Ciao Fras

By Page Sunday

It is the early ‘70s. Thirty-two-year-old Lenore Bloom—depressed, wretched, and unable to cope—makes a decision to take all steps necessary to bring about change in her life. A wife and mother, her idea is to change the nature of her marriage, and so she leaves in the glare of shame and irresponsibility. Well aware how the world affects one from another, she is yet to learn how one affects the world.

Lenore begins a job in an infamous hotel named the Star in Newcastle, a big town north of Sydney in New South Wales. There she meets seventeen-year-old Fras and sixteen-year-old Harry, the two apprentice chefs who work the kitchen. These two young boys change her, and in turn, Lenore changes them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796004373

Page Sunday

Even though I am by vocation a Painter I have always been writing in one way or another. Ten years ago I had a serious heart attack and what began as a way of recovery became a long period of writing. Along with many poems came four books and two others not yet resolved.

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Copyright © 2019 by Page Sunday.

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 Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/27/2019

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

799042

Contents

Chapter 1 The Star

Chapter 2 Pseudo

Chapter 3 Daybreak

Chapter 4 Saving Face

Chapter 5 Worlds Collide

Chapter 6 Enchantment

Chapter 7 Dreams and Deeds

Chapter 8 Orange

Chapter 9 Kismet Warp

Chapter 10 Spaces

Chapter 11 Planes & Autos

Chapter 12 The Letter

Chapter 13 Ciao Fras

POEM

CURRY

Words come now

The heart speaks

Now wrote and nam-ed

Soon decisions to mak-ed

First second maybe third

A voice no one ever heard

First I second you

Third he and she

I speak its truth

You the one who reads

Feels and imagines

What to let go the way of the crow

He and she know past is perfect

None of which remains

Chapter One

The Star

It is a sure thing that at six o’clock in the morning, any door looks the same as any other. With her own key, Lenore let herself in through this front door. It’s Monday Morning; everything looks normal around the foyer of the Star Hotel in Hunter Street, Newcastle: piles of empty beer cans, bottles and broken glasses. All scatter the entrance and Reception Office. Cigarette butts, thousands of them stubbed out on what had once been a beautiful ruby red carpet. On every window ledge, counter and corner is the mess left over from the Saturday/Sunday-night bash. Half filled glasses stack high, lipstick written words, unutterable to Lenore, all over the foyer mirrors and the large, glass, inner double doors. The atmosphere feels heavy with laziness. It is always worse on Mondays.

Everyone in Newcastle knows what and where The Star Hotel is; and what goes on there, the ‘in’ place to go and play. ‘Only place around with any life,’ so the common gossip goes, save for Lenore, she does not know what goes on there. The big glass doors that have been scrawled on with lipstick, open and Harry walks in…

Whew, glad it’s you and not me. Looking at it won’t help.

Thanks a lot, I Know I won’t get a lot of help from you Harry, She told him pretending to be stern. Just look at this filthy mess.

Anyone else around? Harry looks in the office to see.

Don’t be silly, who else in their right mind will be up at this hour except us pair of twits?

Upstairs to the kitchen, Harry walks on to room no.1, and stops outside the door. He knocks a couple of times and when there is no answer, disappears through the door.

Get out ya barstad, said a voice.

Come on, you’ve gotta get up, said another.

Oh, piss off, said the first voice.

Harry appears with the keys.

It’s been a wild and woolly weekend by the look of it.

Well look, throw him under the shower if you have to, we must do something. I want to get a move on before Leon gets up Lenore tells Harry as she unlocks the pantry and the dining room.

You go in and shake ‘im then, be my guest. Now Harry is laughing at her while daring her.

Not on your life, you never know what you walk into in this place. No, you can do the honours.

Go on be a devil, he threw back at her going out the door to try to wake the cook again.

Lenore had already laid the dining room for breakfast, bought the morning paper for Leon’s tray, when Fras finally came into the kitchen.

Hi Fras, rough weekend?

Gidday yourself, don’t talk to me, I aint conscious, he tells her as he lights the gas elements on all the stoves.

