The line marched. All the prisoners were still shackled, so like before, the marching was actually shuffling. Prison doors were buzzed open as the line approached, buzzed shut when it had passed through. The bleeder was conspicuously absent. Bill wouldn’t see him again until the next morning at chow. He had two swollen eyes sure to turn black and a fat lip.
First stop was check-in. The new inmates were issued workhouse blues. The shirts had the letter of the dorm they were assigned to. Sure enough, Bill’s had the capital D. They got one pair of socks, two pairs of underwear, one pair of soft slip-on sneakers, no laces, a sheet, pillow case, blanket and towel.
Next stop was strip search and delousing. It was here, just before they entered, that the shackles were removed. Then, inside, it was kind of like a high school locker room without lockers. There were flat benches and a half wall with an entrance in the middle beyond which were showers. They were ordered to put their prison issue on the benches and to strip. When they were all nude, they were lined up before the benches and strip searched. They had to use the bench to lean on to spread their cheeks. No surprise, they checked everywhere, everywhere being in the nostrils, in the mouth, under the armpits, under the testicles, in the anus and between the toes.
That done, they had to shower. The guards stayed at the half wall. They did this twice a day, every day so they were bored and disinterested. They talked amongst themselves, joked with each other. One told about how the bleeder had been worked over. Another was eyeing Bill. He would be the one to lead Bill to the barber.
In here the guards only carried night sticks. Several of them tapped the sticks on the wall. One paced back and forth along the wall dragging the stick on the wall making a big racket. He asked one of his friends how many asses his stick had been up. His friend said more than his number of fingers and they laughed. He said he thought the stick was pointing to the hippie.
They timed the showers, three minutes start to finish. Then the inmates stood there in the shower area. They were lined up and sprayed with chemical delousing fluid. The sprayers wore rubber suits, rubber boots and gas masks.
Dried off, dressed in the workhouse uniforms, the inmates packed up their street clothes. Private property had been sent along from lockup, taken from them before the bus ride over. Bill noted that one guard, the one who had talked about his stick, kept hanging over him.
“This stick meant for that hippie queer,” the guard said to his friends. “I’m gonna walk him into D dorm personally, show them how pretty he is. Then I’m taking him over to the barber. Make sure he get the haircut he needs.”
“Man, leave the boy alone. He ain’t done nothing to you,” one of his coworkers said.
“I’m gonna make him eat this stick,” the guard said.
“Let’s get this group of misfits settled in,” the sergeant said.
“Move it along you assholes,” one of the guards said as they marched the inmates along. “No talking. Look straight ahead. Arm’s length from the man in front.”
A Note About the Fiction Outtakes:
The Fiction Outtakes are based upon my fiction. Very often they utilize characters which appear in different pieces of fiction written over the years. However, the events and incidents do not generally appear in the fiction. For the most part they are outtakes, pieces written and not included in the actual works or pieces written for fun. All of The Ghost Writer outtakes are not actual events depicted in the upcoming novel (tentatively to be released in February 2017) but the characters are actual characters from the novel. Similarly, Bill Wynn is a character from The Kitchen Stories (written over many years and also to be released in 2017). However, the actual experiences depicted in the outtakes do not necessarily appear in The Kitchen Stories.
The bus arrived about 2:00 PM. Just like in the movies on TV, the prisoners were in foot and hand shackles so they shuffled as the length of the foot chain allowed, their hands in front of them tied to their feet.
Stepping down off the bus was tricky. One boy no older than Bill Wynn who was just twenty-one tripped and tumbled down off the bus. He couldn’t use his hands to protect himself in the fall and stood up with a bloody nose. He didn’t really stand up. Two jail guards pulled him up by the shackles. Bill saw that the handcuff part cut one of his wrists. The boy stood there bleeding at his wrist and with blood dripping down his face from his nose.
“Goddamn dirty pig soiling our yard here,” one of the guards said.
