by Nick Hornby
‘Very nice,’ Seth says, and his voice tells me that he doesn’t want to hear any more about Vincent and Amanda, he doesn’t care about them, and that he’s wishing he didn’t care so much about me.
It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He’s like me, just with different details.
His eyes are closed, and I think maybe he’s picturing me with Vincent or other men he assumes I’ve slept with or loved. Maybe he’s telling himself that he’s too tall or doesn’t hear well enough. Usually, he pulls me in for the hug, but now I do it. I pull him in and we stay like this, his chin on my head, my face on his chest.
I find myself thinking of Amanda at another party with Vincent, and feeling sorry for her. It occurs to me that if I were as beautiful as she is, every passing half-birthday would be harder to celebrate. But mostly I am just glad I am not her and glad we are not them, and glad just to be out here on the curb, breathing the sweet air of Williamsburg and post-colonial freedom.
We are quiet for a while, walking. I begin to see where we are now. We pass the Miss Williamsburg Diner. Little bookstores I could spend my life in. We pass a gallery with black-light art hung above a reflecting pool.
Then we’re standing in a parking lot, outside of what Seth tells me is Bob’s restaurant. I’m saying that living in Manhattan gives you a real appreciation of parking lots, when Seth takes something out of his pocket and puts it in my hand. It’s a dollar. ‘For the gift shop,’ he says. ‘Don’t lose it now.’
With my dollar hand, I squeeze Seth’s about thirty-seven times, telling him everything I feel.
He says, ‘What does that mean?’
I say, ‘ “I’m hungry.” ’
What I feel is, Right now I am having the life I want, here outside The Shiny Diner, Bob’s or The Wonder Spot, with my dollar to spend and dinner to come. We will try everything on the menu. Then we will drive through Brooklyn and cross the bridge with the Manhattan skyline in front of us, which looks new to me every time I see it, and we will drive right into it. We’ll find a parking space a few blocks from my apartment on Tenth Street, and we’ll pick up milk and tomorrow’s paper. We will undress and get into bed.
Last Requests
GILES SMITH
Pork chop – nice and thick, kidney still in – with sprouts, a carrot-and-swede mix, mashed potatoes and gravy. Now, that’s a proper meal. And after, fruit pie and custard or cream. A proper, home-baked pie, mind you – none of your tins and packets. Proper, wholesome, homely food – what my husband Derek used to call ‘a bit of all right’. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and that was certainly true with Derek.
But a lot of them, these days, they don’t want that. It’s all burgers and fries. Milkshakes, some of them. Well, that’s not a proper meal, is it? Not what I call a proper, sit-down meal. With my three, every night, there was meat and vegetables and a pie afterwards, never fail. Or sometimes a crumble, or a jam tart, or a trifle, but always a pudding. Always. Not like these mothers now, with their yoghurts and their fruit if you’re lucky. And the kids all picky and refusing to eat. I’d have them eating soon enough, I’d crack the whip. No getting down until that bowl’s clean. Come on: chop chop, eat up, or you’ll waste away. No danger of that with my Stephen. He had a good appetite. Went to Singapore for the bank but he phones at Christmas. Carl, my younger one, he ate well, too, though he’s smaller since he left home. He drops in from time to time. Brings the kids, but never for long. I always ask, ‘Will you stay for a meal?’ But he says he’s busy and I’m sure he is.
Steak – that’s popular. Quite a few of them ask for steak, and when they do, I try to get a nice one in, which is normally possible. I do a good steak. It was one of Derek’s favourites. Steak and kidney pudding, too, but sometimes just a nice, simple, lean, fried steak. A nice layer of oil and the pan at the right heat, which is as hot as it will go. The problem with steak is, it’s quite a long way from the kitchen to the Row. You’ve got to go out of the canteen block then across ‘Y’ yard and up three flights. It can take a few minutes, what with the security grilles. Really, with a steak, that’s not the best thing. ‘I won’t think it’s rude if it spits at me,’ Derek used to say and he was right. A steak should be out of the frying pan and on to the plate and then straight into your mouth, all hot and melty. You don’t want to wait around for a steak. In a way, they might be better off with a stew or a pie. Something that keeps its heat. I don’t think any of them think about that – though why should they? It’s not like they haven’t got plenty on their minds already, my God. The chips will be OK, though. Most of them want chips. Or ‘French fries’, they write. Well, the educated ones do. I think a chip should be thick, but if that’s what they want, I’ll do them stringy. I’ll do what they want.