Want some breakfast, some toast or something?

Dig some coffee, forget the toast. By the way, I think those apprentices are back. The ones what made that shit mess in one of your rooms last time. Thought I saw ‘em arrive about seven o’clock last night.

Really, well thanks for letting me know.

The apprentices come in from around the regional areas for a week to attend tech school. It was during the routine cleaning of their rooms Lenore found the mess. Apart from the broken furniture and bottles, beer cans and four letter words, someone had emptied their bowels in the corner of the room.

When breakfast is nearly over, and the dining room almost to empty, Lenore approaches the boys she knew to have used that room.

Righto boys, she starts, while you are all still together, how about a little talk.

Why, what we done? One of them asks.

The last time your particular group was here, one or all of you totally wrecked the room you used; even to using the floor as a toilet.

No one spoke or even looked sideways at any boy in particular.

None of the other groups thought it necessary to trash their rooms; and wouldn’t you know there would have to be one who will spoil it for everybody else.

Gee lady, don’t lose your cool, one boy says, It weren’t me.

I’m not. But to that boy I’ll say this, I’m here to make your beds and look after your meals. I’m not here to wipe noses and bums. If I catch you out I’ll hang you up by the balls and render the family jewels useless; and by the way, if you want to write on walls, I’ll leave crayons and slates like I would for any five year old child.

Having said it all she turns on her heel and goes back to the kitchen. ‘The old bat’ she hears one of them say. Harry and Fras are doubled up laughing, and slow clap her as she comes in through the kitchen door.

Ya can run off at the mouth. Fras never is the polite type.

You two bums probably put them up to it.

Who else, who else.

***

There are no more different people than these two. Harry the quiet one, is tall, sports a dark complexion and hair the colour of bitumen, a bit longer than traditional and wavy. He’s calm and gentle, concerned and giving, in a selfless kind of way. There is nothing dark about his spirit; even at sixteen years, he has all the ingredients of a mythical Greek Adonis. He adores his family and his only passion is to be a chef.

It is not an exaggeration to say Fras, on the other hand, is an old soul. One who’s already lived a lot of life, and who possesses all the extreme passions of most youths his age of eighteen years going on fifty! Small, almost delicate, he is scrawny and gaunt. Orange freckles over white skin on a long thin face and blond, curly hair, which is dry, like straw. He wears it just below the collar line, and often complains that the long straight hair he cultivated for so long was sacrificed for the sake of the establishment. His eyebrows almost knit between; high on the bridge of his nose. Fras is pathetically thin with three dimensional ribs and arms much too long. Mature manhood, or rather ‘Fras, the Adult’ has not yet found him. For Fras, there is nowhere to go.

The two friends run the Star Hotel kitchen entirely on their own ability. Every week, Leon gives Fras an amount of money, and he does all the budgeting. Between them, Fras and Harry prepare breakfast for anything between 6-60 people, depending on clientele. A daily counter lunch can be bought from the back bar, a very popular affair with all the local businessmen in the locality of the pub. Bar-B-Que’s are held in the central courtyard for lunchtime crowds on Wednesday’s and Friday’s. On those days Leon employs two extra girls; they have to dress in mini skirts or hotpants and especially knee-high boots.

The kitchen, being on the first floor, and the Wednesday and Friday functions held in the courtyard; Fras, Harry and Lenore dread these two days of the week. Steaks, sausages, potatoes, masses of coleslaw and all the trimmings like bacon, sauces and gravies are transported there by way of the stairs. Leon, who is not blessed with patience, panics at the slightest delay. There are times he can be heard all over the hotel roaring at one of his three ‘slaves.’

‘Leon, the boy’ as he is affectionately (sort of) called, has his rooms at the top of the main stairs; he is aware of all movements, coming up the stairs and down. Always ambitious, yet he knows he is no closer to realizing those dreams now than any other time. Already thirty-five and still cannot be satisfied; Leon surrounds himself with women while his mates bathe in his charisma. Essentially an