Lunch at the Storyteller's Restaurant

By Gary Langford

LUNCH AT THE STORYTELLERS RESTAURANT is a magical collection of stories by a Master Storyteller, containing his best stories with a twist of the unexpected in a dimension of the outlandish/supernatural. These twenty finely tuned stories on individuals or couples are funny, grotesque and macabre while at the same time holding the readers appetite for more engrossing of a weird gallery in a jazz set of energy and coherence to ensure you stay in the refrain for as long as they play.

Gary Langfords first stories were published in the citys newspaper when he was at school. Since then more than 250 of his stories have been published or broadcast, including 80 in his books of stories. Lunch at the Storytellers Restaurant is his piece-de-resistance of stories with all of them published or broadcast numerous times in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, such as the notable The Couple Who BBQ Cats, Radio NZ, then CBC, North America, to be voted in the top 5 stories in the world, 1995, later in the anthology, Cats, Random House, NZ, 2005.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514497906

Gary Langford

Gary Langford is a writer painter of 34 books, including 14 in fiction, 14 in poetry, 3 textbooks and 3 drama books. His poetry CD is Gary Langford Reading From His Poems, along with being in International Poets www.poetryarchive.org His latest works are A Teacher’s Guide to Drama and The Sonnets of Gary Langford. Nearly half of his books use his paintings and graphics as illustrations. In another period of his life he ran a Sydney theatre where he wrote, directed and acted in 5 musicals. Newlands is an earthy, joyous celebration of life, written by one of the best sellers of dreams.

Book preview

Lunch at the

Storyteller’s Restaurant

Gary Langford

Copyright © 2002, 2016 by Gary Langford.

First published 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/11/2016

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

740716

Contents

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

PART ONE: A MENU FOR SINGLES

The Crisis Of Technology

Men And Dirt

The Woman Who Loved Animals Like Pablo Picasso

The Man Who Commuted From Medlow Bath

The Woman Who Watched A Murder

The Man With The Golden Mouth

The Woman Who Loved Parrots

The Man Who Was Happy Living A Lie

The Woman Who Inherited Mrs Pablo’s Shoes

A Vow Of Silence

Oswald’s Watch

PART TWO: A MENU FOR COUPLES

Naddelmann Stroke

Foretelling A Plane Crash

The Couple Who Watched Soap Operas

The Couple Who Knew The Nation’s Foremost Epicurean

The Couple Who Moved In Next Door And Immediately Began Fornicating

The Couple Who Played A Harmless Game

The Couple Who Barbecue Cats

The Couple Who Have Sex In The Bathroom

The Couple Who Hurdle

A Woman By The Sea

A Family Hero

Publications by Gary Langford

Novels: Death of the Early Morning Hero, Players in the Ballgame, The Adventures of Dreaded Ned, Vanities, Pillbox, A Classical Pianist in a Rock’n’Roll Band, Newlands, The Politics of Dancing, Fridays Always Wanted to be Tuesday, Sohrab (Last of the Giants)

Poetry Chapbook: Café Sonnets

Poetry CD Rom: Gary Langford Reading From His Poems www.poetryarchive.org

Gary Langford International Poets www.poetryarchive.org

Poetry Collections: The Family, Four Ships, The Pest Exterminator’s Shakespeare, Bushido, Strange City, Love at the Traffic Lights, Jesus the Galilee Hitch-Hiker, Confessions of a Nude Revolutionary, Rainwoman and Snake, The Family Album, Unit 6, 3 Quake Road, Love Detective Latte, The Sonnets of Gary Langford

Short Plays: Getting On, Reversals, Lovers and Others

Short Stories: The Death of James Dean, A Library is a Place of Love, Lunch at the Storyteller’s Restaurant, Lies, Truth and Blasphemy

Textbooks: The Writer’s Dictionary, Drama in the Classroom www.artsMMADD.com

A Teacher’s Guide to Drama

For KJ and friends

Acknowledgments

N umerous cooks are to be thanked for their enjoyable entrees before this collection, which is the main course at the Storyteller’s Restau rant:

- All radio producers and actors of this entire collection, which has been broadcast and placed on cassette by Radio New Zealand, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 5UV (Adelaide), 2GLF (Sydney) and 2SER-FM (Sydney).