A different guard stepped up to him. “You gonna pay for this, motherf…er,” he said. “You gonna pay for it and you gonna clean it up. Whitey,” he called, ” get someone to bring the bucket and brush.”
Everyone off the bus, the guards lined up the prisoners. There were about fifteen of them by the time the bus had made all the stops for the pickups. Bill was scared worse than he’d ever recalled being scared. He was trying not to cry, trying to look tough and trying to take in everything going on around him all at once. Somehow his eyes must’ve met the eyes of one of the guards because of a sudden that guard was in his face.
“You eyeballing me boy?” he said loudly, so close to Bill that Bill could feel the guard’s breath on his face and smell his stale lunch too.
“No.”
“No what?”
Bill had no clue what he was supposed to say. “No officer,” he finally managed.
“You call me sir, boy.”
“Yes sir,” Bill said.
“Lookee here,” the guard said. “We got us a bona-fide genuine hippie boy.”
All the guards came over. They all wore sidearms and carried shotguns. One guard cocked his shotgun and said “I see the slightest motion out the corner of my eye while I’m checking out this here hippie, I’m shooting at it first and asking about it after I shoot.”
“I’ll be damned,” one guard said.
“Remember the hippie we checked in this morning?” another one said.
“I heard he enjoyed the strip search. You gonna enjoy the strip search, boy?”
Bill did not answer.
Another guard, one who not spoken, poked Bill in the ribs with the butt of his shotgun. “Didn’t you hear him ask you a question?”
“Yes sir,” Bill said.
“Well?” the same guard said, prodding Bill’s ribs with the shotgun with each word. “Answer his f…ing question. You like it up the ass? You look like a faggot to me.”
“No sir,” Bill said.
“You a queer?”
“No sir.”
“We gonna put you in D dorm with the toughs,” the sergeant said. He hadn’t spoken before. He stepped close to Bill. “Course that’s after the barber gets done with you.”
The sergeant stepped off and told the guards to start marching the inmates in. Just before they did, an inmate came out carrying a bucket with a brush inside it. Bill noted the inmate, in workhouse blues, was an albino.
“Thanks, Whitey,” the sergeant said. “Okay now, Mr. Sharp,” he said to one of the guards, “hold the line while the bleeder cleans up his mess.”
One guard pushed the bleeder forward and forced him down to his knees. Another pushed the bucket forward with his foot, not caring that water was splashing the inmate on his knees.
The line of prisoners stood watching while the still bleeding inmate scrubbed the cement with the bristle brush. He stopped only to keep wiping his face with his sleeve so he didn’t bleed on the ground anymore.
“Anyone else wanna bleed?” one of the guards asked.
No one said anything.
A Note About the Fiction Outtakes:
The Fiction Outtakes are based upon my fiction. Very often they utilize characters which appear in different pieces of fiction written over the years. However, the events and incidents do not generally appear in the fiction. For the most part they are outtakes, pieces written and not included in the actual works or pieces written for fun. All of The Ghost Writer outtakes are not actual events depicted in the upcoming novel (tentatively to be released in February 2017) but the characters are actual characters from the novel. Similarly, Bill Wynn is a character from The Kitchen Stories (written over many years and also to be released in 2017). However, the actual experiences depicted in the outtakes do not necessarily appear in The Kitchen Stories.
Bill was on probation. He got three weeks in the workhouse and a two hundred-fifty dollar fine. He actually spent seventeen days in jail and they waived the fine, but he came away from it all pretty broken and with a police record to boot. The police record meant he couldn’t get a job so he had no money, no prospective income, nowhere to turn for help except his probation officer.
Those days, the probation officer determined how often you had to report. Bill reported the week after he was released from the workhouse since that was required. Bailey, his PO, made the next face-to-face for four weeks away and decided regular visits were to be monthly. Bill wasn’t exactly a flight risk or a danger. He was busted at an anti-war protest and still insisted he hadn’t done what they said he did. It reminded him of a character in a story who said they had the papers on him so he guessed he did what they said he did. Then he said he didn’t really remember and it didn’t matter anymore anyway.
