Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Kurt Vonnegut [ereader for android .txt] 📗

to eat the onion like an apple. Do you understand? PENELOPE turns away.

HAROLD

And lots of orange juice--oceans of orange juice.

PENELOPE

Mrs. Wheeler is dead.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

All right--bring me a side order of Mrs. Wheeler.

(regarding LOOSELEAF, resigning himself to being stuck with his company for a little while longer)

Oh, hell--sit down, Colonel. Penelope will bring you some chow.

PENELOPE

That is the most heartless statement I ever heard pass between human lips.

HAROLD

(honestly mystified) Which one?

PENELOPE

(chokingly)

"Bring me a side order of Mrs. Wheeler."

HAROLD

She's up in Heaven now. She didn't hear. She is experiencing nothing but pure happiness. There's nothing nicer than that.

(suddenly, angrily, slamming a table with his fist)

Chow! Harold Ryan wants chow!

PENELOPE

What a honeymoon.

HAROLD

Honeymoon temporarily canceled. (catching sight of PAUL, whose physical appearance really

offends him)

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The boy should still go out and exercise. I have the impression he never gets any exercise. He simply bloats himself with Fig Newtons and bakes his brains over steam radiators.

PENELOPE

You're wrong.

HAROLD

Then let me see him go out and get some exercise.

(explosively)

Right now!

PAUL goes reeling in terror to the front door, opens it.

PAUL

(to HAROLD, abjectly) What kind of exercise?

HAROLD

Beat the shit out of someone who hates you.

PAUL exits. HAROLD pounds on a table.

HAROLD

Chow, chow, chow! God damn it-nutriment!

PENELOPE

We're all going to have to go out for breakfast. The cook quit yesterday.

HAROLD

You're a woman, aren't you? PENELOPE nods.

HAROLD

Then we have a cook.

PENELOPE hesitates.

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HAROLD

Cook, by God! Cook! You're the nigger now.

PENELOPE

People don't use that word any more.

HAROLD

Don't lecture me on race relations. I don't have a molecule of prejudice. I've been in battle with every kind of man there is. I've been in bed with every kind of woman there is--from a Laplander to a Tierra del Fuegian.

If I'd ever been to the South Pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me. Cook!

PENELOPE

You leave me so--so without-without dignity.

HAROLD

People now have dignity when frying eggs?

PENELOPE

They don't have to feel like slaves.

HAROLD

(grandly)

Then go now--and fry with dignity-sunnyside up. PENELOPE attempts to respond to this, but is too enraged. She exits, making a tiny mosquito-like hum.

LOOSELEAF

I dunno, boy.

HAROLD

The educational process.

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LOOSELEAF

I guess. You're lucky you don't have any old people around here.

HAROLD

She was about to get married again. She locked me out of the bedroom last night.

LOOSELEAF starts to laugh. HAROLD shuts him up.

HAROLD

What's funny about that?

LOOSELEAF

(apologetically)

You know me, boy.

PENELOPE enters from the kitchen with a question on her lips.

HAROLD

I should have torn that door off its hinges. Should have scrogged her ears off. Should have broken the bed.

(seeing PENELOPE)

What do you want?

(words fail her)

Well?

PENELOPE

I--I was wondering--is there anything you shouldn't eat--because of jungle fever?

HAROLD

I could eat a raw baby crocodile. (turning to LOOSELEAF crassly) The way to get your wife back is in bed. Do such a job on her that she'll be lucky if she can crawl around on all fours.

(to PENELOPE)

We're starving. Do you mind? file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ku...egut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (90 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

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PENELOPE exits dumbly, detesting the word "scrog," which she has never heard before.

HAROLD

She had two lovers, by the way. LOOSELEAF starts to laugh again, stops the laugh as HAROLD glowers.

LOOSELEAF

Excuse me.

HAROLD

One of them is the doctor, whose weapons are compassion,

unselfishness, peacefulness-maudlin concern.

LOOSELEAF

Huh.

HAROLD

He and his love are like a retiarius. Do you know what a retiarius is?

LOOSELEAF

He's a kind of gladiator who fights with a knife and a net and doesn't wear anything but a jockstrap.

HAROLD

(amazed)

How do you know that?

LOOSELEAF

You told me.

HAROLD

When?

LOOSELEAF

When we were up in the tree so long--with the bats.

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HAROLD

Oh. I'd forgotten.

LOOSELEAF

Fourteen times you told me. I counted.

HAROLD

Really?

LOOSELEAF

You'd get this funny look in your eyes, and I'd say to myself, "Oh, Jesus--he's going to tell me what a retiarius is again."

HAROLD

(acknowledging a flaw in a manly way)

Sorry.

PENELOPE enters, is about to speak. HAROLD stops her with a raised finger.

HAROLD

Let me guess--breakfast is served?

PENELOPE

No.

HAROLD

What then?

PENELOPE

I do not wish to be scrogged--ever. I never heard that word, but when I heard it, I knew it was one thing I never wanted to have happen to me.

HAROLD

That's what you're supposed to say.

PENELOPE

This is not a coy deception. I do not want to be scrogged. I want file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ku...egut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (92 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

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love. I want tenderness.

HAROLD

You don't know you want. That's the way God built you!

PENELOPE

I will not be scrogged. I remember one time I saw you wrench a hook from the throat of a fish with a pair of pliers, and you promised me that the fish couldn't feel.

HAROLD

It couldn't!

PENELOPE

I'd like to have the expert opinion of the fish--along with yours.

HAROLD

(shaking his head) Fish can't feel.

PENELOPE

Well, I can. Some injuries, spiritual or physical, can be excruciating to me. I'm not a silly carhop any more.

(an unexpected, minor insight) Maybe you're right about fish. When I was a carhop, I didn't feel much more than a fish would. But I've been sensitized. I have ideas now--and solid information. I know a lot more now--and a lot of it has to do with you.

HAROLD

(sensing danger)

Such as?...

PENELOPE

The whole concept of heroism--and file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Ku...egut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (93 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

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its sexual roots.

HAROLD

Tell me about its sexual roots.

PENELOPE

It's complicated and I don't want to go into it now, because it's bound to sound insulting--even though nobody means for anybody to be insulted. It's