It starts slow, but it gets better as it goes along. If I had the time I would definitely tighten the beginning. By the way, anyone who has mastered this style has my deepest respect. It is harder than it looks.
Eddie the Penguin
“He's a shrimpy little homunculus. But he gets things done.”
Davey Butter keeps his mouth shut when Victor makes the above remark about Eddie the Penguin, because although Davey is thinking bad thoughts about Eddie, Victor seems to end the remark about Eddie on a positive note.
Victor is a kind of guy who has a mustache and curly hair and five different dining and drinking establishments. Victor is also the kind of guy who has a scar on his face and who looks nice when he smiles, but also who you do not want to ask questions about where he gets this scar. Victor is also a guy who does not have a nickname. Everyone knows who you are talking about; there is only one Victor.
Victor is a guy you do not contradict. Especially when he is making a mostly nice remark about Eddie the Penguin.
Eddie the Penguin is a bald, pear-shaped individual with a high-pitched voice and a way of moving his legs that looks like he is a bird that lives at the South Pole.
The thing about Eddie is that he is everywhere. You can be taking inventory in the freezer or putting the schmooze on a customer or scraping the eaves and that little pygmy will saunter by and ask how are you doing today, in that high pitched voice of his, and be gone. He isn't exactly intrusive, but you can't escape him, either.
Don't get me wrong. I am not inviting unfavorable comparisons with Pygmies. What I am saying is that the guy is short and that his dad is a Mbuti.
Who am I? I am a pal of Davey's. It is I who got Davey into this mess. I got Davey a job working for Victor.
Davey meets Eddie the Penguin during the lunch service at the Breast Bar. The owner, that is Victor, the guy aforesaid, means originally to call it the Brest Bar after either that town in France or the pastry invented to commemorate the famous bicycle race. But the sign arrives with the word “Breast” instead of the name of the place, “Brest,” and Victor is a practical man. Also, the bar is a titty bar and the customers don't care about bicycles, so perhaps this is all for the good.
At the moment when I get Davey his job working for Victor, he is in some trouble. The trouble is that Davey's girl Tina ejects him from her apartment, and Davey does not have a place to live. Some persons might object that Davey may rent for himself his own individual place to live, but these persons are not taking into account Davey not having any monetary instruments or bundles of cash with which to effect this sort of arrangement.
Thus it comes that Davey is bunking with me, a phrase I do not mean literally because I do not want to impute that kind of romantic taint into our friendship. Don't get me wrong. I see nothing condemnable about that kind of romantic taint. I just mean that Davey is sleeping on the couch.
I am also a player in the drama of putting food in people's mouths and tits in people's eyes, and my role in this drama is that I am a dishwasher. I am in the employ of said Breast Bar's owner, that is, Victor, at a place called Madeleine, but formerly I washed dishes at his place called The Puff.
The Puff is named also after a pastry, but in this case, shortly after The Puff opens for business, it develops that some customers confuse the meaning and think it is a place for ladyboys. At first the owner (Victor, as I said) takes this unkind and wants to change the name or perhaps burn the place down, but then decides that there is also money in ladyboys, so he hires some, and develops new affection for the name and the customers and most especially their cash.
It is while I am a dishwasher at the Puff that I come to meet Eddie the Penguin. While I am scraping steak bones and fish skins into the trash, this short little guy with a funny walk delivers a case of second-hand knives for the cooking staff to cut things with, and for about five seconds he puts the looking part of his face in my direction, and asks me how I am doing today, like he has this same conversation with me last week and is just checking to make sure that the tumor has not grown.
I do not have a tumor and I have never had a conversation with him before. Therefore I give him a scan and he seems like he is meaning no harm, so I say I am doing alright and he says great and waddles out. That is how I meet Eddie the Penguin.
It is only a few days later that I tire of the fact that the tits being highlighted at The Puff belong to persons who also have things between their legs, and I request a transfer to another of Victor's establishments, which is called Madeleine. Madeleine is a classy establishment, also with tits but tits belonging to regular girls, but that is another story. I will only say that at Madeleine I also see Eddie, a lot, that is practically every other day.
To get back to the point, the story at hand is about my pal Davey, and his relations to Eddie the Penguin.
This lunch service where Davey first meets Eddie is also Davey's first lunch service in this Breast Bar establishment, and at this moment Davey finds it is his job to keep water glasses full.
At the time when Victor makes his remark about Eddie, the one at the top of this story, the remark that starts out disparaging Eddie for his lack of height and of beauty, and that ends with a compliment about his effectiveness as someone who can make things happen, Davey is working at the Breast Bar for maybe two weeks. Davey has therefore had time to form a definite opinion about Eddie.
Like me, Davey sees Eddie maybe every other day, always coming in and going out. But it is in Davey's personality that he sees Eddie always on the move like this and then thinks about how he, Davey, is always humping the same jug of water around the same twenty-five tables and feels like a dope, and he notices that Eddie comes and goes as he pleases, and always has a smile on that face of his.
I believe that this does an injury to Davey's pride. See, everyone knows how Rita pushes Davey out. But they also know that Rita pushes Davey out for a guy who was not very tall. I am not saying that this new boy friend is a pygmy, or even a partial pygmy, but Rita does make a comment as to the new boy friend being twice the man as Davey even though he is half Davey's size.
Also, you should know in case you do not guess it, my pal Davey is good for nothing. This is why his girl Rita pushes him out of the nest, and why Davey is not in possession of any resources of the spending money kind when Rita gives him the ditch.
Davey is also the sort of guy who seems to deserve his nickname, which is Butter, because he eats so much and it looks like what he eats is mostly butter.
Do not mistake me, Davey is good for a laugh and also for helping me to clean out my liquor stash, although I admit that some people would consider this as nothing.