That first monthly visit changed Bill’s life. He just didn’t know it at the time. That’s when he met Robert, the guy in workhouse blues who looked like he was going to cry. Bill offered him a cigarette, but he said he didn’t smoke. Bill told him he didn’t have any money otherwise he would have given it to him for his commissary. Robert asked him how he knew about the commissary. Bill told him he just got out a month ago.
Bailey was sympathetic to Bill’s plight. Bill wanted Bailey to help him get a job. Any kind of job, Bill told him. “I don’t care what the hell it is,” he said. “I can’t pay my rent.” Bailey said he’d do what he could.
Bill didn’t have much hope. He didn’t have much hope about getting a job or about Bailey helping him. He lay in bed at night remembering. The judge banged down the gavel and then he was clad in shackles on the bus to the workhouse. He had that sick feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. That feeling would never leave him again, never, although sometimes it would go on hiatus for different periods of time, some of them even longer periods.
“Policemen don’t lie,” the judge said. The judge’s name was Shul. They called him “hang ’em high Shul,” because he was the toughest, most conservative judge they had there in Columbus. The town itself was quite conservative once you were away from the university area. Bill had been walking downtown and a cop singled him out from about fifteen people who were crossing in the middle of the block and not in the crosswalk.
“Giving you a jaywalking ticket,” he said.
“What about all the others who were with me?”
“Shut up you goddamn hippie.”
Bill started to say something but the cop cut him off. “Say another word and I’ll run you in,” he said.
Bill didn’t go back downtown again until he was visiting his PO. By then, after the workhouse, you’d never have known he was a hippie.
A Note About the Fiction Outtakes:
The Fiction Outtakes are based upon my fiction. Very often they utilize characters which appear in different pieces of fiction written over the years. However, the events and incidents do not generally appear in the fiction. For the most part they are outtakes, pieces written and not included in the actual works or pieces written for fun. All of The Ghost Writer outtakes are not actual events depicted in the upcoming novel (tentatively to be released in February 2017) but the characters are actual characters from the novel. Similarly, Bill Wynn is a character from The Kitchen Stories (written over many years and also to be released in 2017). However, the actual experiences depicted in the outtakes do not necessarily appear in The Kitchen Stories.
You cheated, you lied, you said that you loved me…Love is something you know nothing about.
Hillary is shocked that Donald won’t say if he will respect the outcome of the election. She says he is disrespecting the very pillars upon which America was founded and cites free and open elections as that which he is specifically disrespecting.
Give us all a break, Hillary!
The more one considers what Trump said last night in light of this election, the more credence his position takes on. The more Hillary stands on her high moral ground there, the more hypocritical she appears, the more disgusting and distasteful she is.
Me thinks the lady protesteth too much.
Trump’s only real problem in the debates is that he is not a debater. Last night was no exception. She has the words, beautiful words, practiced and rehearsed. She is the living proof that the pen is mightier than the sword.
That her words are empty, even meaningless, that her words change depending upon who’s paying her, these are the things that matter, not how artfully her words disguise what she truly is.
Free and open elections died when Obama failed to prosecute the Black Panthers for intimidating voters. They had them on tape and could have prosecuted. But his lack-of-justice department had the memo circulated not to prosecute Blacks.
Free and open elections died when the media gave up any pretense of not having bias in this election. It died when the Washington Ragpost put twenty reporters to finding dirt on Trump. It died when the NY Slimetimes echoed the Ragpost, posted opinion as news and of course posted stories about Trump it knew were false. Free and open elections died when NBC, formerly owned by GE whose CEO is on Obama’s energy team in the White House, pushed out the Trump tapes the night before the second debate after sitting on it, when it purposefully attempted to influence the election and has successfully done so.
