Sydney Crandall had a keen eye for the absurd and it made her susceptible to the seductive quality of alcohol. She tried unsuccessfully to go shot for shot with Miss Piggy. As she teetered on the high wire of convention, that thin thread supporting the socially acceptable drinker above the abyss, Sydney decided it would be a good time to get drunk - not tipsy, but inhibition-numbing, memory-bending, time-warping, brain cell-destroying drunk. Shitfaced. Blotto. Several bottles later - when the tequila ran out they switched to peppermint schnapps - she was finally approaching her goal.
“Are you getting hungry, Tina? I think that - urp - I ought to eat something before it’s too late.”
“Yesssh,” Christina concurred. “I could go for a couple of nice thick pork chops about now.”
Miss Piggy laughed nervously and tried to change the subject. “How do you like working in the hospital?”
“It’s okay. You know, some days, I really do believe I do some good there.” She smiled warmly at Christina. “Have you ever eaten at the Black Forest Inn?”
Christina had heard vague rumors about the Black Forest Inn. Instinctively, she reached for the empty space on her ring finger. “No.”
“The food is wonderful. My treat.”
Sydney and Christina stood up and staggered toward the door.
“Ahem... ahem. Ladies, have you not forgotten moi?” Miss Piggy was apparently feeling left out. “I am available for dinner this evening.”
“I think you’d better stay here. At the Black Forest, you could be dinner.” Sydney laughed appreciatively at her own little joke.
The Black Forest Inn was an intimate German restaurant that refused to acknowledge its desert surroundings. The facade of the Inn had been painted to create the impression as you approached of a deep, dark forest - a Hansel and Gretel forest. Painted trees rose to great heights; painted branches hung low across your path; lichen and moss encroached ominously on the entrance.
Inside, the illusion was heightened by false windows which revealed the deepening woods which surrounded the tiny Bavarian cottage. With its well worn mahogany panels and fake fire roaring in the enormous stone fireplace, the Inn offered a snug refuge from the fantastic Bavarian woods and the all too real New Mexico desert. Indeed, all thoughts of the desert vanished in the Black Forest Inn.
Sydney and Christina were greeted by an ancient gentleman in lederhosen, his parchment dry skin like badly hung wallpaper barely adhering to its frame.
Escorted and then abandoned at their table, service like marital happiness an elusive human condition, the ladies entertained each other with their tales of divorce.
“My ex, Russell, had the coldest damn feet; he used to wait till we were right in the middle of making love to shock me with his icy digits. He claimed he did it to heighten my pleasure, but I know he really did it to piss me off.”
“That’s nothing. For me, cold feet would have been an improvement. You know how some men like to keep their socks on in bed? My Sig used to keep his shoes on. Do you know what it’s like to make love to a naked man in Hush Puppies?”
“Men are pond scum. They’re all alike. You know how I discovered that Russell liked to eat pussy? I caught him in bed with our nineteen-year old neighbor.”
Sydney’s head was bouncing up and down like a pop-up doll, nodding her head in agreement. “I know. And it’s even worse since the divorce. It’s gotten so I’ve started to wonder if I’d be happier with a woman. You know what I mean?”
Sydney didn’t have a chance to find out if Christina agreed as a waitress suddenly materialized at tableside.
“You want to - grr - order dinner, yes?”
Startled by the unexpected growl, Christina looked up. The first thing she noticed about the waitress was her eyes. They bounced around on her face like ships pulled loose from their moorings.
Christina felt an affinity for waitresses. Unlike most restaurant-goers, she tried to separate the waitress from her surroundings, to consider the waitress as an individual. She looked at the fortyish woman waiting to take her order, the pain of standing all day apparent on her overly made-up face. Even her hair looked tired. Christina felt sorry for the prematurely gray lady with the crazy eyes and the aching feet.
“Geez, we were having such a good time chatting, I barely looked at the menu. If you don’t mind my asking,” Christina continued despite the growing look of impatience on the perpetually twitching face, “what’s your name?”
The waitress’s face hardened, threatening to crack her pancake make-up. “Look, are you gonna - grr - order or not?”
Christina got the message. “What’s the ‘Best of the Wurst’ special?”
“A - grr - trio of homemade wurst - today it’s bockwurst, bratwurst and - grr - knockwurst - served with an order of sauerkraut balls.”
“Sounds great. I’ll have that. I’d also like a cabbage salad to start and for desert, an order of peppermint candy bavarian cream.”
The waitress turned her attention to Sydney.
“What’s the ‘Piggy Delight’?”
“A complete dinner, every course made from a part of the -grr - pig. You get an appetizer of ham and fruit. Salad is - grr - wilted lettuce with salt pork. The entree - grr - tonight is pig’s knuckles with sauerkraut served with a - grr - side dish of scalloped potatoes with bacon. Dessert tonight is the chef’s - grr - special pork cake.”
Sydney, drunk, was enchanted by the waitress’s growling, hearing in the syncopated rhythm an alcoholic’s Morse code. “Perfect. Oh... and bring us a pitcher of Lowenbrau.”
Sydney and Christina resumed trading tales of divorce until their dinner arrived. The sounds of girlish chatter gave way to the clink of flatware and the squeal of pork sausage as the ladies turned their attention to the feast. As they worked their way through the assortment of Bavarian delicacies, the air grew fragrant with the aroma of satisfied diners. Suddenly, their waitress materialized again at tableside.
“Grr - who tooted?” Sydney and Christina averted their eyes.
“Come on, come on,” she began again, zeroing in on her suspects. “Do not be shy. One of you - grr - ladies is tooting, yes?”
Sydney could not meet her gaze, embarrassment bubbling up like depth charges from below the table. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s me.”
“Sorry, what is this sorry? You enjoyed - grr - the dinner, yes? Good. Then I will get your coffee and - grr - dessert.” And with that, she took her leave.
While they waited for dessert, Christina began again to question Sydney about New Horizons. “Will Timothy really be okay there? Will they take good care of him? Will I be able to visit? Will he remember me?” The questions came rapid-fire, each one an accusation, with no opportunity for response.
“Relax, love. Timothy’ll be fine at New Horizons.”
“Grr - New Horizons!” Their waitress, hustling back with the desserts, stopped dead in her tracks, her central nervous system staging a wildcat strike, her arms flapping out of control, her face all atwitch, her eyes dancing like a mariachi band on blotter acid. She stopped. Conversation stopped. Planets fell out of their orbits. The Black Forest Inn grew blacker, as, just for a moment, suspended in time, everything simply stopped. Everything that is except for the peppermint candy Bavarian cream, which, obeying the immutable laws of inertial motion continued along its forward trajectory, landing, with eerie accuracy in Christina’s half-open alligator purse.
The Bavarian cream, making all the right contacts inside the expensive purse, jump started the world. Sydney fired out of her chair yelling about the incompetent service. The desiccated maitre d’ ran over, preparing to do battle, his stiff legged gait attesting to the brittleness of aging bones. Christina tried without success to organize the stimuli exploding around her into a coherent image, and, when that failed, leaned back in her chair, laughing heartily. Their waitress, ignoring the surrounding din, pulled up a chair of her own.
“You want to - grr - know about New Horizons? I will tell you about New Horizons.”
“How do you know about the hospital?” Christina’s world narrowed to this middle-aged Bavarian waitress.
“I lived there for seven - grr - years.” Her twitching seemed to accelerate with her confession. “My name’s Grr-eta.”
Comments (2)
Mariachi band on blotter acid...?
Sounds like a good setting for porcine vampires or some such.