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Since his remission, their marriage and their pact for a never-ending honeymoon, George eats his way across the globe. He figures if he’s going to be here for a while longer, he might as well enjoy himself and see what all those jokes about his bottomless stomach are about. Ringo has no complaints. However—
Escaping to other parts of the world is easy. Eating there is not. Ringo takes one look at the curried soups, the glistening oil, the sauces in every shade and becomes embarrassingly frightened. They’ve come all this way, after all this time, and he’s still a Beatle with a suitcase full of beans.
“Live a little,” George teases, but never with his tongue. That’s too preoccupied with today’s tasting. They’re in a communal food place in Singapore now, the red dot island at the bottom of the culinary paradise that was Malaysia.
Well, according to George at least. He had loved it there, cracking open coconuts and downing them with various styles of fried noodles. In both places it was blazingly hot. Their common meal was usually something cold, sweet and endlessly safe — kulfi from the streets of Bombay, bingsu from hidden second floors in the shops of Seoul, chendol from the roadside in Malaysia and mountainous heaps of ice kachang, which was in both Singapore and Malaysia at about every turn.
As always, doubts abound. Often it came served with green or black jelly or something entirely gobsmacking, and George would automatically start his tutting.
“Now, Ritchie, we’ve been over this.”
“Are those beans?”
“Cousins of yer Heinz,” George says as he merrily scoops out a spoonful of them from the bottom of their bowl and eats it with relish. “But better.”
Ringo stage-sighs. “What will they think of next?”
“It tastes almost like jelly.”
“Almost.”
“Here, you can have an extra-big helping of the ice,” and George sweeps the top of the ice mountain with the spoon, stains it pinker with the syrup pooling at the bottom along with the dark beans. And lifts it to Ringo’s lips. It happens so quick and so cheesily that Ringo can't help but snort.
“C’mon, Ritchie, this ain’t green eggs and ham.”
“Can’t have ham anyway, Sam-I-am.”
“Ay! Any more from ye and it’ll melt.”
Ringo looks at George above his shades, then back at the contents of the spoon. George probably digs it so much because they do something similar in Hawaii, except that he has had his fill of it by now. So he opens his mouth. Cold, sweet and surprisingly safe.
“Oh, God,” Ringo says in relief. It’s still a blazingly hot day.
“Told ye so,” George serves himself his own larger spoonful. “But it can’t beat the chendol.”
“Says you!”