The Crowded Table (HH)
#72 of Hockey Hunk Season 6
The Crowded Table (HH)
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Hehhey!
After last week's chapter, I felt that it was rather short (which it was, I admit, certainly) but there is a simple solution to that, I think - just write more! And that's what I do, which means that I am more than happy to welcome you back to The Hockey Hunk, to enjoy another go at it.
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Cheers!
*
"...I don't think I ever could be a doctor," Mason said.
The tiger boy chuckled.
"Why not?" he questioned from Mason.
Mason shrugged.
"I just don't think I could keep doing it a day after day," he said, "facing all that sickness and all...and there's so much to learn."
I felt like I had to boost him up a bit.
"You have learned so much though," I said, "It's not a little thing to learn several foreign languages like you have, dude."
He smiled a bit at that, and it looked and felt nice.
"He's not wrong," Paul said. "Learning all this science is like learning a language, I suppose. There's a lot you have to memorize, and then you also have to know how to use it. Like a...a grammar of science?"
Showoff! I thought.
"I guess," Mason said, "it's all about that now, right?"
"Yes..." the tiger said, "filling my brain with biology, biochemistry, physiology..."
"Before all the bloody stuff," I said.
He looked at me curiously.
"You mean the clinical phase?"
Whatever it was called.
"If that means working with the patients, yes, indeed," he nodded enthusiastically, "but that is many years in the future if I can make it. Maybe five or six years, if I can make it."
"I bet you will!" Mason grinned.
Wasn't he so enthusiastic about this guy? Mason hadn't really talked about him much, but now he was all over it. He seemed nice enough but maybe nothing to...what was the word...to gush over? I think that was the way to say it. Maybe I should check somewhere on the internet.
"I'll just have to work a lot," he yawned, which told me that maybe he wasn't really that into working at the moment. And I couldn't blame him for it either. My own track record for today was nothing to brag about.
"Yeah," Mason said. He managed to sound even more bored.
"Are you busy yet?" the tiger addressed me again.
I could have bolted at that, claiming I was, but that would have meant leaving this tiger dude alone with Mason.
"No," I tapped the top of my computer, "still got some time to spare."
"I'm glad about that," Mason grinned at me, "otherwise we wouldn't see each other all day. We've both been so busy!"
That sounded much better.
"Yep," I said, and I smiled too.
"Did you get the book all read?" Mason pressed the issue on me again.
"So and so," I said.
"Just remember the questions she always asks," Mason said," I told you I did her workshop on Virginia Woolf last year."
"I remember," I told him.
The tiger chuckled.
"Well you sound very literate compared to the people at the Natural Sciences," he said, "I think they mostly just talk about Magic the Gathering when not quizzing each other about the names of amino acids...which I should be doing too, anyway."
He glanced at the big bag of books at his feet with what looked like a guilty expression. Maybe he wasn't quite the perfect student that Mason made him sound like. That almost made me like him more.
"I should borrow you some of my Caledon Rocks books!" Mason chuckled. "They're signed by the writer, you know! And we even met him with Haakon, didn't we?"
That made me smile some more.
"Yeah," I said," he was pretty cool to meet."
"It happened at the bookstore!" Mason grinned. "Maybe he'll come by again, Paul, think about it! It'd be so cool to have him over again. Ooooh that'd be so fun..."
The tiger seemed to find his enthusiasm a bit much.
"I guess I'd have to read some of those books first," he said.
"Just tell me when and I'll bring them over to work!" Mason wagged.
"Thank you," the tiger sounded polite more than anything else.
"Oh, and did you know that - "
"STEPHENS! HAWK-ON!"
Oh boy.
That voice belonged to Doctor Faye, who had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and now approached the table as quickly as he could. It looked like his beret could fall off his head, it was so lopsided on him. He was wearing a purple one today, although the waistcoat was nothing out of the ordinary today, just a simple black one.
"Oh there you are! Fancy happening to you here!" he purred.
It really wasn't that impossible to find his students in the cafeteria, I thought, but he was one for the...the hyperbole, I thought.
"Hey, Doctor Faye," I said.
"Hello!" Mason said.
"Greetings," the tiger nodded.
Doctor Faye looked at him curiously. He was probably a new face for him, and he was ever so fascinated. Maybe this Paul guy was even his type. How'd I know, anyway.
"Oh, hello!" the lion smiled thoroughly. "A new student to our department, Stephens, Hawk-on?"
I've no idea how he managed to make it sound like that, my name, but I didn't mind. It was still closer than most ever got. Mason was the only one who could say it perfectly.
"I'm afraid not, sir," the tiger told the lion, "I am simply chatting with friends here."
"Ah..." said Doctor Faye, "Interesting...very much so! You are most welcome! You hold very fine company, if I may say."
Hmm.
