Is This the End?
[This, by the bye, is not a continuation of last week's story. Whether that story has a continuation remains to be seen.]
So there we were, sitting on the stoop like a couple of lemons, lemons with butts to sit on, and a stoop, to boot. We weren't lemons. This isn't one of those anthropomorphized objects masquerading as the main character in another story. We were real, large, and in charge. Well, I wasn't large, but Bill was. And neither of us were in charge. As if to drive that last particular point home, it started raining, and we headed up the stoop and inside, reconvening at the kitchen table, where I ran a fork along the grooves in the table I could feel out by pressing through the plastic floral tablecloth. A very limited history of where I'd carved in the table appeared in the wake of the fork. The best position to do this sort of thing is with your head down on a crooked arm, splayed out on the table further away from your body, whichever side arm you've chosen to rest on.
"So this is it? You're just gonna sit there and carve up the table?"
"Technically, I'm just tracing old places I've carved in the table," I said.
"Oh, right. Well, still. Tracing carvings in the table? That's how it ends?"
"Not with a bang or a whimper, I suppose." I didn't move my head in all of this, I just kept it firmly on my arm, using only the force of gravity, which is the beauty of that particular position, and why it's ideal for doing something like tracing old carvings in the kitchen table. I suppose my words probably sounded a little funny, seeing as how my mouth was squashed against my shoulder and I drooled every time I tried to say anything. Well, maybe anything. "Eh. Err. Liz." Not too much drooling, but my lip (and shoulder) was already soaked from my previous efforts, so I couldn't be sure.
"What? What are you saying?"
I picked my head up, and stopped tracing with what I presumed was a discreet wipe of my mouth with the back of my fork-bearing hand. I looked at the table at the drool, which was, frankly, even grossing me out a little bit. "Nothing, I was just experimenting."
"Experimenting with what? Seems like a lame experiment, just grunting."
"Well." I'll admit, not my best riposte. Not even very good conversation.
Bill got up from the table and went over and picked up the kettle from the stove top.
At the sink, he gave one last look back at me, still seated at table, still with the fork in my hand. He winked once. And then turned into a lemon.
Now that is some experiment.
disclaimer:
We warned you last week, and the week before that: We may just not have very many regular issues left in us. Depending on how everything cooperates, you may not notice a thing. Then again...
Honk if you like tomatoes.
And tell everyone we said hi, and that we'll miss you.
-- I wonder what's all that noise, and running backwards and forwards for, above stairs, quoth my father, addressing himself, after an hour and a half's silence, to my uncle Toby, --
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