Personal Yummy #72
Could it get any slower…
With no other choice, I’ve spent most of my time today doing side work, and then extra: cutting lemons; preparing salads, covering them with plastic wrap, and storing them one on top of the other in the refrigerator till they resemble the Leaning Tower of Pisa; using a clean, white cloth and window spray to wipe off the fingerprints and grime that have accosted the glass refrigerator door; brewing iced tea and coffee; stocking the plastic storage containers with straws and tea bags, and the shelves with napkins and just-washed, tiny tin teapots, which are deliciously hot to the touch; assembling a large stack of place settings; and refolding and arranging the menus and inserting a colorful “Specials” sheet into each.
Honestly, though, there’s only so much stocking you can do, and only so much space to put all of it. But don’t worry—Adam and I always find a way to entertain ourselves, whether it is watching Talk Soup on the dusty, old TV that sits high upon the beer cooler behind the bar, or using the remote to flip through the channels with Walter—one of our Saturday bar regulars—trying to decide what movie to watch, the changing picture flashing like a disco bulb.
This afternoon, however, Adam and I have decided to write a goofy, nonsensical song together, for no other reason than that it sounds like fun.
“You start,” I say, daring him, as I slide my stool closer.
“You got it,” Adam responds, not one to back down from a challenge.
He grabs a little notepad and immediately begins writing the first line, following it with three deliberate dots.
I just stare at him, surprised by his sudden inspiration. “So, are you going to let me in on it or not?”
“Patience, my dear, is a virtue,” he says, grinning.
“Adam…”
“Okay, okay, Jenna…” He clears his throat. “Here we go… ‘There was a girl who wore lots of pearls…’”
I smile. “‘She put them on every morning…’” The line just comes to me.
Adam nods approvingly and writes it down. He then thinks for a moment. “‘They hung about her neck in various swirls…’”
“‘You…you…you…you would’ve thought she was performing…’” I announce.
He jots it down.
“‘She wore so… One day she…’”—he shakes his head. “Okay, okay, now I got it… ‘One day she wore so many, she could not see…’”
“Good one,” I say, laughing. “Okay, then…” But I sit there for a few minutes, tapping my fingers on the top of the bar.
“It is your turn, you know, Jenna,” Adam points out, shooting me quite an ornery look.
“Oh, I am quite aware of that,” I say, shooting him the same look back. I sit there for a few more minutes, though, feeling the same way I feel when I am sitting in front of my word processor in my tiny dorm room, trying to come up with an ingenious conclusion for one of my Shakespeare papers. “Oh, oh, I’ve got it, Adam!” I eventually say, spastically jumping up from my seat as if the answer to “What is the meaning of life?” has just hit me. “‘They ravaged her like a bunch of fleas!’”
Adam looks down, about to write, but then he looks up, his forehead wrinkled. “What!!! Are you serious!? That doesn’t make sense!”
But I just laugh again, my head falling on my hands, the tears welling up in my eyes.
After about twenty minutes of “hard” work, though, we finish our lyrics, and Adam embellishes them (who really knows why) with a drawing that is, well, distinct (a Rambo-look-alike woman with a scary face, her entire body inundated with an unlikely mixture of pearls and fleas). So we alternately sit and stand there for a while, taking turns serenading each other with our creation, each time in a different rhythm and melody:
There was a girl who wore lots of pearls…
She put them on every morning…
They hung about her neck in various swirls…
You would’ve thought she was performing…
One day she wore so many, she could not see…
They ravaged her like a bunch of fleas…
She tore them all off and flung them away…
And boy does she regret it—she regrets it to this day.
But thank God no one is around to hear us. Adam is a tragic actor, inspired by Melpomene. I am a dancer, blessed by Terpsichore. But Aoide, the Muse of song—she must have been absent the days we were born.
******
The above excerpt is from my coming-of-age novel—The Grill on Murray Avenue: A Story of Innocence—about the inhabitants of an unassuming bar-and-grill in Squirrel Hill, a vibrant neighborhood in the east end of Pittsburgh. The story is told by Jenna, a young waitress who dreams of becoming a professional dancer.
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