This tiger guy nodded.
"They are very friendly indeed, yes sir," he said.
"I am so glad that I ran into you two!" the lion said as he pulled another chair and welcomed himself onto our table, "Reilly tells me that she's got her costume ready for the Money Song and she would love to try it out during our next rehearsal. I have been thinking that we should try to get more costumes into the mix now that we are so far along into our rehearsals. I know they're not all ready yet but at least we should be wearing them more, to get more comfortable in them."
I looked at Mason.
"So I should be wearing the silver suit, right?" he asked. "Like we decided after we reviewed the Broadway staging for the Money Song?"
"Exactly!" Doctor Faye smiled. "Since the costume is finished, after all. We don't have to do the makeup because that takes so much time, but I would prefer us to continue the rehearsals with the costumes on."
"No problem," Mason said.
"Not for me either," I said too, although it did look to me that Doctor Faye only really wanted to ask Mason for the moment, "I've got the stuff I need."
"Hmmmyes..." Doctor Faye purred and smiled, "sounds splendid! We'll be doing the opening number and probably start going through the staging for the ending scene too, if we have the time. I think we have to discuss with the boys who will be doing the special effects."
"Are we gonna try those out?" Mason asked. He sounded hopeful for gadgets.
The lion threw his paws in the air.
"Oh, no, no!" he sounded almost outraged. "They're so expensive that we can't afford to do many test runs."
He chuckled.
"We'll just do a few preliminary tests and then for the live performances, of course!" Doctor Faye continue.
"Oh, okay," Mason sounded pretty disappointed.
"Are you guys doing some sort of a performance?" the tiger asked.
Guess there was something he didn't know!
Doctor Faye looked at him before glancing at me and Mason.
"Stephens! Hawk-On! You haven't told your good friend about your show?" he asked.
"They haven't," the tiger said quickly.
"Tsk tsk," Doctor Faye clicked his tongue, "while he's sitting here with the stars of my show!"
Maybe Mason was the star, but I probably wasn't. My role wasn't all that big and mostly it involved me looking sexy and getting slapped on the butt by Mason.
This Paul dude raised his brow.
"Well you are full of secrets, aren't you?" he was mostly speaking to Mason. "What show is this? Some musical?"
Doctor Faye chuckled and put his paws in the air again, though this time he struck a pose with them.
"Im Cabaret, Au Cabaret To Cabareeeeet..." he drawled, though not very loudly, although enough that some people looked over to him, especially because he was doing all sorts of dance moves with his arms that were a bit like the ones Mason was meant to do in his role, but the Doc's were...worse.
Paul looked at this very curiously. I got the feeling he had never seen a grown man do something like this before.
"Oh...does that one have any Nazis in it?" he asked.
"Yep," I said, before Doctor Faye had the chance to.
"They are rather integral to the plot," Doctor Faye added.
"Then I haven't seen it," the tiger said, "my mother banned anything with the Nazis from the house. She said she didn't want to be reminded of that sort of stuff at home."
Must've been a mom with a really weak stomach, I thought.
This only fueled Doctor Faye's catty curiosity.
"I suppose that is one way to object to Cabaret on moral grounds, although I suppose someone could oppose it for many other reasons as well, I would say!" he said.
The tiger's lips became rather thin.
"My mother's great aunt was deported to the General Government where she died under some deplorable conditions, apparently in 1941 or thereafter," he said. "The exact details are very hazy."
Suddenly the musical felt really trivial. Whatever we were trying to say with it - what Doctor Faye wanted to tell through the songs and the words, about all those things - I felt like it didn't matter much when there was someone like Paul who could say something like this. I understood it perfectly, what he was saying.
"Was she Jewish?" I asked.
I didn't want to assume that. I knew that a lot of other kinds of unwanted people were killed too.
"Yes," the tiger said.
Doctor Faye almost had his muzzle open. He looked horrified.
"That is why she didn't want to see anything that reminded of those times," he said, "she even banned Sound of Music, which I think was probably counter intuitive in hindsight."
The three of us just stared, really. Then he smiled, and shrugged.
"it's my history, " he said, "I can't go on living if I cry over it every day. Unlike my high school teacher who cried when she mentioned_The Diary of Anne Frank_ in class and realized I was there as well."
We were still really quiet. Then he snorted.
"Come on!" he sounded almost annoyed. "Everything is fine!"
He drank his tea.
"Maybe I should come and see your show when you're giving a public performance," he said. "See all I've been missing out on."
Doctor Faye adjusted his beret.
"You should!" he yelped. "Absolutely! Definitely! I'll make sure that you'll get a free ticket! What a splendid idea. "
"That is very kind of you," he said.
I wasn't sure what to think about this now, or what Mason did think. He looked a bit unhappy too, and concerned that we'd upset this tiger.
*
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