Burning the Duck

This is the first time I have passed 24 hours without posting (but not by much). My excuse is that I am sick and exhausted. I am posting this at 3:00 a.m.

This is another of Sylvia's marvelous stories that are not only very good in that they are very funny and strongly evocative, but very well written also.

Sylvia says:

Then, there was the night she set the duck on fire. We spent our first Christmas away from our childhood homes in New York and she wanted to do something festive. With no parents to stop us, we had already opened our Christmas presents from our families at least a week earlier. So she bought a duck, and invited a few others over for Christmas dinner. We did not, however, have a pan to cook the duck in. Ever enterprising, she took a sheet of cardboard and wrapped it in aluminum foil, placed the duck on it, and put it in the oven. In case you don’t know, as we didn’t, ducks are very fatty, and the fat pours off during roasting. The duck fat quickly caught fire, as did the cardboard and the duck.

We were miraculously able to extinguish the fire, but apparently, there was a lot of whooping. A little boy in the neighborhood whom Linge had befriended, heard our shouting, and began scaling the wall outside to look in our window to see whether we were alright. A policeman walking by, saw the little boy, and hauled him down. When the boy gave him his explanation, the officer brought him to our apartment to verify whether the boy was telling the truth. She confirmed it, and later began dating the police officer. The police officer introduced her to a giant, but that’s another story.