Free The Origin of Waves by Austin Clarke Page B

women! And this may surprise you now. But when I think of my three ex-wives that it was my goddamn privilege to be married-to, I take my hat off to each and every one of them, as role-models, ’cause those three broads was three goddamn strong women! Had to be!”
    “Like your Old Lady.”
    “Like my goddamn Old Lady. God …”
    “…  rest her soul.”
    “I showed you the snapshots, didn’t I? This one of my Old Lady, I carry next to my Green Card, in a plastic thing … laminated?
Laminated
. Side-by-side.”
    “Like my note to myself. Did you get sick with pneumonia?”
    “From what?”
    “When the hot water was cut off in the winter?”
    “I was embarrass. That was the only illness I suffer. Because of the way they stripped me of my basics and my conveniences. I almost sued their ass for the inconvenience. But I change my mind. I was glad, though, that I wasn’t living with anybody, like a woman, ’cause to come home and have
that
thrown in my face by a woman, even if she was my wife, that would make me kick her ass! But I am not a violent man, normally. But it was
cold!
It was
co-o-o-ld
, Jack! I endured it. For four months, during one o’ the coldest winters Brooklyn ever faced. And with the ’lectricity cut-off, you shoulda seen my goddamn freezer! We Amurcans like bulk, and buying in bulk. And we eat that way, too. So in my freezer I had me four turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the reunion of my ex-wives and family, the biggest goddamn turkeys you ever rested your two eyes on, and I had me some pork chops, and some steaks, salt fish, cow-foot and ox-tails; and a friend who me and him go hunting together sometimes, and once we catch a deer, so I had me some game in the freezer, from that deer after we skinned the son of a bitch. Got him with two shots.
Blam! Blam!
The goddamn blood! All that blood. But the meat was tender. Well, I couldn’t cook it, and I couldn’t bake it, and I couldn’t goddamn boil it, neither. I had to throw it in the garbage, after I give-way the rest. To my landlady, and some Jamakian neighbours. Goddamn!”
    “I think you were embarrassed like I was … not being able to swim.”
    “So, what you think o’ me, after all these goddamn years? You think I change? You haven’t change much to me. Not really. A little grey, that’s all. From that day on the beach. The same cool motherfucker! Eh, Timmy? But in a way you
have
change. A little. But I can’t figure it out. And you walk that same street, what’s its name, at the same time every day, and you telling me you’re not going anywhere, or looking for chicks? Do you visit the girlie-shops, then? They have striptease joints here? Men our age, when we reach a certain age, and can’t get it up no more, all we do, all we can do, is
look
. Looking don’t cost nothing, man. And it don’t kill. Or a little watching to remind you to remember when you was a strong man and
could
do it. It happens to the best of us. I think this is what you do, on your walks. You can confide in me, your oldest friend, and a man on the brink of sexual disaster of being able-only to look. Looking don’t cost a penny. So, who is the Chinese chick? In your mind, or a real chick? So, where the hell you go, when you’re walking that street outside there, is your business. Just be honest, brother!”
    “You used to like to talk with an English accent at Combermere School. It got worse at Harrison College. I remember your English accent. You still have a little of it.”
    “You remember some real strange things!”
    “I remember every thing. The day you had the cobbler in your foot, the day you lost your voice singing“We Three Kings of Orient Are,” the first time you came first, the day you made sergeant in the Cadet Corps, the day your uncle left on the ship for the States …”
    “I remember your uncle’s funeral, too. I remember the inner tube floating out. I remember trying to talk like an Englishman. Chermadene. And how