Free and open elections died when the grassroots organizations that supported Obama went to work for Hillary, registering how many dead people in how many states? Registering how many non-Americans who are not eligible to vote? Free and open elections died when the laws of the land, this land, refused to uphold showing ID and American citizenship to prove eligibility for voting.
Free and open elections died when those same grassroots organizations, we now know for a fact are tied to you, Hillary, organized and paid people to create the very violence at Trump rallies you accused those deplorable and irredeemable Trump supporters of perpetrating.
Free and open elections died when the Democrats nominated and America allowed a felon to run for office. Hillary has corrupted the State Department and the FBI. She talks about Trump’s taxes, but really no one knows about the finances of the Clinton Foundation, where it is estimated that two billion dollars have gone in but only several hundred million are accounted for. She had it backwards in last night’s debate. Ninety percent of the money goes to administration and ten percent to charity. She, of course, in her pretty words, stated it the other way around, and Donald—never the debater—didn’t correct it. (I don’t want to misalign her, so the real estimates are eighty – twenty, eighty percent for her people and twenty percent for actual charity work.)
Free and open elections? That’s a joke, right? Hillary claims on the one hand that seventeen intelligence organizations say Russia is behind the Wiki-leaks and that Trump is in collusion with Putin. Yet her email server was eons less secure and she claims it was never hacked. Trump also missed that thanks to her pay-for-play, she sold our uranium to Russia who now sells it to Iran who buys it with one hundred-seventy billion dollars in cash that we gave to Iran. In part, her deal. Selling our uranium to Russia alone should disqualify her from running for president.
Give us all a break, Hillary. You’ve peed on all those pillars of America you claim Trump is disrespecting. If your pretty words get you elected, America Beware!
Our socialist-leaning government, so far from what it was intended to be, is selling the minorities a false narrative. Aimed particularly at African Americans, it is selling a pity party, telling minorities time and time again that they are victims, that they must be taken care of, or, by implication, telling them that they are less than.
Obama and the Democrats own this one, and actually their narrative, spewn recklessly as they have always done it, is a major cause of minorities having failed to effectively integrate en mass into the middle class. It is also the single underlying ideological difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.
A few simple facts: slavery ended about 155 years ago; segregation ended about 55 years ago; we have an African American president; African Americans run some of the cities that have recently had major riots; Democrats have run the cities like Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore for anywhere from 50 to 100 years; the war on poverty, a Democratic initiative, has cost 23 trillion dollars and spanned 55 years yet it has not effectively lessened the poverty rate in America or changed the demographics of the poverty.
There are many more facts of all kinds that could be cited. But the single most germane ones are that children born into single-parent families are much more likely to live in poverty than those born into two-parent families and 74 percent of African American kids are born to single mothers.
The Democratic narrative of inherent racism in America, heightened by two black attorneys general and a president more intent upon demonizing Caucasians than advancing the quality of life of the African American citizens he governs, has crippled African Americans while simultaneously inciting their ire. This president and his attorneys general, in deliberately and purposefully not prosecuting the Black Panthers and wrongfully defending a host of African Americans (Hands Up Don’t Shoot) despite their clear criminal actions, have incited the racial divide we now face, caused chaos in our streets and endangered the lives of every police officer on the job. They have told African Americans they are less than, that they should strike out and that they are deserving of payoffs called reparations. Poor me, Poor me.
This is so far from the truth it’s amazing they’ve gotten away with it. We know how and why they did, but that’s for another time. What they should have been selling, if they really wanted to help their people, are hard work, education, and self-dependence. That is what has allowed every other group in America to rise up and that is what is allowing other minorities to surpass the African Americans now.
Fredrick Douglas taught himself to read at a time when Blacks were forbidden to have education. He used ingenuity, hard work and determination. This is what Obama and his cronies should be selling.
But they’re not, and the reason they’re not is because they are the modern-day slave owners. They offer the African American community a variety of government handouts that keep it in virtual poverty and abject dependency. In return, the Democrat masters get 90 percent of their votes and continue to run their inner cities which they have decimated.