I’ve been doing it for two and a bit years now, and I suppose you get into something like a routine. Especially recently. At first it was dribs and drabs, but of late, particularly with the bombings, it’s been more like a steady stream. There was all sorts of fuss when they brought it back. People say, we didn’t used to need it. But you’d have to say it was a more innocent world then. There wasn’t the terrorism, for one thing. Or there was, but not nearly so much of it. And you never heard about people having guns, the way you do now. And all the business with the children, which people got very worked up about. I don’t know why, as time goes by there just seems to be more wickedness generally. Like the one they sent off last night. Nineteen years old. Climbed a tree by a playground in a park and started firing. Eleven little ones he killed, and three mothers and an au pair girl, a Swiss girl, I think. They asked him why and he said, ‘I wanted to see them scared.’ Well, what are you going to do with someone like that? No, on the whole, I think they had to bring it back.
Soon after they did, the governor called me in and we had a chat about it. ‘Repercussions at catering level,’ he called it, because he’s a one for the jargon. I said I was happy to take charge of it. He said it would mean some late evenings, and how would that be at home, and I said I was on my own now, so it wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t mean to sound funny, but it was nice for me in a way because I got to do some cooking again. The thing about running the kitchens is, like all these jobs, it gets to be mostly administration in the end. I write up the menus, do the orders and the store cupboards, the fridges and freezers, and obviously I keep an eye during lunch, or what have you. But in terms of actually cooking, I don’t think I’d done any for about seventeen years, all told. Obviously with the burgers being so popular, the fast food, there’s some weeks when I don’t do much now, either. But not always, not by any means.
Some people think they don’t deserve anything. Jean from next door to me, she’s said to me before now, ‘Maggie, I don’t know how you can bring yourself. Cooking a special tea for someone who’s evil.’ And I know what she means, except I don’t really see it like that. That doesn’t mean I’m soft about it. I know the kind they get up there. They’ve done awful things, wicked things, it’s unimaginable what they’ve done, some of them. They wouldn’t be in here if they hadn’t. Except, obviously, the mistaken identity ones. But even so, I think there’s human standards and you’ve got to treat them right. I said this to the governor when he asked me what my attitude would be. I said I thought something special was appropriate at the end and I haven’t changed my mind. You’ve got to remember, they’ve been up there for months, some of them – except the political ones, who go through a bit quicker. But for most of them, there’s months of sitting around, thinking about what’s coming. It’s a difficult time for them. And they don’t get any special treatment up there, day to day, far from it, just the same food as the rest, which, between you and me … I mean, we do our best, but the budget’s tight and anyway you’re cooking for nineteen hundred. There’s not exactly going to be the personal touch, is there?
I don’t know what it must be like, to know you’re going to die. I mean, we all do know that, but we d
on’t know when, like they do. And how. And I don’t think a decent tea is out of order, in that circumstance. Actually, I think it’s the least you can do. We know they’ve done wrong and we know we can’t forgive them, but at least we can give them their dignity at the end. I think they appreciate that, most of them. It makes them feel they weren’t just sent packing, they were cared about. I think they deserve that much. Well, that’s how I see it. I said to Jean, ‘You’d want the same if it was you, Jean.’
The form goes up to them the day before and they have to fill it out by midday. That can’t be easy for them. It’s hard to say, just after breakfast on one day, what you’re going to feel like eating for tea the day after. Maybe you thought in the morning you’d want, say, lasagne but then it turned out on the day that you couldn’t face mince and you wanted, say, a lamb cutlet. Too late then, of course. But we’ve got to plan ahead, so there it is. They can have what they like, within reason, up to a maximum of three courses, with coffee or tea and a piece of confectionery or a biscuit if they want it. No alcohol, for obvious reasons. Obviously, you’ll get the jokers, like the one who said he wanted a whole roast pig with an apple in its mouth. Or the governor’s head, one of them said he wanted. The wardens tell me about those, because they read them while they’re up there and tell them there and then if they’re wasting their time. The boy in the tree wanted cauliflower cheese. Which, to be honest, I think of more as a snack than a proper supper. But rather that than a burger.
