“These damn conversations just won’t stop. If I were capable of holding my tongue, the issues would simply fade away. But, no, it seems I can’t let my flippant comments pass into their deserved oblivion. I am powerless; I simply cannot remain silent. I counter my disparaging comments and my snide sotto voce remarks. I respond to them. And, I might add, my responses can be acidic, acrid, acrimonious, and astringent in the extreme.
“The problem, of course, is that the dialog takes place in my head. That’s not where dialog belongs. Wouldn’t you agree? Don’t you think dialog, by its very nature, ought to involve at least two people? I know, you might argue that I am by my very nature at least two people. But that’s not what I mean, is it? No, it’s not and you know any such multiple personalities or personas or what have you are irrelevant to—and in fact, utterly out of place in—this soliloquy, don’t you?
“Now that we’ve reached accord on that matter, let me mention something I think I failed to share earlier, before we awoke.
“She smiled at me so sweetly that I thought she must be visiting my grave, though I knew with some degree of certainty there would be no grave. No, after I’m gone there will be just a bag made of heavy-duty plastic—strong enough to prevent any remnants of bone from poking through—holding the remains after my incineration. At any rate, she smiled at me; you know, that cudgel of a smile that serves as her weapon of choice?
“I said to her, ‘Oh, Miss Greta, how nice to see you today! How are you?’ And she continued to display that diaphanous sneer, utterly incapable of hiding her disdain for me. Of course, I’m sure she had no intention of hiding her contempt; she artfully concealed it only from you. I saw it for what it was. She wanted nothing more than to disembowel me and feed me into the wood-chipper. But you saw in her sweet smile a white flag; a burying of the hatchet. God, you are an easy mark, my friend. You are an easy mark.”
