The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up by Jacob M. Appel

Author:Jacob M. Appel [Jacob M. Appel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908885111
Publisher: Cargo Publishing
Published: 2012-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Arnold woke the following morning to the scent of wet dog. The German shepherd, covered in lather, was tracking suds around the apartment. Great balls of foam covered its pointy ears. When the animal noticed that Arnold was moving, she lunged at him and rubbed her wet coat across his face.

“We went for a walk,” the girl explained. “Son of a President found a skunk.”

Cassandra grabbed hold of Son of a President and pulled the dog toward the bath. The sound of splashing water soon filled the apartment. Here was yet another advantage of Manhattan that he and Judith had taken for granted: You didn’t have to worry about skunks. Or rabbits. Or woodchucks. In contrast, Brooklyn was a jungle of herbivorous pests just waiting to sink their canines into burgeoning flowers.

Arnold wiped the soapy dog-froth from his lips. “You need ketchup.”

“What?”

“Don’t waste your time with soap or shampoo. Cold water and ketchup works wonders.”

“Are you for real?”

“I had a Fulbright to Italy a couple of years ago. I came up with the ambitious notion that I was going to do for tomatoes what George Washington Carver did for peanuts.” Arnold stood up and stretched; his muscles ached from sleeping without a blanket on the cold floorboards. “Dried tomato paste is also an excellent adhesive. Not to mention a very efficient source of automotive fuel. If I ever find a way to show my face in public again, I’d love to market a tomato-powered car.”

“You call that ambitious?” answered the girl. “I call that wacko.”

She shut the water off in the bathroom and set about preparing breakfast. It struck Arnold how easily they’d settled into a domestic routine—as though they were a married couple. As peculiar as it must be for this girl to have a stranger twice her age sleeping on her floor, and a fugitive on top of that, she acted as though it were nothing out of the ordinary. Arnold glanced at his watch. It wasn’t yet six o’clock. When he pulled open the heavy damask curtains, the sky was still grey.

“I like to get up my ass up early,” said the girl. “Otherwise you lose half the day.”

Cassandra sliced a mango with a pocket knife and ate a sliver directly off the blade—a sin for which Arnold’s great-grandmother, The Baroness, had once fed him castor oil. Then the girl handed a morsel to Arnold. The fruit tasted perfectly sweet. For their main course, Cassandra prepared granola and blueberry pancakes—a far cry above the botanist’s standard fare of orange juice and toast. It was impossible to imagine Judith labouring over a frying pan early in the morning unless she were arranging a still life. He could never forget the first meal his wife had cooked for him. She’d baked eggplant lasagne, but she’d forgotten to boil the pasta before she put it in the oven. The end-product had displayed the consistency of birch bark. Judith had learned her way around the kitchen over the last thirty years, but she was a one-meal-a-day chef—and that meal was dinner.

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