Chapter 18: Brekkie with the Lord-Gagger

Olney inspected his freshly anointed tartine.

He'd layered it with enough butter, but had he put on enough jam? Drooling with glee, he reached for the knife. Slop went the gop on the slick white bread as Olney with joy did spread, spread, spread.

It was a glorious sight.

Olney Garkle's sole contribution to the sharing of household chores was his morning walk to the boulangerie. He would rather have wakened to a breakfast already prepared (with the preparer discreetly out of sight), but since Maggie did the vacuuming, cooking and dishes, he could put up with it. Besides, she wouldn't know an ordinary baguette from a prize winner. It took his discerning eye, and this morning that eye had nearly popped from its socket. There, shoulder to shoulder with paler brothers and sisters, stood his ideal baguette, its crust blushingly burnt, as if it had slowly baked on the beach at Cannes. I'm so crisp, it rasped back at the flat, when sliced in half. And the insides were billowy, yet not so soft they came away with the butter knife. You simply had to tear out and throw away the fluffy bits of some baguettes, a dreadful last-minute discovery with the Bialetti chortling away on the stove and your sub-mandies working overtime.

Most mornings Olney ate breakfast by himself. Rhonda was always gone by then, and with Maggie there was an unspoken agreement that she would sleep in until his ritual was finished. Since she rarely ate first thing anyway, there would be nothing for her to do but drink coffee and watch his frightful ingestions. When it was all over--signalled by the sound of Olney theatrically clearing his throat--she would come out to join him. Olney liked the arrangement. He hated to be observed while eating a French breakfast. Like masturbation, it was a private affair; you did things with the bread that people shouldn't know about.

Hélas, this morning was to be different. Poised and ready to drown the first quarter of his creation in a steaming bowl of café au lait, Olney looked up aghast as Maggie walked in.

How dare she, he thought, his plans for a frictionless and fruitful day suddenly dashed. Frumpy and half asleep, she was wearing that Day-Glo blue dressing gown again, decorated with a dozen Day-Glo red parrots ever ready to poke a man's eyes out with their Day-Glo yellow beaks. Worst of all, the cuffs of her black silk pyjama bottoms were caught in the thick Canadian Wilderness socks she always wore.

Olney snarled as she poured a cup of black coffee and sat down, staring at the table from another world. His chewing and wolfing finally caused her to look up.

I can't look, she thought, looking anyway. Maggie Bebette often found herself mesmerised by the worst things. Once her gaze slid toward the dreaded sight, she couldn't tear it away. Olney, a dreaded sight for friends, enemies and strangers alike, had snagged her the minute they met.

"Take your pyjamas out of your socks," he commanded, sinking more of the apricot laden missile into the beige brew. He drew it dripping to his quivering lips.

"You should see yourself," Maggie said. "Even Jesus would gag." Her sneer was dispersed by a yawn. "No wonder Rhonda never eats with us."

Olney replied with a muffled epithet as she slipped her pyjamas free of the warm socks and lit a Marlboro. She looked out the window. Across the street, a woman she'd waved to once or twice was opening her shutters. Olney had jumped all over Maggie the first time it happened. Waving to strangers from your apartment was an un-Parisian thing to do, he'd said. Well, she didn't know about that, the woman always seemed happy enough to wave back. Maybe she was Belgian, he'd suggested. Maybe Olney was an arrogant prick and just plain wrong, Maggie had concluded.

Once, she waved to the woman when her husband was there. Olney had had to go along with it that time; the couple looked so cheerful waving back. A lovely moment, Maggie thought. So many lovely moments in those days. Just after moving in, actually ... long time ago, now. Barely two months. Sometimes it was all like an old movie, and you knew the ending would be just as sad as the black and white Forties. Well, this wasn't the end, at least not yet. But things were different now. Rhonda.

"Your American cigarette stinks with particular malice this morning," Olney observed through a mouthful. Cigarettes rarely bothered Olney at breakfast. He couldn't afford that luxury, since he was the one who nauseated everyone else with his Gauloises.

"I didn't think you'd notice," responded she, "since it looks like most of that thing your eating is up your nose." She stretched, feeling a little more awake. "Oh, well, you may be a mealtime psychopath, but at least you don't come to bed reeking of onions and beer."

"Are you suggesting I'm not bad, as mistakes go?" Olney was buttering his second tartine. "Do you mean you could do better? You, who greets the world every morning with your pyjamas slovenly tucked into the very socks so highly esteemed by loggers and greasy car mechanics?"

That woke her up. "At least I don't slobber over my food."

"If you loved these breakfasts as I do, you'd start slobbering before you went to bed."

"So! You admit to being a slobbering slob."

"I've certainly never slobbered over you."

"Liar. You're always slobbering over me. And I'll bet you'd like to slobber over Rhonda, too."

"You leave that refined young thing out of this. And leave me the hell alone while you're at it."

"Oh, stop being so testy. Did we get out bed on the wrong side this morning?"

"Don't get cute. The fact is, I have to supply the slobber for both of us. I'll bet when you're alone not even a time-lapse camera could catch you moving."

"At least I'm not an arrested adolescent like you. You're the one who always needs to be praised no matter what insignificant thing you've done. I'm surprised you haven't advocated in detail the superior method used by your regal self to wipe your royal behind. I know you'd appreciate my fawning flattery on the subject."

