Just Desserts by Andrew Rodgers

There weren’t many restaurants Harold still tolerated. Most were too crowded – like the buffet down the street which clearly had a busing arrangement with the local nursing home. Others were just too damn expensive. Harold also hated theme restaurants, anything cooked with cabbage, and food from countries that bordered the Mediterranean.

Of the few places left in town that Harold hadn’t already abandoned, Swartz’s Delicatessen was the least-terrible option. It certainly didn’t have the best food, but it was cheap. Also, he could always get an early bird table for dinner. The only problem was the music. Well, not the music so much, because Harold couldn’t hear it.

No, it was Pearl’s tapping that drove him nuts – she had a habit of tapping her fingers along to the beat of whatever song was playing. Right now, as Pearl drummed her fingers, Harold could tell that “Calcutta” was probably playing on the restaurant’s creaky sound system. Decades earlier, when they’d initially married, Harold enjoyed Pearl’s peculiarities. Now, it was just one more in a laundry list of annoyances he suffered in silence.

As Harold chewed the last of his green beans, he tried to ignore the tapping and think about other things. Like the time he spotted Mrs. Fenster dancing naked in her backyard. Or when he returned from the Army and the owner of Huggins Suits slipped him twenty dollars. The memories gave Harold a peaceful feeling. Coupled with the chewing of his beans, it was almost relaxing. So, when the obnoxiously overeager waiter named Doug or Dave or Dan appeared out of nowhere, it startled Harold so completely he spit some of his food onto the table.

Making matters worse, the young man started talking before Harold could adjust his hearing aid.

“Mwwwwwaaaaa. Mwwwwaaaaa,” was all Harold heard.

“What does he want?” Harold impatiently asked Pearl.

She responded with a loud buzzing noise. Harold adjusted his hearing aid further. “What?”

“Dessert,” Pearl said flatly. “He wants to tell us about the desserts.”

“Oh,” said Harold. He liked desserts. When he was stationed in Hawaii, a pretty hula girl with a coconut bra brought him the most amazing apple pie he’d ever tasted. That might have been his favorite dessert, maybe even his favorite moment. But this wasn’t Hawaii, and Pearl certainly wasn’t a hula girl.

The waiter began listing the dessert options, adding a theatrical flourish with his hands for each item. The first dessert went by too fast for Harold to understand. He thought he heard something about a pie, which sounded interesting, but c’est la vie. He tweaked his hearing aid further. Then he heard the waiter mention “Death by Chocolate.”

A smile slid across Harold’s face as he looked at Pearl. In his mind, he began to imagine how she might die by chocolate.

The waiter would set a big chocolate cake in front of Pearl and back away while bowing gracefully. Pearl wouldn’t want to share, which would be just fine with Harold. She’d grab her fork and take a big bite, smearing frosting all over her dentures, chewing happily, while tapping on the table to some unknown tune. Suddenly, Pearl’s eyes would bulge, and she’d put her hands to her throat in agony. In her last moment, before the poison took full effect, she’d look lovingly at Harold, wanting to apologize for all the times she yelled at him for tinkering with the lawn mower. Then, with a splat, she’d fall face first into the cake. Harold smiled, then shook his head slightly to set the fantasy free.

The next dessert the waiter mentioned sounded a bit like “Pirates Flambé,” which Harold knew was a mistake, but nevertheless imagined would be a flaming pie of some sort, served up by a troupe of swarthy buccaneers. Pearl would grow concerned as the pirates drew closer—one of whom would probably wink at Harold with his one remaining eye. Just before Pearl stood up to protest that this was most certainly not what she ordered, the lead pirate would plunge his rusty cutlass into her belly and dump the flaming pan onto her. Crude perhaps, thought Harold, but effective.

The waiter continued. “We also have a lovely fruit tart.”

Harold stared at the waiter blankly. There was absolutely nothing interesting about a fruit tart.

“And finally,” said the waiter, “we can kidnap your wife and send her to a foreign country, where she’ll become the servant to a criminal mastermind and die a miserable death.”

“How does that sound?” continued the waiter.

Harold blinked. Did he hear the young man correctly? Because that last dessert might be very interesting indeed. No more tapping on the table or annoying trips to the opera. And maybe, finally, he could devote the time he needed to get that old garden tractor working again.

Just to be safe, though, Harold asked Pearl to repeat what the waiter had said.

“Rice pudding,” she said. “They have rice pudding today.”

“Oh.”

That was disappointing. The waiter possibly named Derek or something, waited for Harold and Pearl to decide.

“Well,” said Harold at last, very slowly, “they all sound… wonderful.” His mind raced with possibilities – pirates, poison, kidnapping – he’d be happy with any of them. “But today I want…”

“Fruit tart,” interrupted Pearl. “We’ll share a fruit tart. And bring us small spoons, so we can enjoy it longer.”

Harold looked across at Pearl and as his smile faded, hers grew.

“Excellent choice,” said the waiter, as he made a little clapping gesture with his hands to compliment their excellent ordering skills, before slinking away to retrieve their forsakenly boring dessert.

As the waiter walked away, Pearl patted Harold’s hand. He forced a smile and turned his hearing aid off once again, drowning out everything except for the new song that Pearl began tapping on the table.

Andrew Rodgers

Image by RD Law from Pixabay  – Fruit pie on a plate.