The Democrats are gaming the African American community. Their economic policies and current social policies are continually proven untenable and ineffective. Their rhetoric is often pretty. They have the backing from the left-leaning media (check out the owners of much of that media) and billionaires like George Soros (check him out). But make no mistake, they have no one’s interests at heart but their own–their own selfish self-interests.
Attack them and they call you every “ist” in the book to shut you down. Contradict them and they use the lack-of-justice department to prosecute you like they’ve done to those whose scientific findings don’t align with their political agenda, as in climate change. They even use the IRS to prevent organizations which might oppose them from forming.
It took a civil war to end slavery the first time. What will it take this time to prevent the Democrats from continuing to plunder the very community they purport to represent?
From The Ghost Writer
Carla and Rose woke with big league hangovers. Murph was sitting in a lounge chair watching them. He’d returned from his walk and coffee out and had taken up the laptop to work. Keekah had come up, herself not a hundred percent, and checked in on Rose. She told Murph she would prepare a full brunch and they could all come down whenever they were ready.
Murph remembered a waitress he’d known. They’d had a trip to the Poconos together. Saturday night she’d gotten really sloshed and she woke up in the middle of the night wanting farina. Go figure. Murph called room service—good thing they were open twenty-four seven—that delivered the most perfect farina Murph had ever seen. It was positively beautiful, totally even in the plate, smooth, steaming hot, a round dollop of yellow butter dug into the middle and melted. Murph was thinking some choice words, but he was having a good weekend so he was taking it in stride. He helped her to the table and as soon as she saw the farina she heaved all over it.
Rose made no attempt to cover herself as she sat up in the bed. Carla had not stirred yet but she was up too. She asked what time it was. Murph told her after eleven. He told her it was time to start heading back to real life.
“This is real life,” Rose said. She got up unabashedly and went off to pee.
“I am so hung-over,” Carla said.
“You remember last night?” Murph asked.
“Everything,” Carla said. “You should have joined us in the hot tub.” She turned over in the bed and buried her head in the covers.
“Yes. You should have,” Rose said returning to the room. She sat on the edge of the bed, faced Murph and drew one leg up on the bed, knee bent. She leaned her arms on her thigh. This gave Murph an up close and personal view of every bit of her.
Murph looked. He did not look away. Carla finally sat up and seeing Rose posing for Murph, bad as she felt from the hangover, she moved behind Rose and started kissing her and fondling her. “Last chance,” she said. “Two for the price of one.”
“Pass,” Murph said. He got up and was about to head out of the room when Rose said, “Please.” Carla echoed Rose’s one word. “Please,” she said.
They were mostly quiet at brunch. Keekah and Keelah were as hung over as Rose and Carla. They were dressed in house-dresses and wore scarves on their heads. They padded about in soft bedroom slippers.
Even for as bad as they felt, they prepared a wonderful brunch. Some things were ordered in and delivered—bagels and lox, kippers, white fish and all the trimmings that went with them. But they prepared the eggs and home fries, fresh squeezed juice, a beautiful fruit salad and strong, hot coffee.
“We’ll be leaving around two,” Rose told the sisters.
They acknowledged. Keekah told her she and her sister would close up the house and take all the food back to the city. She suggested they could have it for lunch tomorrow at work.
“How are we going to work?” Murph asked.
“Same as always,” Carla said.
“You think?” Murph asked.
“What happens on the Island stays on the Island,” Rose said.
The check is in the mail. We’ve all heard this one. I won’t…in your mouth. We’ve heard that one too. This election has all come down to which lies you choose to want to hear.
Make no mistake. Trump is a liar. Make no mistake. Clinton is a liar. So the choice is in the flavor of the lies you want to palate. Interestingly enough, the two samples above reflect the flavors of the two sets of lies in the campaign.