It is on a day when we are laughing and cleaning out my liquor stash that Davey proposes that we knock Eddie the Penguin very hard on the skull. He says that this would be a laugh. I ask him why, and he says that Eddie is having too much fun and that there is no fun left over for other people.
I think this is an amusing thing to say, so I have another laugh, and Davey interrupts my laughing to say that no, he is serious. When he says this he has a look on his face. I do not like this look and tell Davey we will not talk about knocking Eddie on the skull anymore.
The incident is as we say forgotten, until a month later.
At this time, a month later, I receive a telephone call from Davey informing me that he is decided to go to Mexico for his health, as working in the filling water glasses industry is a negative effect upon it. The health emergency is urgent and he is in Mexico already, so I can have the couch back and also there is a nearly empty bottle of my Scotch underneath it.
I think this is another laugh, but I also believe it, for this is a typical stunt of Davey to go away all sudden like, usually because he has built up some debts or because he is good for nothing.
It is a day or two later, at Madeleine, when I next see Eddie the Penguin and I hear the better story. I have finished scraping plates for the day and I am sat down on a crate to eat my filet mignon and trout which I have reserved for this occasion. Eddie sees me in the midst of my gustatory business, and he waddles over to keep me company, to amuse me, and to tell me what happened to him three days ago.
I would say that Eddie's is the true story, but I am not present to observe either party engaging in the events in question, so I will just report what Eddie relates to me.
Three days ago [Eddie says, in his high-pitched voice] I am making a late night delivery to The Breast. It is late enough that people who live by the clock would call it the morning. I unlock the place and wander through it, carrying a package that Victor asks that I deliver. The package is very valuable and very small so I walk back through the kitchen so I can climb the stairs to the office where I know there is a small, safe place that is inconspicuous.
When I am walking through the kitchen, I turn on the light. But before I can take more than six steps [listening to Eddie, I figure that this is three steps for a normal person], something falls on me with a clang and it is now dark again and also very hot and echoing.
I punch very hard at whatever is around me and for my efforts I get some bloody knuckles and also a ringing in my ears. It is obvious now that some person has overturned a cooking pot on me.
I know that my stature is not impressive but I still find this to be an insult to my dignity, so I yell to the person who overturned the pot to refrain from such insults and also to remove the pot.
There is a shouting noise, and although I can not make out the words, I believe that they are rude. Then this person or these persons commences or commence to beat on the outside of the pot with more force and with a harder object than formerly I had been beating the inside. To judge from the noise, this object is a ladle.
Because acute hearing is important to the sort of business I do, I stick my fingers in my ears and wait for the noise to finish. Which it does, eventually, and this I think is because there is only one person outside the pot, and this person is now tired.
At this point it is that I change tactics and stay very, very still. This staying still goes on for a time and then I think my captor gets bored, because the pot is lifted up and I see a pair of legs.
I step toward the legs very quickly and then go around behind them because I do not think that this person is very smart, because his actions so far have not shown me that he has any kind of plan besides being a pest and a bully to a person of smaller stature.
Indeed, I get the jump on him, and he is standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding the pot and swaying and looking for where I could have gone. He is looking everywhere but behind him, so my guess about his smarts is on the money, as they say.
There is no point in waiting for him to grow some extra smarts, so I step forward and punch my fist into the backs of his knees. I do this very hard and he falls down very quickly and I have to move out of the way to avoid being crushed by this man, because in addition to being of greater stature than me, I also find him to be of greater mass.
Then I step onto his chest and I practice my tap-dancing. I find that his chest is not big enough for my routine, so I also include his face and his knees and also some other parts in between.
When I am satisfied that my tap-dancing is practiced, and also that he will not put any more pots over my head, I take a rest, and I ask him how he is doing. I always like to know how guys are doing because I am a sympathetic personality.
He groans a bit and he mumbles, and I think he mumbles because he has his arms over his face and this is not good for the articulation.
It is at this moment that my driver, Big Sally, decides he must appear. I believe that Big Sally has gotten impatient and maybe also a little bit worried for my health. I tell Big Sally that I appreciate his concern but that he worries too much, and I was delayed because I had a sudden desire to practice my tap dancing.
Big Sally looks at me, and looks at the guy on the floor, and he starts laughing because he has a big humorous streak and he likes a good laugh, and while he is laughing I go upstairs to drop off my package.
When I come downstairs again, Big Sally has still got a case of the chortles, and I suggest to him that as much as I, too, enjoy a good laugh, that it is now becoming an injury to his dignity, and that he should give it a rest.
He quiets down and then gives the fellow on the floor, I believe it was your pal, Davey Butter, a hoist. Your pal Davey is not walking so good, what with the cowering and his arms over his face, so Big Sally puts him over his shoulder like a bag of Idaho Russets, and we walk out together and set Davey on the pavement outside.
We prepare to take our leave, and this fellow Davey, he takes his arms from his face and talks. He is more clear with his words now, and this is what he says:
“You won't tell anyone about this, will you?”
I am a sympathetic personality and I say no to comfort him, even though this is obviously a lie because I am telling you about it now. But Big Sally thinks this is the biggest joke of the evening and despite my earlier warning to Sal about injury to his own dignity, he cannot stop laughing until we get into the car and drive away.
So [Eddie the Penguin says] that is what happened three days ago.
I thank Eddie for keeping me company, and I scrape my own plate, which has very little to scrape by now because I was very hungry and the filet and the trout at Madeleine are both very good.
Then I go home and I fluff the couch as best I can which is difficult because after this time Davey has left a very big dent in it. And I sit on the couch and take out the whisky and finish it, and I am sad, because Davey did not leave very much in the bottle for me to drink.
(c) 2011 Michael Bernstein
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