… where they cross-examine each other over tasty meals
And who are the astronauts? Two Hell fiends, perhaps, skulking about incognito?
Again the soothing olive hues of pseudo-Mediterranean eats, the red-and-white-checkered tablecloths… sometimes there’s something about a place that makes it fantastically popular and irresistible to constant packing.
Of the four Olivas in town, the location of this particular one certainly gives it a major advantage over its metropolitan brothers, although something tells me any other place in precisely this location wouldn’t reel in the same business.
For, The Hunched Cornish asseverates, the business here is crazy – a madhouse, I tell you, a madhouse!
And so The Hunched Cornish absolutely had to get a table at the Oliva on Sahaydachnoho Street coming down from the Poshtova Ploshcha metro stop in the hip and rising Podil district of Kyiv. This is the street where he went to Monsieur Olivier with The Dancing Girl, who bent The Hunched Cornish to her will by defending a cockroach scurrying up the wall (is she with Manny Face right now?), and the street where he burned down that hapless Shangri-La joint after they overcharged me and Smith on some stinking lavash, so there’s nothing new under the sun here for The Hunched Cornish, except he’d never been in this particular Oliva – and it bugged him, bugged him no end.
Reservations? Yeah, right.
Little should it surprise you that it was enough to shoulder my gruesome self through the door and stand over one of the smaller tables about to be occupied by two muscle boys, who, upon seeing The Hunched Cornish, courteously get up, sheepishly look around to see if there is any other seating, which there isn’t, and leave.
The Hunched Cornish hates fucking muscle boys.
Seated, I eye with suspicion two fully space-suited astronauts sitting behind a larger table against the opposite wall.
Then John Smith shows up. Naturally, we start to talk. I keep an eye on the astronauts, who are acting very peculiar, somehow eating their salads through their helmets in a way I can’t figure. Why don’t they just take those damn helmets off, was one question I might have posed to them if I wasn’t a monstrous freak above the common run of humanity. Although I like Smith well enough, I’ll have to admit. Hate Jack Step – hate him like hell. Manny Face – there is an altogether different kind of contest between us – nothing Smith, for example, will ever fully comprehend.
What’s this secret agent escapade you’re on in the Commix section, Smith?
I don’t know what you’re talking about, The Hunched Cornish.
Oh, come now, Smith. You getting mixed up with Jack Step – I can smell that a mile away.
No such thing. I really don’t know what you’re on about.
Smith crunches his fork into his Greek Salad for 46 hryvnias; I, into my Classic Caesar Salad, I don’t remember for how much, but the price is in the same range – with chicken, that is, as opposed to the more expensive one with the large shrimp.
That’s the thing with Oliva – it’s got a limited menu, but just about everything they’ve got they do well and they do quick. It’s not generally expensive. Perhaps midrange. I don’t know. Let’s just say hoity-toity What’s Off magazine doesn’t drop so low nowadays as to review joints like this anymore, now that they’re living, rather smugly, high on the hog. The large ice tea I slurp for UAH 25 (you can get dark or green tea) is refreshing and delicious.
Smith keeps eating. He remains silent. I watch the astronauts, who are watching me. I begin thinking I’ll probably have to get rid of the stiffs. What the fuck’s the deal with those costumes. Smith crunches and crunches his salad. That’s okay by me. I know Smith will look up eventually, probably say something that hints ever so subtly at sarcasm – yeah, he has that in him. Though you’d never know it to look at him. That’s what makes it so shocking – when it comes.
And then he says: I don’t think that was a very classy deal, you going on that talk show in a filthy toga and pissing on the host.
Whoa there, sonny boy. Where you coming from with that, Smith?
What the hell’s her name? Katyaya Mustarda…ya… or something. The damn interview show – “Meet the Bitch.” You got up after deciding you’ve had enough of her sharp repartee and you took out your wad and started pissing – right on her head. I think that was pretty low of you.
Meet the which?
No, no – the bitch, the bitch, that’s “Meet the Bitch.”
Smith, maybe you’ve got some kind of fever on the brain, or –
No, I don’t have any fever on the brain.
Obviously, it’s not worth pursuing. I’m enjoying my steak medallions in garlic butter for 87 hryvnias, and I ordered it with some kind of wide, fat pasta – you get quite a number of pasta options here to side with the main dishes and the wait staff will of course explain them to you, unless you’re some kind of fucking pasta expert and don’t need their help. All the meat dishes I’ve tried here have been good.
Smith’s is a heroic shepherd’s pile of choice and generously heaped lamb parts steeped in brown gravy with a side of really thin pasta, which isn’t spaghetti – also for UAH 87. According to The Hunched Cornish, it’s the best deal in the house.
So I say to Smith: I want you to offer those pictures you took of Manny Face through his skylight dancing tango with those devils Heinrich and Boris to him in a large unmarked envelope – come up with a price – I’m sure he’ll lunge at them.
The astronauts across the room grumble nervously and stir.
Okay, says Smith, but what’s the point?
The point is I’m going to be taking pictures of the transaction with a wide-angle lens from across the street.
Aaaaannd…???
And nothing, Smith. We’ve got to frame that fucking bastard.
For what? Manny Face is a good-looking son of a bitch, he’s an actor, he dances tango, he gets laid all the time, he –
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT, SMITH!!!
Just then, one of the alleged astronauts blows a huge and incredibly smelly fireball fart – a fart of fear, a fart from Hell; the other one convulses in awkward wriggling, forcing a pointed black-furred tail through his spacesuit – a telltale sign, so to speak – ar, ar…
I get up and walk over:
Okay, you clowns. Beat it.
Oh, come on, give us a break, says one.
Yeah, says the other, we just got back from Venus.
That’s nice, I say. Now scram.
For dessert, The Hunched Cornish suggests Oliva’s ice cream (30 hryvnias). The Hunched Cornish loves good ice cream. So does John Smith. You won’t regret it.
The Hunched Cornish, June 21, 2013