Breakfast With Paul Newman

 

Part One of “Alabaster Christ”. Read the whole novella here.

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“I had this weird dream this morning,” he said, spooning sugar into his coffee. “It was just before I woke up.”

She spoke through a mouthful of hot cereal. “What was it?” She wiped a dribble of oatmeal from the crack of her mouth with the hem of her cotton bath robe.

“It was about Paul Newman.” He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, staring at a small burn hole in the dining room tablecloth. “There was this thing on the CNN ticker last night that said his spokesman denied newspaper reports that he’s in ailing health. Did you know he’s 83?”

“Jesus Christ. I always liked him.” She bit into a small triangle of grapefruit. A rivulet of pale pink acidic juice dripped down her reconstructed chin. “I met him about, I don’t know, ten years ago at that charity auction thing. You remember. Marj was involved.”

His stomach rumbled. Toast would not be enough. “In the dream I’m in this airport and there’s Paul Newman with two other people. He’s looking all dapper in a brown suit and he has an overcoat over his arm, also brown, and he has on a hat and he’s got ths nicely trimmed goatee and mustache. Brown as well. Light brown.”

 There’s a new box of Cap’n Crunch in the cupboard, he suddenly remembers, or he could fry himself an egg or two. Maybe scrambled? An omlette would be too complicated with tee time less than an hour from now.

“And in the dream,” he continues, ”I’m going around telling everyone I see, ‘I just saw Paul Newman and he’s looking great! There’s nothing wrong with him.’ I was so damn happy he looked so good.”

He took a sip of his coffee and busied himself buttering his toast. Bacon, he thought, might be a good idea, though he was already considering having the bacon cheeseburger at the golf course snack shack for lunch this afternoon. Is it possible to have too much pork? He wasn’t sure but he didn’t want to test the theory, not with his cholesterol and blood pressure problems.

“That’s it?” she said, picking grapefruit skin out of her teeth. “That’s the whole dream?”

“That’s it. What d’you think it means?” He ravenously considered her grapefruit.

“That you’re queer for Paul Newman?” she ventured.