Cough And Sneeze Please

Forky Spoonsbotom stopped by last week. Said he planned to go calooping with his new girlfriend. Asked for some tips as his romance record's stuck in the grooves between failure and dismal failure.

"Well Forky, if you're going courting, dining out is a nice touch."

Forky scratched the stubble on his jaw. "You talkin' about a donkey roast or a mulligan joint?"

A formal banquet seemed more romantic than a mulligan mixer serving up stew, so I replied accordingly. "The donkey roast would serve your purpose better."

Forky snapped the strap of his red suspender against his chest. "Yeah, but that means we'd have to get all tizzed up."

I nodded in agreement. "Getting gussyed up wouldn't hurt your appearance any at all."

"Humph," Forky said. "Most nights I eat tommy brown and snags. Wouldn't know what to order at a highfalutin donkey roast. Bessie probably wouldn't know either.

"Like you say, brown bread and sausages are a fine meal at home, but I'd suggest you start with hors d'oeuvres at the restaurant."

Forky brushed farmer-calloused fingers through blond woolly curls, then tugged on his sideburns. "I don't know. Ordering horse's ovaries and having to get all tizzed up isn't really my style. What if I just take her out to tiffin?"

Brilliant idea. Going out for a simple breakfast cut down the probabilities of mischance. What could go wrong?

We agreed that breakfast at the local cafe would be a romantic way to start a day and Forky left, hands jammed into his trouser pockets, whistling a jaunty rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, relieved now that he had a game plan firmly in place.

Several days passed before Forky shuffled through my screen door, scraped the old wooden chair across the linoleum floor and scrunched down in it at the kitchen table.

When a husky man scrunches, you can pretty well guess things aren't going well for him.

I approached the issue straight out. "How did it go at your breakfast tête-à-tête?"

"Not well." Forky said glumly.

"Oh come on now. It couldn't have been that bad. What happened?"

Forky played with the handle of the coffee cup I'd put in front of him as if organizing his thoughts. "It was a nice morning so we drove over to Williams, the college town about twenty miles from here. Everything was fine til the waiter took our order. That's when the romance ended."

I was genuinely puzzled. "A waiter? Usually bohunk cafes hire waitresses."

"Wasn't no bohunk cafe. Chose the glitz and glamor instead. The Hilton. So the waiter takes her order first and she asks for coffee. Nothing else. Just black coffee."

I nodded. Nothing wrong with that. "What happened next?"

"The waiter took my order."

"And . . . ?"

"Well, dang blast it, I was hungry. Ordered a rasher on a doorstep with cough and sneeze on it. Told him I didn't want none of his fancy tiger just plain doorstep and that I'd have some Munster plums with plenty of cow's grease and a short stack of saddle blankets on the side."

After forty years of friendship, I had no trouble deciphering Forky's order but I could see where the waiter might have been confused.

"So let's see now," I mumbled, "you ordered bacon on a thick slice of bread with cheese, potatoes with plenty of butter and a short stack of pancakes on the side, and you specified you wanted plain bread, not fancy French bread, under the bacon. Simple enough. What happened next?"

"The waiter got all huffy. Said this was a five-star restaurant. That rules and regulations prohibited them from coughing and sneezing near food. That it was unsanitary."

"And . . . ?"

"I told him I didn't want mutter and stutter on my doorstep. All I wanted was cough and sneeze."

"Um hum . . . you didn't want butter, you wanted cheese."

"That's right. Well, this waiter fella's mouth pursed up real small, his cheek developed some kind of a tic and he asked us to leave. Said we were trouble makers."

"So you left?"

"Yeah. Bessie started crying. When we got out to the car she said I'd done that on purpose just to embarrass her and she never wanted to see me again. Guess I should have just ordered coffee, huh?"

"Might have been safer."

Forky and I chewed the fat for awhile, til the sun slanted through the windows at a forty-five degree angle and I figured it was time for lunch.

That's when someone pulled the lightbulb cord and a smarter-than-usual idea blinked on and off in my head.

Slammed my hand down on the table making the coffee cups skitter nervously. "Forky! I've got it!"

He looked at me owlishly as if he wasn't sure he was ready for more of my dating tips. "Yeah . . . ?"

"Let her do the ordering next time. Say you have to make a phone call. Tell her to order while you're gone. That you want a full monty."

"What's a full monty?" Forky asked.

"That's the beauty of it. It means: everything. Tell her that when she asks, then beat a hasty exit."

Last night my phone rang. It was Forky. "OK. So what do I do now?"

"What do you mean, do now?"

"We're at a restaurant and she's ordering the full monty and I'm on the phone like you said. But you never told me what to do next."

Instantly alert, I glanced at the clock. Kept Forky talking long enough for his date to place the order but not long enough to stress her out by his absence. Told him to go enjoy his meal. Assured him: NOTHING COULD GO WRONG."

After we hung up, I thought about this for quite a while: nothing COULD go wrong, could it?
Cough And Sneeze Please © 2006 Chaeli Lee Sullivan