The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [46]
Too quickly, Gloria said, “Yes. In college. Happy as a clam. Studying his brains out. Study, study, study.”
“Can’t believe how much he studies.”
“His little noggin overflowing with knowledge.”
“The brain is a marvellous thing.”
“Dear,” said Gloria to Steve, “there’s no soy sauce here.”
“There isn’t, is there?”
“I’d better go into the kitchen and get some.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Steve and Gloria got up from the table together and left the room.
Kyle looked at Brittany. “These people are mentally ill.”
“It’s all relative, Kyle. Maybe they’re happy.”
“They have no food in their kitchen.”
“Few people do. They probably go to the deli once a day, like us.”
“No, I mean no food whatsoever. A jar of pickle juice and a box of weevil-infested pancake mix older than the civil rights movement.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not.”
“They appear well nourished.”
“All they ingest is Scotch and gin.”
“Keep your voice down. Maybe they can hear us.”
“Are you going to eat that last bit of sweet-and-sour pork?”
“Be my guest.”
Kyle ate the last piece of pork.
Toast 2: A High Seas Tale
11 Nov. 1893
Though the Vessel shakes with incessant nauseating rolls & pitches, my faith in a Promised Land free of grills and devices that scorch our tender farinaceous flesh shakes not. The ship’s Captain, one Cornelius Jif—a hideous, unschooled poltroon of questionable agenda—has almost entirely reduced our daily ration of both cinnamon & sugar, this over and above last week’s complete withdrawal of butter. Some of the fainter slices on board have swapped logic with salt water and have gone delirious from the cursed sogginess that is the perpetual enemy of we who travel on the Good Ship Slice, registered in Liverpool but flying the Canadian Dominion’s flag (though only, one might add, when nearing crafts touting flags of nations hostile to America’s open-loaf policy—a policy that promises shelter to those slices who, like myself and my family, sit huddled in babushkas & mite-choked rags ‘neath the fo’c’sle, dreaming of lives free of staleness and the Grill).
Yesterday the Widow Bran surrendered Hope of reaching our destination and became a piteous sight on the aft deck, the angry gulls & skuas gobbling her fair carcass, their demonic cackles rousing Captain Jif from the afternoon round of chemin de fer he plays with the bewee- viled ship’s “Guests of Distinction”: Lord Rye of Loafestershire, the Marchioness of Yeaste (said to have gone mad from a patch of mould on a raisin’ed slice) and the bellicose Herr Pumpernickel, heir to the fabled Knead fortune.
The only notion that gives us plain slices in steerage any hope is our Dream of one day inhabiting a land where freshness can live in peace, free of the perpetual mania engendered by the overbearing presence of cheeses, relishes & tuna mayonnaise.
But I neglect the most rousing of experiences, one that I must now here relate. We shored in Angra do Heroísmo, alongside the lava-domed Azorean coast, to restock a supply of durum wheat gone to mush from a leak in the prow—a leak caused by the unfortunate instance when Captain Jif—demented from a heady blend of liqueur-filled Yuletide chocolates and gambling wins—steered our vessel into a Turkish military ship, Al Sheesh-Ke’h Bahb. ‘Twas a fearsome puncture that interrupted our almost unceasing prayers to Saint Gwynevere of Cruste,
Manuscript ends here.
Bethany
You’re back.
With a bang! Thank God.
And “Toast 2” was epic. To be honest, I’ve been going through Roger withdrawal. Things aren’t the same around here without someone a bit older than the rest of us to whip us into shape. Since the incident of the stolen gum (the QuickTime securi-cam loop of the event went viral all over YouTube), everyone’s paranoid and grim.
I hope you’re feeling better. Eight days is a long time to have been away. It’s Sunday today, but it feels more like a “generic” day—or rather, it feels like what days must have felt like before we invented the seven days of