Hatched (28 page)

Jude fell headlong in love with her, in the way that people do in such settings, but only for a moment or two, and, along the way, he felt a sudden fuzziness towards this branch, this bank, and the entire abusive system of which it was but a tiny part. Such gracious admiration and gratitude would probably last for a few days, or until the next abusive act committed by a bank that in its true soul was devoted to its abusive fees for its obscene profits. As a parting act, in the glow of love and lust, Jude wrote his phone number on the back of a deposit slip and slid it towards her with a smile of gratitude. She was plain, but attractive in a bank-teller way, someone he’d most certainly not recognize were he to ever see her again outside of this precise setting, but someone who, at that very moment, with her special fee-eradicating touch, was oddly gorgeous to him.

And so, back in his familiar Fabergé Restaurant surroundings, Jude could now spread the tools of his trade before him, confidently, with the gentle bulge of his groin pumping blood into his cock, and the equally welcome bulge of ten-and twenty-dollar bills that could be converted into hours at Fabergé Restaurant, and, in turn, converted into words upon the yawning, white space that awaited his heaving spurts of ink.

He had decided, in light of his unexpected windfall, to convert one of his precious ten-dollar bills into quarters, which he then spent making copies and scans in the New York Public Library of books and articles devoted to the symbols and significance of eggs through history and across cultural genres. This was the boost that he decided he needed, a way of connecting his own words to the many thousands of years of written, egg-filled records. And now that he felt aroused, and infused with cash, he could look around this precious egg, in search of images of lust and love so as to nourish his memory, so that later that evening he could gush out his passionate relief.

Fabergé Restaurant seemed particularly active tonight, as an array of servers bustled in and out of the swinging door towards the kitchen, and it seemed to Jude that there were more tables, or perhaps more tables set with more table settings, than he had ever seen before. He had already decided that he’d stay to the bitter end tonight, since he could afford not only an appetizer, and even a main course, but a nightcap! He had already planned, in fact, to finish off this night in the bar, in light of the conversational windfall he had gained with this previous encounter there with that guy Ted. Most importantly, though, was his decision to make serious advances on his egg manuscript, so that he could finally move on to his novel, the Great American Novel, that he wanted to actually start writing. “Come hell or high water,” he thought, “the first words will be on the page tomorrow!”

To stir his eggy thoughts, Jude looked down at the array of articles and books before him, seeking inspiration. He scanned some of the pages and encountered keywords that he jotted down with his big, black Montblanc pen, beginning with a Latin proverb that adorned an article on the mythology of the egg:
omne vivum ex ovo
, followed by its translation: “All life comes from the egg.”

“Nice,” he thought.

He then began to write out on one page a list, at first cleanly, and then, as the words were born beneath his wet, black nib, increasingly messily:
nourishment
;
birth
;
resurrection
;
strong without, fragile within
;
hatch
,
sustenance
,
continuity
,
punishment
.

“Punishment!” Jude blurted out. “I had not thought of that!” He imagined throwing eggs around Fabergé Restaurant in some kind of open rebellion. Of what? Now that he had money in his pocket, and the thought of a night’s minor feasting, and, hopefully, major writing, he could think of nothing against which to rebel. Maybe tomorrow.

On a second page, he jotted down notes, sufficient to provide him with necessary detail, but sketchy enough to avoid his having to make citations:
Birth of Aphrodite, born of an egg, hatched by doves alongside the Euphrates River
. “Hatched by doves? Strange.”

Leda, the swan recalled by Yeats in his description of her rape by Zeus, who laid two double-yolked eggs. Her husband, Tyndareus, had fertilized the first pair, from which came Castor and Clytemnestra; and Zeus had fertilized the second pair, leading to the birth of Helen and Pollux
. The story went on, with ever-more complexity.

“Wow,” thought Jude, “there’s more here than I bargained for.” He turned the page of the article on mythology and symbolism of the egg and found more nuggets.

Romans believed that the ingestion of eggs increased fertility
. Jude looked around, caught sight of Liz, the unbuttoned and big-breasted server whose hair cascaded downwards in the direction of the male gaze. “I get that!” he said to himself, almost audible, and then chuckled to himself.

