“Beauregard! Beauregard! You must at once from the Wicked City! They’ve made a simple hash of it!”
I stroked my prodigious beard and replied in measured tones. “Do tell.”
“The floors, Beauregard! The floors are simply indescribable! I cannot bring myself to lay first foot upon them!”
I nodded, sagely, into the phone receiver. “Well, that does seem exigent, I suppose.”
“Exigent? Why, Beauregard, it is simply improper! It’s these layabouts your contractor seems ever-eager to employ, some bunch of brothers-in-law and favorite sons, I don’t doubt!”
The matter slowly clarified. I emitted an interested but cautious belch.
“Beauregard! These men! One can tell them to fortify the duvet corner until perdition, but until one kneels and begins the process with a hammer, the spark of innovation is mute! Mute, Beauregard!”
“I understood that after due consideration, the duvet corner would receive a special concrete pad in the back yard.” I allowed my brow to become clouded, as a concession to the other occupant of the line.
“Beauregard!” Scandalized, I knew at once my conspirator could not continue the discussion of such intimate details over such a public medium as the telephone.
I unfurrowed my brow (politesse be damned). “I could be upon the 5:26 train and be home by Midnight, should such a course be prudent. As you know, the Wicked City is neigh inescapable at the best of times, and today it is particularly bad.”
This was a half-truth. In fact, no time is worse than another, but the trains weren’t running, after some unfortunate accidents involving a cement mixer and a plough, overturning the tracks.
“Beauregard, you hie you hence or I swan, you’ll return to a domestic bliss the likes of which would turn a frog’s ears northward in winter!”
I sighed and hung up the phone. The law would have to wait until our building woes could be made to make sense.
Audio Version read by Ruth Gibbs, Ben Gibbs
Piano by James Gibbs