Michael Malone - Weebly

smile into the dining room.
It was long after seven when Ramona Dingley
returned Polly, with profuse apologies, to Glover's
Lane. Around the Hedgerows' paint-cracked table
Miss Dingley, Luke, Polly, and her father now sat
among white opened boxes of giant pizzas, cans of
beer, cans of Coke.
Mozzarella stuck to their fingers, anchovies fell to
the floor.
"Ridiculous food. Marvelous, ain't it, Cecil?"
Ramona asked happily.
"I remember when I first saw one of those
wonderful wretched TV dinners. Always felt liberated
eating out of cartons and cans.
Nothing tasted better than chow mein in a
cardboard container, except hot dogs in a napkin."
"If you think this is good," Luke told her, "it's too
bad Mama Marco's closed for that funeral, because
hers make these taste like a rubber tire."
"Pphht!" she snorted. "I see you two have ingested
a tire and a half. While we old fogies babble away and
pick at our crusts." There was a quarter of a century