He looked back at his notes and double underlined
fertility.
This seemed an important point, which helped explain the popularity of this place. “But then,” he thought, “there’s fertility and potency, not the same thing.” He stared up into space and then around him. As he looked onto guests, and thought back to others he’d seen in this place, he thought of the many men, and women, who were here with lovers and who would probably bow-out of the former (fertility) in favor of the latter (potency). Interesting. He wrote that down. He read on.

Both Romans and Greeks believed that eggs nourished people in the afterlife, and so bodies were buried with eggs alongside them, and eggs were placed inside of tombs
. By now Jude’s writing was almost indecipherable, and his right hand was slowly becoming blackened by drips of ink. He even had a stain of black ink on the sleeve of his jacket.

“Where the fuck is this coming from?” he asked, rhetorically, to himself.

He laid his Montblanc scepter down, and reached into the chest pocket of his jean jacket for a meager, but functional, replacement, and then kept reading in search of inspiration and meaning. He was focused, intent, in the zone, when suddenly: “I brought you something!”

He almost jumped out of his skin, even despite the softness of the voice and the predictability of his having been addressed in this public space.

It was Tina. She stood very close to him, and in all of her weightless, scentless, subdued presence placed a tiny, blue egg upon the white tablecloth before him, right beside the notebook in which he was note taking.

“We had this in the kitchen, I thought you’d like it.”

Jude stared into her light-blue eyes, and then down to the fragile gift she had laid before him. It was beautiful, and strangely familiar. Jude was shocked by her having initiated this conversation, and stirred his memory to reward her with some appreciation for her kindness.

“It’s a robin egg?” he inquired, knowingly.

“Good choice,” she replied, showing her impeccably aligned teeth beneath her, well, faultlessly perfect lips. She seemed warmer to Jude tonight, somehow more human. He had become accustomed to such unemotional relations with her, and he wanted to prolong this surprising moment.

“I am writing about eggs,” he revealed. He didn’t realize how obvious this was, and said it like a kind of dramatic declaration.

“Okay,” she uttered, as though giving him permission. “I somehow suspected as much.”

Jude ignored the jab, in favor of prolonged dialogue. “All kinds of eggs, and their histories.”

She could think of nothing to reply. If she told him that this was in fact why she’d brought the robin egg to him, she’d undermine the innocent laying-bare in which Jude was so genuinely engaged. She just looked at him, softly. The restaurant had begun to hum with conversation, but it was as though they were the only ones there. “Your eyes are exactly the same color as the robin egg!” Jude thought to himself. That was something to contemplate, and they both seemed to be doing as much, separately and together.

Jude suddenly felt uncomfortable in the silence. He remembered her few words to him. That he was writing about eggs must have been kind of obvious, he suddenly thought, but then remembered something from his readings for the essay he was researching. The situation may yet be salvaged.

“I read somewhere that the bluer the eggs, the more, um . . .” He struggled to remember some tidbit of knowledge from the depths of his memory, and he looked down at the little egg on the linen tablecloth as though looking for the answer in the object. She hoped that he wasn’t expecting her to fill in the blank.

“Oh yes!” He smiled at her, and she grew slightly animated as he did so. This, he thought, is my only chance. She looked at him quizzically. “Healthier female robins lay brighter blue eggs!” he blurted out, as though this was a profound revelation that could possibly kick-start her sentience. “And the bluer the egg, the more the male robins pay attention to the baby!”

He seemed satisfied by his profundity, but then couldn’t for his life recall how this correlation had been illustrated in whatever bloody article he’d read about robins, and he hoped she wouldn’t ask.

She didn’t.

He also hoped that she wasn’t reading his thoughts, because it was all he could do to not make the very inappropriate link between the egg and the color of her eyes. Suddenly distracted by the appearance of a guest at the entranceway to Fabergé Restaurant, she was about to leave, when Jude recalled the unfamiliar bulge created by his wad of small bills.

“Can I see the menu, please?”

Tina looked at him, genuinely surprised.

