Huple

You can dine at that quaint little cafe` in Paris, chase the fading colours of the rainbow to the giant mountains of candy within the realms of your imagination, you can hunt a shark with a knife and make a night of it, wherever and to whatever queer delicacies your proclivities may lead you, a place you will never visit is the restaurant down the street. To call it a restaurant is effrontery. Something to the tune of McDonald's or Sloppy Joe's becomes it better. But McDonald's it is not, and a Sloppy Joe's I know not. I shall call it Kay's for that is what it's called. A simple, peeling paintboard that a few years ago might have announced its presence to all the town with resounding authority and a shade of gaudy red says so. Kay's! It takes up the bottom floor of a two storeyed house painted yellow and orange and boasts a head chef with oodles of charm and little talent. To be fair, it's only that the words are plastered across his floppy chef-hat which urges me to call him the head chef. There are no other chefs. I go there often. It's nice to have a meal that's easy on the stomach and the wallet sometimes. Kay's is easy on neither. But I didn't particularly like Huple and wanted to give him something to go 'huh' and look dazed about the next time I suggested eating out somewhere. It's what I do. It's not meant to hurt people. Just their bowels. It gives me a tickle. Huple is my best bud. He is not a great talker, or hugger...Once he drove over my foot with his van. In his defence, he had just quit drinking. But oh well, whatcha-gonna-do? There are many areas I could have done so much better in. Like football. I could kick a ball across the field but had no control while running. Or math. My teacher said I was gifted, 'special' even. But my IQ test told me I'm a moron. I'm pretty sure I came up with the idea for Fight Club. But I could never write. I had a better friend. But then I traded him for Huple. I liked his name better. He sounded round-cheeked and generous. He turned out to be a bungling idiot. We broke into a house last night. Posh neighbourhood. Low security. It's what we do. It's a standard procedure really. Wait for the owners to leave. Slip the lock in the window with your credit card. Climb in. Grab all the cash and lingerie you can find. Sneak out quietly. Huple has no skill. He's like any other crook, breaking through, tripping alarms, forgetting the lingerie, leaving clues all over the place. Not like me. I'm clueless. Like any good mentor, I've swallowed my initial skepticism and taken Huple under my wing. He's the obedient protege`. But he did mess up the game today. He tripped an alarm. The thing with Huple is, he's not without contrition. He feels sorry for what he did. So I gave him a pat on the back and suggested we roll over to Kay's for a bite. It's been just 2 hours and the retching's begun. He's over by the pot as we speak. Nothing in the world is without retribution. That's lesson number one. I, as his mentor and Kay's as my old joint, have shown him that.