“And how are you doing?” I replied to her kind inquiry into my wellbeing.
Sitting in her immaculate living room, she sideways on the loveseat, me in a chair, in between us the coffee table set with teacups on saucers, homemade bundt cake to be eaten with dessert forks all lined in a geometric system holding everything together.
“We’re fine, we’re fine,” she said, “now that Susie’s grandpa is no longer with us, that leaves a little space for road trips. Not that it wasn’t an ordeal with him passing, I mean with the whole investigation and everything, that took quite a toll on all of us and of course Susie, since she was the main suspect because she was the last person to see him alive at least what they could figure out, and she did have the knife in her underwear drawer. No, honey, the green ones go in the pantry; the blue ones stay out here. But you know Susie, she always pulls through. We used to call her the Teflon-lady because nothing ever stuck to her. She was quite insulted by that, but we didn’t mean it a bad way, we would never think that she could have done anything like that though it is curious that the very same knife that was used to kill him was found in her room, but I figure that someone else must have put it there because if she really did have something to do with it which I am not saying she did she wouldn’t have been so stupid to hide it in her room where they were bound to come looking. That reminds me to call the window guy. The French doors in the living room look like the Loch Ness monster wandered up from the lake and licked all of them to have a taste of us. Siri, add window guy to new note. Isn’t she wonderful? I use Siri for everything these days, and I swear it’s almost like she listens in on my conversations. She’s always a step ahead of me. I mean, the other day, I said, ‘tried wife in floozy’s perfume’ and Siri said ‘hide knife in Susie’s room is noted twice’ I mean, where does she get this stuff? It’s kind of scary to think what she knows about us. Maybe the police should take her in for questioning. Between her and Alexa, we have no secrets anymore. What’s that, baby? No please don’t dig in the backyard. We’ve got all kinds of things buried out there. And dinner’s soon. Tell me you’ll be staying, yes? It’s been so long since we had people over. Of course, Susie’s grandpa was here all the time. We never got a break from him, did we? I mean the yelling and the throwing of food. And worse. No, I think Susie is better off now. I hate to say this, but he was a burden toward the end. He was. But Susie held up fine. Of course, she also had us do the work for her. It wasn’t like she was ever home, was it? Little miss out-and-about. Thank God all of that has died down because other than that, we’re fine.”