Algren at Sea by Nelson Algren Read Free Book Online Page A

see how the difference was that crucial.
    What made him really appealing to everyone, however, was that he didn’t mind keeping the rest of the table waiting at his chamber doors while he took the waiter into consultation. With one judicial finger on the menu designating the ultimate steak of his ultimate choice, the waiter leaning forward attentively, pencil in hand, the Rear-Echelon Liberal would frown in thought while the tension around him mounted and spread; till even the duchess, at the next table, would feel it and crane her head about to see what was affecting her neck. When he had everyone’s attention, he would hand his verdict down: “Meeeee-deeeee-yummm ray-err.”
    It was done. Tension relaxed, conversation picked up. He was the real thing in front-line finks as well as in rear-rank radicals. I still wonder how he got his start.
    Then it would be my turn, and since The Connecticut Child seemed to expect something from me, I’d sneak a bit of spit on the ball myself. I’d hold the menu close to my eyes, one eye nearly shut, and ask, “What is poissonnière?” Immediately everyone would shout in chorus, “Fish!” Especially Mrs. Di Santos.

    â€œYeah,” I’d answer shrewdly, “but which one?”
    That menu was an honor roll of the Vasty Deep. Everything that disports itself in the trough of the waters or hangs upsy-downsy by eyeless suckers to the roof of the deepest sea-sunk cave, that scuttles sidewise across the sands, leaps in a spout of welcome to swimmers off Cape Cod, or comes smiling down the Gulf Stream on its hunkers with no thought of tomorrow was on that carte.
    â€œNothing much in the line of seafood tonight,” I’d mutter, making it plain that the one chance a gourmet like myself had to have an edible supper was to go out and harpoon something himself.
    â€œDo try the gin-ger,” Goldbraid Fatty coaxed The Connecticut Child; “it’s tan -gy.”
    â€œWhat do I say now?” she asked me in a lowered voice.
    â€œAsk him if he’d like to jump ship with you,” I suggested just loudly enough to be overheard at the head of the table.
    Â 
    Pale fruit, blue flowers, and sequined hats loaded the table where we sat, the night that the Gala Captain’s Dinner arrived at last. Meyer Davis’s aides stood ready on the festooned balcony above us. Goldbraid Fatty had fitted the most comical hat of all onto his head—and even at that the fun had barely begun! I hadn’t seen a table so loaded with goodies since the last time I’d played Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
    This was it. We were traveling first class at last. We were almost too gay to bear.
    The musicians struck up a chirpified tune. “They’re playing Bluebird of Hoppiness,” Fatty explained, letting his tongue hang for the usual effect. Then, without re moving his comical hat or putting his tongue back where it belonged, he began hacking at a swordfish as if it had tried to attack him. Mrs. Di Santos began dipping shark’s fin with sherry down her neck in a way that made me glad they’d taken the trouble to pour it into a soup bowl first. They might have handed her a fin and a bottle. If this one ever sobered up sharks wouldn’t be in it with her.
    The Rear-Minded Radical conducted preliminary inquiries on the red-snapper situation. Had I been the waiter I would have made some inquiries about him to a red snapper.
    Between the red snapper and the lobster, he trapped himself. He had committed himself verbally to red snapper in an announcement made to
the entire table the day before, and now he wanted a change of venue— if the lobster were fresh and not frozen—but the waiter could not swear, beyond a reasonable doubt, whether the brute were frozen or fresh. He therefore arranged for lobster upon the contingency that it was fresh and that contingency was contingent upon how fresh, and just as I decided to solve