Olney fell silent for a moment. They were both right, but she'd won the round. His lips puckered with anticipation over another sip of coffee to wash down the second tartine. Indeed, the bowl was already rising in the hike of his hands. His Adam's apple bobbed merrily as the tepid liquid sailed down his throat. He wiped his mouth--still fluted in case another sip was needed--with a gunk-stiffened towel. "Tu me fait chier," he muttered, picking up the matte-blue packet of Gauloises. He always said something mean in French when he was caught glibless in English.

"Hah!" Maggie didn't know what it meant, but his voice sounded cornered. Her victory wasn't worth the toot of a bingo winner's fart, though. Too early. "So what are you up to this afternoon," she asked, hoping to be alone for a change.

"I was going to write. Until you walked in with your normal non-fluency stuffed in your socks."

Maggie slammed her fist on the table. "Fascist bully," she yelled.

"Dozy Ding-Dong!" he yelled back.

"Why don't you go back to bed, you foul-tempered old goat." She was ready to cry; he didn't care.

"You oughta wear a tattoo on your arm says 'Born to burn toast,'" he went on blindly. "At least you're saved that problem in France."

"Your problem is that someone edited your frontal lobes with a meat cleaver when you weren't looking."

"Oh, yeah? Well, at least I had 'em to begin with."

"You're a snob, Olney Garkle, the worst kind of snob, and you know why? Because you're a snob with no class."

"Oh, yeah? At least my class didn't spring from a Norman Rockwell frecklescape."

"So what's wrong with Norman Rockwell?"

Olney pulled at his face like Edvard Munch on a bridge too far. "What's wrong with Norman Rockwell? Why nothing, dear, nothing a cosy nuclear moment wouldn't solve. God! You're the one who needs a lobe job."

Maggie trembled with anger. She'd bitten, all right. He loved these arguments. Why? Did he have a tumour on the brain? Why hadn't someone up and cut off his head years ago, the contemptuous bugger. Everything she liked he destroyed with his vicious tongue. Well, by God, she could do it too.

"You peevish prick, you're just like a swarm of no-see-em's trying to bite the legs of an innocent child. Mean and nasty ... "

"Oh-ho-ho, very good," he exclaimed with an appreciation mixed with bile. "At least I'm animate! You're the stasis hunter who roots herself in divine inertia, hallowed be the okey-doke. A plague of no-see-em's biting like piranha fish couldn't wake you up. Norman Rockwell!"

"So, you're the greatest thing since sliced rice, is it?"

"Sliced--?"

"--Never mind, Mr. Arrogant."

"I have my well-honed points, yes."

"Well, I hope you're not including your willie in that humble summation, mister, because it isn't big enough."

"Whaddya mean?" he bellowed, oaf and dumblike to cover his surprise. "Dint you allus say we was a good fit?" Maggie mummed up. Not used to this game. Went too far. Anything said now would be used against her. And so would her silence. Hopeless.

"Yeah, wimmin," he grumbled, shifting a would-be thespian gut from one side to the other. He wiped a gob of Method snot from his nose with a backhand. "Soon's their minds go slack they start hittin' b'low the belt. Why'm I livin' witchoo, huh? All I want's a ham sandwich once in awhile, got stuck with the whole pig ... " Oh, shit. In his mind, he turned to run for his life.

Maggie burst into tears. "You're the pig, Olney Garkle. A rotten son of a bitch of a sadistic pig. I'm sorry I said what I said, but it's not nearly as bad as the things you say. And don't forget one little thing," she recovered, "you're getting your 'ham sandwiches' for free. In fact, you're being kept!"

"Oh, yeah?" he rallied. "At least I'm not the greatest block to my own evolution, like you."

"Yeah, well at least I'm not a threat to everyone else's, like you."

"Oh, yeah? At least I'm not the bumpkin whose only goal in life is to find the clearing within and go to sleep in it."

"Yeah, well I'm not always whining about reality, either."

Damn the girl, she was winning. His mind raced for the ultimate insult. "At least I'm not a woman, the species that's up for sale. We all know women not only can be bought, they insist on it. You know their motto: 'No deposit? No return, chump!'"

"Then you must be a 'throwaway'. So where's your deposit, chump? Let's see it."

"I'm a chump, all right. A laughingstock among men. I deposited my sanity with you. Imagine! 'The fool put his sanity in the care of an ornamental plaything.'"

"Salope!" she screamed.

"Mais non, chérie, salopes are women," Olney corrected. "I'm supposed to be a salaud."

"Imbécile, then!"

"Crétin, yourself!"

"Dummy two -boots!"

"Uni-neuronic!"

"Espèce de con!"

"Sac à foutre!"

"Hey, what's that mean?" Maggie leapt to her feet. "It sounds horrible in French."

"Means scumbag, ha-ha."

"Oh! You hit below the belt worse than any woman."

"I never accused you of having too-tiny-tits."

"That's because I don't."

"Right, but your ass is humongous."

"Skinny twit!"

"Hottentot butt!"

They fell back, exhausted. Olney grinned sheepishly and so did Maggie, but the insults were filed away for an ominous future.

Breakfast was over. They tidied up and took leisurely showers. He shaved, she put on some make-up. On the street they kissed and went separate ways: she to the nearby Square Violet to feed the pigeons; he to the British Library to admire the silky throats of the pale young girls.

§§§

Chapter 19: February in Paris

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