ONE OF THE WOMEN from the academic group comes to their table, holding two dishes of food. She’s a large woman, wearing layers of clothes, dressed sensibly for a hike in the White Mountains. “Would you like some of this food?” she asks. Matthew has been expecting her. He has seen her moving around the room, trying to give the group’s surplus food away.
“We weren’t even able to finish what we ordered,” says Matthew.
“Would you like to take some home with you then?”
Liz snickers.
“No,” says Matthew. “Thanks, but we really aren’t interested.”
The woman looks at the man in the nylon shorts. He’s still muttering and clipping. The woman hesitates and then turns away, though he’s certainly a good candidate for surplus food. He has cleaned his platters completely. He’s terribly skinny and would probably welcome another dish. People would be willing to help the poor if only they were more attractive, thinks Matthew. He thinks of saying this to Liz and Belinda, but they have their heads together and are laughing like schoolgirl pals again, watching, while trying to appear not to watch, the big woman’s efforts.
“Oh, Jesus,” says Liz. “Get a load of this. She’s going to try to give it to the colonials.”
The colonials are listening while the big woman offers her food to them. They are polite, but nervous.
“Now those are good manners,” says Liz. “Those people are willing to listen to this woman without ever telling her that they think she’s nuts. That’s breeding.”
“Listen to her,” says Belinda. “Now she’s describing the dishes.”
“They probably think she works here. She goes around displaying the dishes that are available.”
The colonials refuse the food, politely. When the woman goes away they put their heads together and begin whispering about her. Matthew sees their eyes dart in her direction, and he can imagine their conversation.
“Who on earth would want her leftovers?”
“Do we look impoverished to her?”
The waiters and busboys descend on the academics’ table en masse and begin clearing it, as if they have decided that enough is enough. If there is food to be served, it will come directly from the kitchen. There will be no food bought once and served twice.
The woman turns to what should have been the most obvious group, the hockey players, who are singing. They accept the food eagerly, and the woman begins ferrying platters and bowls to their table. Some of them she has to snatch from the hands of the busboys. The hockey players offer boisterous thanks. One rises and kisses her.
The big academic in the down jacket tries to communicate with them in Russian. He elicits only shrugs and mocking laughter. The academics go through some animated confusion over the check, gather their coats, and make their way out. As they leave, one of the hockey players makes a joke at their expense. Matthew, Liz, and Belinda can’t make it out, but when all the hockey players, American and Russian, laugh in the way that only young men who think they have the world by the balls laugh, Matthew understands.
“You hear that laughter?” asks Matthew.
“Are you kidding?” asks Belinda.
“What did they say?” asks Liz.
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Matthew. He doesn’t say what he wants to say, because it would diminish him in their eyes; he wants to say: “I mean, do you hear what kind of laughter that is? It’s cruel. It’s the cruel laughter of big, stupid guys, and it turns out to be international.”
Belinda and Liz begin speculating about the sexual abilities of Russian hockey players, in voices much louder than they realize. Matthew urges them out.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 494, Mark Dorset considers Food: “Leftovers”; and Laughter and Ridicule: Attitudes Underlying from this episode.
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