Audrey Hepburn's Pearls: Part I

Chapter 83.3: 1968, Georgina

Chapter 83.3: 1968, Georgina

"Gosh, everyone misses you at the club. I get asked twice, no...three times per night about you! They all want you to sing that 'Diamonds' song and I keep telling them I don't know what that is!"

I sighed, listening to Genesis go on and on about the club. He didn't seem to know how to talk about anything else right now. "Diamonds... Do you mean 'Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend'?" I asked, for once sitting on the couch but not without the aid of the lifesaver. My wheelchair was neatly folded up nearby me. 

Genesis of course was in the kitchen, knocking things around and making banging noises while Paulie was trying his hardest to sleep in the bedroom. Today had been Paulie's first day back to his day job, painting wherever he was needed. He'd been somewhere in the Bowery today. However, he hadn't gone to his night job with Genesis. Genesis had been disappointed, but was now gracing both of us with his loud presence after work. He'd decided to make me dinner, which I had declined, but he'd insisted so I let him.

"Yes! That's the one they kept talking about! What is that? How does it go?"

"I'm not going to sing it for you." There was some kind of bubbling in my heart at this, painful like heart burn.

"Oh come on. How am I supposed to know what they're talking about if you don't?"

"No, I'm not gonna."

"You stick in the mud."

I forced a giggle at this, and he looked back at me from opening a cabinet with a half grin on his face. I knew it. He'd been just teasing me, trying to make me laugh. Sure was a strange way of going about it.

"Where in heaven's name does Paulie keep his skillet? Do you know?" he asked me, changing the subject and banging yet another cabinet and making me jump.

"I'm not sure he has one."

"What? How can you cook without a skillet?" 

"You can."

"I can not."

"For Christ's sake its under the sink! Now quiet down!" came Paulie's yell from the bedroom off the kitchen. 

"See? He does have one!" Genesis chirped triumphantly, throwing open the cabinets under the sink and practically diving into the old pots and pans down there. It made the biggest clattering noise of all and Paulie's giant groan was the undertone to all the noise. "And I don't appreciate the Lord's name in vain, young man!" Genesis called to him, mixing in with his drawn out growling like a big jungle cat in the bedroom.

"We're the same goddamn age! I'm serious, stop making noise!"

"We are not! I am practically a year older!"

"Genesis, for fuck's sake!"

Genesis started giggling as we heard the old worn out bed springs in the bedroom start to squeak, then as Genesis went into full on cackle the bedroom door slammed louder than any noise we could have made in our entire lives. 

"Ooh, I love it," Genesis beamed from the stove, now oiling the pan and clicking on the burner. The raw chicken he'd taken from the freezer was sitting on the cutting block next to it, and next to that was a half full jar of Crisco. I never used Crisco, too fattening for me, but I supposed it was a special occasion. 

No matter how much Genesis annoyed me, sometimes on a daily basis, I loved his cooking. And now I knew that raw chicken, already shaken with too good spices and things, could only mean one thing: he was about to make his famous fried chicken. He'd told me a long time ago that he'd learned how to make it by watching his father's cook, Sassy, make it. I'd asked him what kind of a name "Sassy" was and he told me never to ask that question again. I'd obeyed.