Round Robin — A Love Story of Epic Proportions by Flynn Joseph

Author:Flynn, Joseph [Flynn, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: CIA, gibes, humor, family, Chicago, delicatessen, East Germany, powerlifter, Fiction, romance, invective, parents, sisters, children
Publisher: Stray Dog Press, Inc.
Published: 2010-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

Bianca didn’t exactly skip inside. But she didn’t complain aloud, either. She was a model prisoner quietly serving her time, giving the warden no excuse to extend her sentence. She sat at the kitchen table between her father’s place and Robin’s and awaited the French toast she’d chosen from the list of possibilities Robin had offered. Manfred preferred scrambled eggs, as many as Robin cared to fix, crisp bacon and a toasted English muffin with raspberry preserves. When he saw that Robin intended only one soft-boiled egg for herself, he told her to eat more if she wanted, he would help her turn her food into healthy muscle.

It struck her as oddly threatening that a man would tell her to eat as much as she liked. She’d used her size, her obesity, as a barrier against unwanted male attention. Yet, here was a man who brushed aside one of her main lines of defense as if it were a cobweb.

Still, Robin loved to eat a hearty breakfast and so she seized the opportunity, adding more eggs to the bowl to be scrambled.

She wasn’t a fancy cook, but with almost two decades in food service, Robin knew how to make what she liked, and prepare it well and efficiently. She had everything on the table in appropriately short order. It looked good, it smelled better, it was all hot and everyone was ready to eat at the same time.

Except Manfred had something to say.

“Do you offer thanks?” he asked.

“For the food?”

Bianca watched the exchange, interested.

“Ja.”

“No.”

“Would you mind if we did?”

“You’re religious?”

He shrugged.

“I started praying at school meals to annoy the Communists. In prison, I became sincere. Prayer helped me there. I would like my daughter to learn. Even if it means nothing to her now, someday, perhaps, she will become sincere, too.”

“If that’s what you want,” Robin said, “this is a free country.”

Manfred took Bianca’s hand and bowed his head. Robin was about to reach for her fork, and dig into her rapidly cooling eggs, when Bianca startled her by taking her hand and joining them all together.

But the kid wasn’t being pious. There was a smirk on her face.

The look said: If I’m stuck with this mumbo-jumbo, so are you.

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