Here’s another one for you. How do you know when a lawyer is lying? When her lips are moving. Hillary is a lawyer, isn’t she? Or maybe she can’t recall.
So let’s put out a few things before moving on. The only people who don’t believe in conspiracy theories are those who’ve never been involved with the system. If you’ve read here before, I have first hand experience in two separate matters where the authorities and courts conspired to perpetrate major injustice. The authorities lied, pure and simple, and the courts knew they were lying and helped them get away with it.
So I believe Donald Trump when he says the system is rigged. I believe him when he says the media is in the tank for Hillary Clinton and is overtly aiding and abetting her in her getting elected. I believe that free and independent press in America is dead.
Similarly, I believe Trump when he says that the State Department, the lack-of-justice department, the head of the FBI and Obama himself conspired and colluded to ensure that Hillary Clinton did not get indicted and did get a free pass for the crimes she committed in regard to her emails, the Clinton Foundation and pay for play. Furthermore, I believe she lied to the families of the people killed in Benghazi, even standing there before their coffins. Personally, I consider that to be one of the most despicable things she’s ever done. Also personally, I believe that shows what she will be as a president. Truly.
So there it is in a nutshell. For this election it’s pick your poison. Hillary and her friends, along with the self-serving press, are conducting a major character assassination on Trump. It’s inconceivable to view it any other way. She has out-campaigned him by using her global network of liars and corrupted government agencies, president on down, to make this election about something which may be reprehensible yet which pales in comparison to the things she has done. Even as this is being written she is fundraising, has raised more than a half billion dollars and has used the money to trash Trump. Kudos for her ability to pull this off, but shame on anyone who doesn’t think she is ten times more immoral than him. From selling our uranium to Russia to ripping off the people of Haiti, there’s no limitations to what she wouldn’t do for her own self interests. Choose her and that is what we’re electing.
Trump, in continually falling into her traps, has shown he is not presidential material. But what he’s done doesn’t even rate as small potatoes compared to her. He underestimated her. He surely underestimated the depth of the corruption of her and her campaign and our government which protects her to protect being outed for how corrupt it really is.
So, pick your lies. That’s this election. Sleaze? Or total unadulterated corruption, perjury and use of government for personal gain to the tune of a about 175 million that we know about? Weigh it on your balance scale.
And then consider that if you’re unhappy with how things have been going through the Obama administrations, Hillary’s Supreme Court picks will ensure we continue down that way for some three decades. Can America afford it? Will America survive it?
And the truth is… There is no truth left in America. If we are still the greatest country ever, it’s only by the grace of God. Oh! I forgot. I’m not supposed to bring up God. That’s not politically correct.
Actually, truth left us a long time ago. In the electronic era, however, we just see the lies more. Maybe they are more blatant now because our leaders take us for stupids. Worse, according to Hillary we are deplorables who are irredeemable. Very nice the way she thinks of us little people.
Bill Clinton was a great liar. If you remember the Monica Lewinsky thing, you know this. He shouldn’t have been impeached for that, but all the other liars in Congress had to make a show of him so we’d think they were actually doing something. That was one of their lies, that they’re doing something for us. None of them can be trusted to do anything for us. Another of the lies was their holier-than-thou pretense that they weren’t cheating on their spouses. They should have all been put under oath and asked the same questions as Clinton. Statistically, almost seven in ten are or were cheating. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say fifty percent, or forty percent. Then they all should have been impeached too.
One of the biggest reasons the truth is gone is that the media is no longer honest itself. Look at who owns a lot of it and you’ll see why. Remember when GE owned NBC and the CEO of GE was in the White House on Obama’s energy committee? So you think NBC and all its cable stations are unbiased? They had skin in Obama’s energy game, and a game it was because they were gaming us and lying about its effectiveness. Truth? A senator in a movie playing on cable now says “Truth is what I say it is boy.”
Just as an aside, when the judge asked me if I had anything to say at my trial and I started to tell the truth, he banged down his gavel to stop me and sent me off to jail.