“Of course,” she said, and turned away.

“Thank you!” he almost called out, as though she was a half mile away already. “And thank you, for the egg. I’m really grateful, it’ll inspire me.”

“Careful, though, it’s not edible,” replied Tina, and then seemed to float away, attaining a slight elevation from the earth on those tiny, sculpted legs, apparent beneath the nearly mini-skirt she wore that evening.

Jude watched her recede from his immediate parameter, and then looked back down at the turquoise-blue egg—quizzically. He then realized that it matched not only her eyes, but also the color of her skirt, and he instinctively raised his head to make a mental comparison between the pastel hues that danced in his mind’s eye. Virtually identical.

“How fitting!”

He watched her approach the door to Fabergé Restaurant, and then, recalling his mission, he looked back at his book.

The Finnish book known as
Kalevala
tells the story of Ilmatar, who was impregnated by an eagle, producing six cosmic eggs and one egg made of iron
.

“Jeez,” muttered Jude, and read on.

The eagle sat on those eggs, but was also sitting on Ilmatar, and when she moved, all the eggs rolled into the sea, where the shells broke, creating a churning mass that divided heaven from earth.
Jude paused for a moment, for this seemed to be of momentous importance.

One of the yolks became the sun, another the moon. The specks of eggshells created the stars, and the iron egg turned into a thundercloud.

Jude looked down at the egg and was suddenly seized by the thought that he’d better protect it. Who knows what might happen when eggs crack? This thought led him to lean back in his comfortable chair and contemplate the celestial horizons of Fabergé Restaurant. He hadn’t ever noticed before that there were cracks all over the ovular-shaped restaurant, some very pronounced but, as he looked more carefully into the dimly lit distance, a plethora of others as well. Indeed, almost every area of the canted roof and walls that surrounded him were cracked. Had they always been like this? He decided that he’d simply not paid attention, since his focus had either been upon the often blank pages before him, or upon the sweet pleats in the fabric that subtly gestured towards the bodies of Jessica, Tina, and Elizabeth.

These Fabergé Restaurant creations had inspired rivers of cum upon his groin, his legs, and his feet, cum that had spurted, spilled, and then swirled down into the drain, where they were joined to oceans of warm water that bathed and warmed him, inside and out, in his masturbatory shower sessions. Egg whites could be used to seal, to coat, and to make surfaces glisten, and Jude suddenly wondered what the rivers of cum that poured from his body could do for the cracking and cracked Fabergé Restaurant.

The warmth recedes, ever so slightly, the sound, an eerie whirr, the smell, like a world beyond this shell as it quivers, fractures, ruptures, falls to pieces . . .

Chapter 24

Nate had returned to the prep area, awaiting the onslaught. Now he needed someone to cajole, in advance of the impending craziness. He saw Russ on his hands and knees before the Hobart washing area, as though he was praying to cleanliness. The god of all things clean, John was manning the dishwashing machine, even though the first dish had yet to leave the kitchen on its quest to be dirty enough to be able to travel into the steamy warmth of John’s Hobart cleaning machine.

“Russ!” called Nate, loudly enough for those young ears of his, and not loudly enough to capture John’s attention.

Russ looked up from his scrubbing. “Are you calling me?”

Nate felt somehow sickened at the thought of this kid, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old, scrubbing a clean floor with what was surely pure bleach. The smell was overpowering, even from a distance of twenty feet. Nate stood there, as though beckoning, and so Russ rose to his feet in the kind of terrified obedience that the food and service industries invoke in people, and hurried over.

“Yes?”

“Russ, what are you doing?”

Expecting to be told that he wasn’t working quickly enough, or that he’d missed some invisible spot on the floor, Russ seemed surprised, and then relieved by the question.

“I . . .,” he began.

Nate didn’t care to hear.

“It’s a big night, Russ. It’s our stand against Wall Street! Against the Wall, and against all Walls! We will Wall-op the enemy! Walk over the bodies of Wall-Mart and Wall-Greens! Tear Down the Wall!” Russ looked dumbfounded. And then Nate picked up a spatula, put it to his lips, and began to belt out a song.