I don’t take the meals up. One of the wardens will do that. It might be Dave or John or sometimes it’s Dudley. Deadly Dudley, we call him, on account he’s so slow. I reckon even the stews must be cold by the time Deadly Dudley gets up there, never mind the steaks. Normally, with the wardens, there’s a bit of a lark, which I enjoy. Especially with John, who’s a one. He’ll say something rude about that day’s lunch and I’ll tell him he’s a yard of pump-water who’s obviously never had a decent meal in his life. And he’ll say he’d be all right if he had a woman like me to take care of him and I’ll say it’s a good job his wife can’t hear him talking like that. ‘The first Mrs Reynolds’ he calls her. Maybe it’s a funny time to be making jokes, or a funny place, but you have to, don’t you? I think we’d go mad otherwise. There’s a different atmosphere on execution nights, and I think it gets to everyone. It doesn’t mean you’re not respectful. Even the wardens. When it’s soup, you’ll see them pick up the tray really slowly and you’ll know they’re being really careful not to slop it.
With the McDonald’s, we ring up and a taxi brings it. I don’t know who pays. It must be an account or something. The taxi comes in the tradesman’s entrance and the driver comes in the kitchen with the bags. They come in sometimes and say, ‘Grub up!’ I don’t think they know who it’s for. Maybe they think it’s for me, though Lord knows it’s not my idea of food. I often say, it wouldn’t be the first thing I ate, let alone the last. I take out the packages and check everything against the form, and I might just run it through the micro if anything seems to have gone a bit cool. Whatever it is, it might as well be hot. And then it all goes back in the bags and goes up like that.
It has to be in the packages. One time, I didn’t do that. I got a plate all ready on a tray and put the two burgers on there, the chips beside them in a pile. I took the little sachet of ketchup and squeezed it out on the side of the plate. And the apple dessert thing that comes in a cardboard tube – I halved that and put it in a dish. And I tipped the Coke out in a glass. Except we only have those little Duralit canteen water glasses and I needed five of them. The amount they put in those cardboard cup things: enough to float a navy. And I set it all out with a knife and fork and a napkin, as you would. Well, apparently he went mad. He wasn’t having it. Threw the lot on the floor. Screaming, he was. They had to hold him down. I just thought it would be nicer. Make it seem more like a meal. I don’t know. It’s what you’re used to, I suppose.
There’s quite a call for curries. In fact, after burgers, that’s probably the most popular request. It’s fine by me. Derek enjoyed a curry – not often, but every now and again, maybe with the left-over lamb, and hot as you like, until he was sweating like a donkey sometimes. I had a little run-in with Dave over curries, early on. He came in the kitchen one day, looking a bit edgy, which he does when he’s got something to say, and he wondered if maybe, when they asked for a curry, what they were expecting was a takeaway from one of the local Indians. I told him straight away not to be so daft. Why would you want a takeaway when you could have something fresh from the kitchen? Especially these days, when the trimmings – the poppadoms, the nan bread, the difficult things to do on your own – you can just phone up the wholesaler for, along with everything else. So I knocked that idea right on the head. There’s nothing anyone can tell me about cooking a curry – a good, wholesome, home-made one, and hot, if that’s what’s wanted, which very often it seems to be.
‘Thai-style dipping sauce’ though: that was an odd one. ‘Spring rolls and a Thai-style dipping sauce.’ Well, spring rolls was fine, because we get a fair number of Chinese through generally, so there tend to be some in the freezer. But Thai-style dipping sauce … I think he was mucking me about, to be honest. I asked John if he’d ever heard of Thai-style dipping sauce and he said his wife wouldn’t let him watch those kinds of videos, but seriously, no he hadn’t. In the end, I sent out the Thousand Island and he had to make do.