The NY Slimes and Washington Compost–one more time, check out their owners and you’ll see they have no interest in the truth since mostly it goes against their personal interests. And on and on.
The climate change truth? Why would the Attorney General, fine piece of work she is meeting with Billy boy Clinton on the tarmac, prosecute scientists who contradict what the government wants to hear about it? Why are almost all the studies done by scientists getting federal grants? Yes, when you pay for it, you can have the answer you want, whether it’s right or wrong. The game is fixed and they are lying to us. Why? Federal power grab.
Obamacare? Lie after lie after lie. From keeping your doctor to it will cost less…BS, BS, BS. Why Obamacare? Federal power grab. They could at least be honest about it.
We are stupids. If we believe any of them, we are dumber than dumb.
Ironically though, Mr. outrageous himself, Donald Trump, has hit upon some truths that should scare all of us. The system is rigged. That’s why a lot of the Republicans won’t support him. They want the status quo since changing it would cost them and their cronies fortunes and they’d lose their power. The media is in the tank for the Democrats. They’ve even admitted it. Our elections are as crooked as those we used to laugh at in what we used to call the banana republics.
Truth? There is no more truth. Justice? Yeah. Look at the lack-of-justice department and the FBI and how they colluded on the Clinton email case. The American way? Not anymore. They are marching us into socialism knowing full well it doesn’t work anywhere in the world.
From The Ghost Writer
Sunday morning Murph was up first, normal and straight like always, or at least the way he’d been from his mid-thirties on. Rose and Carla were out, dead to the world as per the saying, deep in oblivion. Even the sisters slept in.
Murph dressed quietly. He took a moment to cover Rose and Carla fully. Downstairs, he looked in on Keekah and Keelah. He did the same with them. He felt like tickling Keelah’s feet, which were sticking out, but he didn’t.
Despite a brisk spring chill, he walked along the beach near to the water but making sure no water hit him since he was wearing running shoes. In his youth, when he was distance running, he would have run the length of the beach until heading into town for breakfast. He settled for a good-paced walk and after about ten blocks headed up the beach to the boardwalk where he took one of the ramps to the street. He followed the street to a boulevard and walked along the boulevard until he came upon a high-class diner. Inside, with all his kitchen experience, he judged that it was wannabe high-class more than actually so.
He sat at the counter and ordered coffee. He was thinking about restaurants, about New York brunches in particular. He was about forty and working in an Upper West Side Manhattan bistro. The place only had four cooks and one chef, so the cooks were close in the sense that they depended upon each other. If one of them needed a day off, one of them had to cover the shift.
Murph never liked the brunch meal. It was greasy, all greasy. The joke was that everything slides, even the cooks after the meal. Murph used to say that you got into your car on one side and slid across to the other side.
This place reminded him of that one except this one was more pretentious. Even the waitress reminded him of one of the waitresses from the other place, one he’d gone out with just after separating from his wife. She brought him his coffee and gave him a nice smile. She asked if he was sure he didn’t want something to eat and recommended eggs Florentine with home fries. He laughed to himself. He remembered stirring scrambled eggs with a stainless steel paddle in a fifteen gallon soup pot set in a big boiling Bain-Marie. He remembered poaching a tray full of eggs at a time, making twenty dozen to start off with. “No thanks,” he said.
Foremost on his mind was getting home, getting off this Island, getting past the craziness he’d witnessed. He had not joined them in the hot tub but he had let Carla lead him into temptation with Keelah. He had slept with Rose and Carla only because they had joined him in his bed long after he was asleep.
He’d awakened between them. He was in pajamas, they were in birthday suits. He’d wished he was twenty years younger, not working for Rose on writing her story and that he simply did not care about consequences.
He sipped his coffee and took a refill. He remembered one waitress who pinched her nipples to make them stiff so they showed through the white blouse uniform top. That was her way of getting better tips. Can’t make this stuff up, he thought. Then, God, get me off this island. Get me home.
