The Juice

My mate Jack was in love with the American girl, she was the apple of his eye. ‘She’s a Georgia peach.’ He kept saying, but she didn’t seem interested in a Limey, in fact, pretty much, she was cool as a cucumber. Jack phoned me with a plan. He’d found out which pub she went to for lunch. He wanted to “drop in” and try to chat her up. 'I‘ll just start with, "I didn’t know you used this place and take it from there,"' he said. I was supposed to be with him so it wouldn’t look contrived. I thought the idea was a lemon, but he persisted with it. We’d have to do it on a Wednesday, place would be quieter apparently. When the day came we left work early to be sure we had enough time, Jack was nervous in an over-confident kind of way. When we got to The Orange Tree Inn she was already at a table with a glass of coke and a tomato-salad. Jack ignored her and we went to the bar and ordered a couple of pints and two bacon sarnies. Without warning Jack looked behind me and with a big cheese grin and waved. ‘Hi Sandy, what are you doing here?’ Her polite smile was taken as an invitation to join her by Jack and he grabbed our beers and walked over. For the next half-hour I played gooseberry while he really gave it to her with smooth chat – sweeter than strawberries and cream. I was amazed. Jack told me later he’d practised his spiel for days. The crazy thing is, she bought it. Jack met her that night and according to him she was a virgin and he took her cherry. They became “an item” as she called it and all went well until Anglo-Saxon semen fertilised African-American egg. Jack skipped work, calling in sick one Monday. Two-weeks later he turned up with a broken arm, a limp and two fading, but clearly enormous black eyes. Seemed Daddy had flown in from Atlanta to return his wayward daughter to the fold, and feed Jack a whole juicy bunch of The Grapes of Wrath.