There’s some that are so negative, I don’t pretend to understand. ‘20 Marlboro Light, one packet of chewing gum.’ A particular brand, it was. I don’t remember it now – White Ice or something. A shame, really, when you think what he could have had. But there’s quite a number, in actual fact, who only want cigarettes or biscuits. Or bowls of cereal, even. Sugar Puffs, Shreddies – and that’s it. It’s as if they’ve already given up, in a way. And you wouldn’t believe the writing on some of those forms. It’s a good job the wardens go through it with them first, because some of them, frankly, I wouldn’t be able to read. Big letters and small letters all jumbled. I’ll tell you what it’s like, it’s like what you might do if you were right-handed and you had a go with your left. And as for spelling … It’s all they can do, some of them, to write their names. There’s one came down not long ago, just two words on it in big, block capitals: ‘JAFFA CAKS’. John thought that was hilarious. I had to tell him to calm down.
Some really know what they want, though. There was this lawyer who murdered his wife. It was in the paper. He did it for the insurance. His mistress had helped him set it up and for months he got away with it. He’d done the whole thing – appeared at the funeral in tears, appealed for information with the police on the telly, where he’d actually broken down. He was a hero for a while – a tragic hero. And then they found the mallet, wrapped in a bin-liner on a pleasure boat he owned, moored down at Mersea. They asked him why he hadn’t ditched it, thrown it overboard or something, and he said an odd thing. He said, ‘I couldn’t bear to.’ He was through here about a month ago. I remember his handwriting. It was very elegant. As for what he wanted … Dave brought the form down and said, ‘You’re gonna love this.’ It was asparagus to start, tips only. Two guinea fowl, wrapped in bacon and roasted, with buttered green beans and mashed celeriac which, I’ll be honest with you, I had to look up. And to finish, a crème brûlée. Honestly, I felt like going up there and saying, you want fancy French food, you’d better come down here and make it yourself. Then there were all these cheeses. And special biscuits, not just Jacob’s. ‘Filter coffee’ he put. And at the end – I’ll always remember this – he wrote ‘Five toothpicks of good quality’. We had a good laugh at that. He got it, though, or nearly all of it, including the toothpicks. It needed a bit of guesswork here and there – especially cooking the guinea fowl – but I did it. I don’t know what he wanted with those guinea fowl. There was no meat on them worth speaking of.
I think, with some of the others, the fact you could have anything kind of paralyses the
m in a way. It’s almost as if they’d be better off with a menu, a range of options, so they could choose. There was one the other week who just wanted a sandwich. They’d gone up at midday to collect the form and he was just sitting there, hadn’t written anything. He was this middle-aged man who’d killed his children, four of them, at breakfast one morning, with a rifle – for no real reason, apparently. He just got angry and that was that, and the next thing he was phoning the police and asking them to come and get him. And Dave, I think it was, said to him, ‘You must be able to think of something.’ And he said, ‘I’ll just have a sandwich.’ When they asked him what he wanted in it he just said, ‘Whatever.’ Sad, really, but I think it’s true of a lot of them on the Row that they don’t really know their own minds by the end. I made him a cheese and pickle one, because nobody ever objects to that, and I put it on the tray as usual. John said, ‘He’s not going to get fat on that, is he?’ and I said, ‘Shush now.’
Derek’s last meal – that was a sandwich. I was thinking about it last night when I was doing the cauliflower for the boy in the tree: what was the last thing that Derek ate? And it must have been that sandwich. That’s the trouble with hospitals. They order a day ahead, so if you get there after the cards have been round, chances are you’ll get the meal the person who was in before you asked for. By the time we got through Emergency and then up on the ward, it was lunchtime and the person in Derek’s bed had obviously ticked egg and cress sandwich, which was not Derek’s favourite by a long way. I tried to say to him, you’d better get that inside you, Derek, because you don’t know when they’ll be round again, or what with. He did his best, a couple of mouthfuls, but he was very ill by then. I don’t think he knew much after that. He was so grey. That’s what I remember most of all. Him so grey and the noise of the breathing.