Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel by De Vries Peter

Author:De Vries, Peter [De Vries, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497669680
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-10-20T22:00:00+00:00

I was left alone at my lunch in the dining room, one afternoon during the second week of my confinement, when Mrs. Duncan excused herself, explaining that she had some shopping to do before going to work and would clean up when she returned. I was grateful for the peace, Mrs. Duncan having developed the habit of hanging about and talking after serving my food. I had come to cherish my solitude, to the point of disparaging all potential lodgers on whom I laid eyes. I had remarked that a woman who had just inspected the still vacant room looked to me like a Lesbian. Mrs. Duncan replied, rather self-righteously, that tenants were not barred from her premises on grounds of nationality.

Left alone, I began to scratch under my cast with my table fork. Anyone who has ever had a limb so imprisoned knows this frustration, which can send the victim into a frenzy. I had found the best implement for such emergencies to be a wire coat hanger, which can be bent into a variety of surgical shapes, but I had none at hand here, with the result that in trying to reach the spot where I itched I pushed the fork down too far and couldn’t get it out again. I tried to fish it out with a knife, which only made matters worse. In fact, that too was lost. The end of the handle kept slipping from between my thumb and forefinger, like a wet pip, just beneath the top of the cast, till it was too far down to recover. In a fit of pique, I seized my spoon and thrust that down into the cast also. “Get in there then,” I said, “if that’s what you want.” I had no doubt I would recover them all quite readily with the coat hanger, which turned out not to be the case.

With an odd laugh, I set to work assembling my stock of provisions for the night. Suddenly parched for beer, I had ordered two cans from my vintner, due at the appointed hour also with a fresh quart of booze. I stuffed the pockets of my trousers and robe with enough ice cubes to keep one can cold in the bathroom wash basin while I drank the first, or to chill both if they arrived warm. The problem of pressing on the delivery man the empty beer cans could be faced when the time came. For snacks, I took a few slices of the ever-present pumpernickel and a can of sardines which I located so far back in the recesses of a kitchen cabinet that I was sure it had been forgotten and would not be missed. The sardines I lashed to one leg with a stout rubber band. In order to add to my store several stalks of crisp celery and a scallion or two left over from my lunch, I set them on top of my head and tied them with the cord of my bathrobe, which I knotted under my chin like a maiden tying on a bonnet.

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