- Awards: ‘The Woman Who Loved Parrots’, State of Victoria Story Award; ‘The Man With The Golden Mouth’, UWS Award; ‘The Couple Who Played A Harmless Game’, Garuzza Award; and ‘The Couple Who Barbecue Cats’, CBC Radio Award.

- Editors of the following magazines, newspapers and anthologies: A Feast of Words (Sydney), Cats (Random House, NZ), Fusion (Sydney), Goldfish, Barking Dogs & Rainbows (Sags Press), the Great Australian Short Story Collection (Fass Press), Inprint (Bathurst), Landfall (Dunedin), NZ Listener (Wellington), New Zealand Now (Longman Paul), Macarthur Literary Review (Sydney), Penthouse Australia (Sydney) Quadrant, (Melbourne), Redoubt (Canberra), Stories 2000 (Sydney), the Sydney Review (Sydney), Tabasco, Sauce & Ice Cream (Macmillan NZ) and Takahe (Christchurch).

- Story Performances: Francis Bell, Auckland, 1992-1994; Arts Centre, Christchurch, 1996, 1998, 2004, 2010; library diversions, (with-and for-Proc Thompson), Canterbury Public Library, 1989, 1992; schools, Sydney and Christchurch, 1989-2010; the rites of spring festival, NSW Writer’s Centre, 1998; Universities of Canterbury, Newcastle, Technology, Western Sydney and Wollongong, 1989-2010; and the Writers & Readers Season, Christchurch Arts Festival, 1997.

Author’s Note

I began life as an oral storyteller, which was either natural (I was given copious scones and pikelets for my stories), or reflected that the libraries around me in my childhood resembled cupboards, such as one library where I almost read all books on the shelves by morning tea. Sometimes I was encouraged to do the talking, or have my face pushed in – a good reason for storytelling. Other times I was asked if I’d tell stories, teaching me the power and beauty of words, especially when teachers gave up strapping me due to hand exhaustion, and I was allowed to tell stories at assemblies on cold mornings, relieving the frost of boredom or abuse, both of which were prevalent in the neighbourhood, whether at school or not.

As I got older, my orality grew; naively thinking ‘The Girls From Afar’ would kiss me in order to close my horny orifice. Wrong. ‘The Girls From Afar’ pedalled their bikes away at a furious pace, powerful thighs impressing me no end, thinking, so that’s why they have scrums in rugby, a pagan sexual ritual, though girls didn’t wish to discuss this either, so I told stories about local girls who were training for the next Olympics. This was a shade more credible, and flattering. I wasn’t excelling on kisses, but my stories were given gifts, especially by parents who enjoyed the fact I appeared to forget that I was originally there to take their daughters out, sometimes never getting further than the kitchen, undressing biscuits and puddings, feeling satisfied and triumphant, and biking away before dancing with daughters. I wasn’t doing too well on the girl front, but well on the cooking front.

Later, in the next period of storytelling, the more outstanding my stories were, the more I was paid in different forms, even if I wondered about the intellectual calibre of my audience when I was asked, ‘How did you know that happened, boy, who told you?’ The less I knew, the more I learnt to look knowledgeable so I was credited with great intelligence, particularly when I began to write down what people said to me, causing nervousness, just in case my neurones did function well, and were not as scattered as some wished they were, supporting attempts to do so. These stories got published, and I went to shops without looking like a beggar, buying my first pair of long-pants and a bike that wouldn’t buck me off (my rural background) when I sped around a corner, searching for life’s stories. I was still at school when this began, staring at my name in the local newspaper, changing with the public from an odd boy to an odd, but bright boy. A few even claimed to know me, teaching me that what’s called truth is often storytelling.

The title of this collection reflects my philosophy as a writer and teacher. You’ll find at least one dish in the cuisine for your tastebuds and my aim remains what it always has been as a writer – to make you feel better when you put the book down than when you picked it up – and I don’t mean sheer relief! Two of my most published stories began as oral ones where food and drink were being stuffed down throats: ‘The Woman Who Watched A Murder’ at a party in Leichhardt, Sydney, and ‘The Couple Who Barbecue Cats’ at a barbecue in Sumner, Christchurch, causing people to look suspiciously at their food. All stories in this collection, then, have either started as oral stories, or ended up as them, all being on the radio, or performed to audiences, bringing together the contemporary and most ancient forms of storytelling, including the new form of computer stories. The stories in this collection, including the most successful ones I have written, have been tried numerous times with audiences. I’ll leave it up to you to pick these. We all have different tastes. May you enjoy, and – to be an optimist – not throw up, or if you do, get your direction right for those around you, as that, too, is a story!

