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Fried Scampi From Hell
Ciara MacLaverty | | | | | |
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Vicky visits me every Saturday lunch time at the shop cause she knows
my boss always goes to the Harbour Inn for a plate of fried scampi.
'Frankenstein's gone then?' she asks but it is more of a statement
than a question. It was Vicky who named him Frankenstein because
of his silent hovering and his funny eye. I thought it was a bit
cruel but then she told me he hides Playboy magazine inside the
Times when he collects it from the paper shop. It's a subscription,
she says. Now as soon as the bell tinkles behind him I start
to breathe easier. We sit with our bums on the radiator and
keep an eye on the customers. Usually if I'm lucky they don't
have to ask for my help and they know what size of jeans to buy.
I let them take a big pile into the changing room anyway. There's
no curtain in the window cause it looks straight out over the sea.
Me and Vicky laugh and imagine how stupid we would feel if we were
starkers and a fishing boat could see right in.
'God, imagine if it was his boat,' she says, 'mortification or what?'
I didn't bother asking her the exact meaning of 'mortification'
but I guessed it roughly means she'd take a beamer.
Like she took a major beamer last year when she won all those merit
certificates for every subject and her mum came to the school wearing
blue eye shadow. There was a special parents' section at the back
of the assembly hall but it was empty except for Mrs Worthington,
straining her neck and clapping her hands at chin level.
'Victoria Worthington - certificate of merit,' the headmaster had
to shout seven times and each time Vicky crossed the stage in a
funny speeded up walk with a face like mortification. At the end
of the ceremony her mum came up and gave her a poke in the ribs.
'Well done Vicky,' she says. 'Smartie pants all the way. Our very
own Wonder Woman.' Vicky's mum is English and she speaks like they
do on Coronation Street. Usually Vicky just gives a kind of grunt
under her breath and rolls her eyes.
''What if everyone in the front rows could see up my skirt?'
she says afterwards in the cloakrooms. 'What if he could see my
fat bum?'
'You haven't got a fat bum,' I say. 'Just so long as he didn't see
the meat mallet sticking out your knickers.' She gave me a look
of horror and then her head tilted back and the laugh came like a
sneeze when she remembered it too. In time to the beat of 'I love
Rock n Roll' she was hopping from one leg to another on top of her
bed spread, hitting her backside with one of those wooden meat mallet
things she found at the back of the cutlery drawer. Her bum cheeks
were taking a beamer at the sides of her Terri towelling knickers.
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