From The Ghost Writer
Saturday night dinner was a farce, maybe a romantic, tragic comedy.
Keekah and Keelah outdid themselves. They wore high heels and were made up beautifully, their brown skin golden, their cheeks rouged, their thick lips wild red. They wore no underclothes and reminiscent of school days, they had rolled the skirts of their uniforms so they were short even for minis. Nails done to match their lips, they were voluptuous, scrumptious, succulent, ripe peaches ready for squeezing, sucking and devouring.
Rose had to drink another half bottle of champagne before she could win back one of her lost two thousand dollars. But win it back she did, and it was quite a show, so much so that Carla did a repeat performance of her dressing room matinee there in the sauna. Later, they all took a shower together, the two women washing Murph like he’d never been washed before. So much for work boundaries, Murph thought. Rose seemed happier and freer than he’d ever seen her. That counted for something. Carla, for her part in this craziness, did not seem jealous at all. She seemed to totally not mind.
Murph wore jeans with a shirt and tie and a sport coat. Rose and Carla came down in low-cut evening gowns and full attire. They drank a bottle of white wine with the shrimp cocktails and salad and a bottle of red with the lamb. The lamb was perfectly done, full rare, and the mint sauce was delicate, not too sweet, capturing both the essence of the mint and the lamb flavor of the au jus.
Keekah and Keelah toyed with Murph mercilessly. When they seated him, Keelah placed his napkin on his lap for him. She copped a feel as she did and leaned over enough so Murph could see all of her full breasts. Keekah did that for Rose. She copped a feel of Rose, but when she bent over to let Rose see her bosom, Rose, totally toasted, reached into her top and was clumsy about it such that Keekah’s breast popped out.
“It’s alright, Miss Rose,” Keekah said, fixing herself. “I’m happy you’re happy.”
Murph, drinking only mineral water, watched it unfold. He enjoyed his meal, enjoyed the party favors Keekah and Keelah provided. Rose and Carla, both happily inebriated, spoke mostly to each other, paid attention mostly to each other. Murph was convinced they wouldn’t make it to dessert and coffee. But they did, silly as they seemed acting like love struck kids with each other.
After dinner, about eleven, Rose insisted everyone get into the hot tub. Only Fred was missing. Fred, like he always did, disappeared when he was off duty. So there they were, the two sisters, the two new friends and Murph. Keekah and Keelah had started drinking after they’d served the main course. They drank rum and coke and so when Rose called for the hot tub party, they were happy to join in.
Keekah and Keelah stripped easily since all they had on was the uniform. Rose and Carla, having trouble just standing, sat down and allowed the sisters to help them. The sisters, cheery as ever, we’re quite free with their hands. Rose and Carla laughed, old-woman schoolgirls allowing themselves to be on the edge.
Before Keelah got into the tub, she asked Murph, who hadn’t undressed yet, to accompany her to the kitchen. She stepped into her high heels and took Murph by the hand.
“Come with me, baby,” she said. She walked, holding his hand, a step ahead of him so he could look at her.
“What’s the matter, darling?” she asked when they were in the kitchen. “Don’t you like me? Don’t you like us?” She poured herself a fresh rum and coke and leaned against the sink.
“That’s not it,” Murph said.
“If you’re worried about Miss Carla, you don’t have to. She and Miss Rose gonna do fine as friends. Seems like they both needed to cut loose a little. And me and Keekah, we’ve never done this before, but seems Miss Rose wants us to… you know.” She shimmied gently, turned around, spread her legs and leaned forward over the sink. “You know,” she repeated. “She wants us to enjoy ourselves this weekend. Course we wouldn’t do nothing we didn’t want to, so I’m saying I want to.” She wiggled her behind for him.
“I can’t do this,” Murph said.
“Sure you can,” Carla said. She stepped into the kitchen, walked up to Keelah and kissed her.
Writer's play 