Part One

A Menu for Singles

There’s always a price on the menu,

whatever the dish you order,

hope you get the right one,

argue with the waiters,

ask to see the cook.

The Crisis Of Technology

B loomstein didn’t fully understand why life in the city was breaking down. She accepted that a woman never went out on the streets alone any more. Not if she wanted to keep herself intact. Had been this way for years. Even in her mother’s lifetime. Too many men with hatred in their eyes. Too many gangs of youths wandering the streets, looking for kicks, and those to kick, not even the weak and fragile. Any isolated figure. This was not a time to stroll down to the local shopping centre for fresh bread and cakes. Streets were full of people wanting to make bank withdrawals from you without a keycard, or a computer access nu mber.

She felt trapped in her apartment in the inner city.

High above the chaos.

Afraid to answer the phone.

She was a journalist, recently completing a series of articles entitled The Crisis Of Technology, which were being recommended for major journalism and media awards, having made a complex and abstruse topic understandable. Her particular gift was to make reason out of things unreasonable, to make others glimpse understanding when she had little herself. Society was in crisis. All accepted this. Bloomstein had played her part in the Women’s Movement, a familiar guest on television talk shows and computer chat cafes.

A woman who had made it.

On her own terms.

Now, however, Bloomstein was frightened. Urban guerillas were at the end of her phone, threatening her with violence, represented by a hatred of the Women’s Movement. One voice remained with her long after the others died away when she reduced public appearances, including the computer cafes. She pictured the owner of this voice as being tall, blond-haired, and thin. The man would describe what he was going to do to her, never showing emotion, not even when she responded, hoping to drive the voice away.

She had tried anger and reason.

She had tried laughter and contempt.

Still the voice never altered. He might have been talking about the weather, not rape and sexual mutilation, closely describing her figure as if she were on the computer screen and they were close to her, able to touch each part of her body.

The police had been less than helpful, knowing who she was, having to pay court to her anxiety, beyond this having shrugs of indifference. Even a policewoman had made Bloomfield feel she deserved what she got, as if she were somehow responsible. Shoulders shrugged and she was told threats were daily events, like traffic jams. The police could no longer keep up with the escalating crime rate, let alone threats. One even suggested she only use her computer since she couldn’t be mutilated on that. Bloomstein took umbrage so he apologised, telling her to get an unlisted number, use an answering machine at all times. That would be enough.

The unlisted number took weeks and didn’t work. How her heart sank when she picked up the phone, hearing the mutilator’s voice again, convinced he was closer to her, even inside the high rise building with its twenty-four floors, armed security guards who wore dark uniforms and had to be fit, not aged retired men who looked as if they couldn’t run at all without cardiac arrest. This was an affluent area. Robberies were common on the streets, just beginning in the buildings, with gangs taking on the security guards. The Bloomstein apartment was lined with original paintings, expensive prints, contemporary ceramics and sculpture. Yet she believed the mutilator wasn’t interested in these, just cutting her body into pieces, even during the consciousness of rape, describing each one in graphic detail, what happened to blood and bones as he was inside her. His final one was what he would do to her eyes, just before she died.

In her articles, Bloomstein had pointed out other black spots in history from which good had arisen out of the ashes. Social disintegration was an inevitable process before the circle of growth and decay would start turning once more. In fifty years’ time, this period would be referred to like the Great Depression of the Thirties, the period of European Revolution, the decline of the Roman Age, the shadows which fell inexorably on the Golden Ages of Greece and Egypt. This was the rise and fall of all ages, which she wrote and spoke about with authority, including to educational groups.

Historical parallels were cold comfort.

Bloomstein stared out over the city. Darkness was falling and the city looked magical and harmless, turning its lights on as gangs took over the streets completely. She thought of her parents. They were proud of their only daughter. For a moment she considered ringing them, then abandoned the idea, having spoken to them only three nights before. They would think it strange if she rang so soon. She was a barometer by which they could safely steer through these terrible times. They expected her not to have time for them; it gave them something to talk about. Complaints on this score were indulgent and comfortable.

The kind which enjoyed whining.

The phone rang.

Bloomstein regarded this, trying to ignore the shrill tones,