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Show Acting Alone Page 31g "Bloody bandages!" Sam yelled again, poking Simone in the place where her ribs should have been, making her squeal in un-nunnish ecstasy. "Boiled for blood soup on your special Catholic calendar feast days, you know? Like in the early Roman persecutions? Everybody called you people blood drinkers and fed you to lions and all? So even today, to observe your early martyrdom, you boil down gross bloody hospital bandages, and the bits of gauze are a natural thickening agent, so you save money on flour and tapioca and carrageen, and are frugal in this way!" He looked down on her as proud as punch. She was delighted. "You're gross," she said. The chaplain primly cleared his throat into a hand-mike up front now. The silence of the unresurrected tomb broke out all across the refectory, except at Sam and Simone's table. "I shall now practice custody of the eyes upon Chaplain Wagstaff Bopp," murmured Simone. She covered her face with both chubby palms. Her fingers stuck straight up and soft like baby fingers. "I only wish that I was old and blind and deaf like some of my sisters," she said, "and too selfish to feel obliged to pay attention to Bopp's social issues." "You ought to knock on something when you're saying shit like that." "I can't help it. I really can't bear to listen or look at him after eating." "He grosses you out? Like scab sandwiches?" "Worse. If you only knew - " She tightened her fists up over her forehead and looked like she was about to get serious, but stopped herself presumably not to breach the decorum of this light, chatty tabletalk. |