Lest the Nobility Draw their Peas through the Sink
Fighting to
concentrate on the task at hand despite the presence of a TV man dancing about
the room, the philosopher Laurence Bravepepper found himself explaining to one
of the miniature satyrs that usually accompanied him on these
drainage-screen-installation mission what a TV man was.
“It’s a
biological creature that consists of what used to be called a television set
before the term ‘monitor’ supplanted such antiquated notions of discreet media,
coupled with legs and arms. It moves
about blaring its nonsense all the time, for not to do so would mean certain
death.”
“And that’s
what that thing is?” the satyr, whose name was Cosgrove, pointed at the TV man,
the latter in the act of exposing himself to a woman (she did not look away).
“Yes,”
Laurence Bravepepper ground out the word like a stony turd from the backside of
a demon. He kept his eyes on the long
fingers of Baron Hustenslack and his wife the Baroness, scrabbling at the fully
fertilized eggs of the green earth.
“I’m sorry,
I’m sorry!” Bravepepper kept repeating.
“Don’t
apologize,” the Baron insisted. “It’s a
sign of weakness.”
“What rot,”
Baroness Hustenslack could be heard to say.
“‘Never
complain, never explain,’” Bravepepper’s satyr quoted (whom, we don’t at this
time know for certain; probably one of the Andrews Sisters).
Bravepepper
struggled with the wire mesh cup.
“Gimme them
peas!” the Baroness demanded.
.
