The last kitchen scene

I went into the kitchen and they were there. I said, “You’ll have to get out now, I’m afraid, because Ralph wants to use the kitchen and he doesn’t want you here.”

“Oh!” they said, affronted, and “His Lordship! Excuse us!”

But the cunts left. (I wasn’t feeling very generous.)

When they were really gone, I leaned out the door and called to Ralph.

He came shambling, clumsy. He kept stretching out his legs, mid-walk. In the doorway, he balked, unhappily frowning at the Oscar Person chairs.

I looked at them too, the horrible shitty awful chairs that hurt you. Ralph was exhausted! I wanted to kill the chairs!

Yet he just sat down.

I brooded over him, worried. “Are you okay? I guess you can’t be . . .”

“No. I need . . .”

“I’ll get you some juice?”

“No, I’ll get some in a minute. Thanks.”

I sat down, useless. Then he reached out and I reached out and we held hands.

He said, “Really thanks.”

I said, “Thank God it’s over.”

Then, just as I looked up and saw the pale blue envelope, gaudy with foreign stamps, addressed in near-invisible pencil, propped between two corn muffins on the microwave:

my chair began to play “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

round and round the mulberry bush	It had a bleepy timbre: my first thought
the monkey chased the weasel	was that a guest had planted a bomb in
round and round the mulberry bush	the chair, which mocked its victim with this
the monkey chased the weasel	infantile tune before blowing him/her to
round and round the mulberry bush	smithereens. I sprang to my feet, and saw:

Deep within the punctured seat, an odd plastic gleam showed. I bent and plunged my hand into the chair’s guts, extracting Eddie’s mobile phone. I shook it free of cornflake debris, and waved it at Ralph, squealing:

“Oh, shit, we’d better really answer it?”

“You,” he said, alarmed. “I can’t. I –”

“Oh, shit.”

I backed away, stalling, and went to peer at the blue envelope. It had no return address, but it was addressed to Jack Moffat, and somehow I knew, and when I finally pressed the right button and held the tiny phone to my comparatively colossal head, still frowning at the awful tune and reluctant to press the thing which made that noise to my ear, and more absorbed by the envelope, which I’d plucked from its nest and was opening with one hand,

the phone call was from Denise Cadwallader too.

“Hello?” I said, and for the first time heard her cool, self-conscious voice.

“Hello. May I speak to Chrysalis Moffat, please?”

“This is . . . Chrysalis.”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I have bad news.”