Bruce Willis and the Business Problem

Bruce Willis ripped off the apron and scowled at me from across the diner.

 

“This isn’t working out. When we agreed to be business partners in 2007, do you remember what I said…”

 

“Yes yes, how could I forget?” I interrupted, stifling a burp with the back of my gloved hand. “But that was a different time. You were looking to invest some of the cash you made from your singing, and I was a plucky Brit with a sweet tooth.”

 

Bruce kicked the edge of our frozen yoghurt machine with his tan brogues, joggling the seaweed cones stacked precariously on the top. Francois, our corpulent pug, dumped himself expectantly underneath.

 

“What are you looking at, you dog cunt?” Bruce barked at the indifferent canine.

 

“Temper temper, Brucie.” I yawled, almost hiccupping a throat full of warm custard back up and over the marble counter in front of me in the process. I put down my spoon and slid the door of the topping fridge closed. “Listen, when we decided to open this pudding restaurant in the heart of Berlin everyone thought it was a gamble. And they were right. But some gambles pay off. Or pay out. Whichever is the right one of those two things.”

 

I was losing my thread, so he pounced. Up onto the service area at the back of the fudge bar, scattering sweets and candies as he strode irately along its surface. Francois yipped and snaffled up a whole slavering mouthful of German Somethings and sugared bacon.

 

“The restaurant is fine, ‘mate’” I could hear the air quotes clamped to either end of that English pleasantry, like cynical American babies gumming the arid, withered dugs of Lady Britannia.

 

“So what’s the problem then, Bruce?” I asked coyly, carefully ordering my set of 23 jam knives in their velveteen holster, which hangs codpiece-like in front of where my cock and balls live.

 

“It’s you, you slobby, limey motherfucker. You hang around here all day eating. And when you’re not eating, you’re on the phone ordering massive deliveries of food that you always, ALWAYS ask to be addressed to Bruce Willy. It’s Will-ISsss.” He hissed

 

Great, lank ropes of ivory mallow hung forlornly from the ceiling, so I got my extendable grabbing claw out to tug strand towards my gnashing, blackened teeth.

“I don’t see what the big deal is, Bruce. It’s just some fucking snacks.”

Diarrhoea pissed its way up the wall behind me with the sound of a dying star doing a pooh. With this, I could see that Bruce had snapped.

 

“Now I’m going to show you what a TV dinner feels like.” He smirked, and turned on the fan oven.

 

by Jamie Oliver