Fictionlet
“Hey, Greg, do you smell—” said Brigid as she came out into the living room, but stopped short when she saw him. He was typing away at his laptop, which was normal, and puffing at a pipe, which was not.
“Hmm?” he said.
Brigid blinked. “Since when do you smoke?” she said.
“I don’t.”
“Then what do you call that in your mouth, a banana?”
“Oh, that,” said Greg. “This isn’t smoking. This is a pipe. It’s different. A pipe is like sipping on port; smoking is what you do with a cigarette and is like drinking wine that came in a cardboard box.”
“Uh huh,” said Brigid.
“Anyway, I usually don’t, much as I enjoy it, because I don’t want to have black sludge for lungs. But every once in a while I pull out my grandfather’s old pipe for a treat.”
“I’ve never seen you do that before,” said Brigid. “It makes you look like the guy in 101 Dalmatians — the songwriter, with your rumpled shirt and your v-neck sweater…”
Greg laughed and put on a vaguely-British accent. “‘You’re n-n-not getting the p-p-puppies, not one! N-n-not one! And that’s f-f-final!'”
“Gah! Don’t do that.”
In a screeching falsetto, Greg added, “‘Anita and her bashful Beethoven! Pipe and all! Oh Roger, you are a fool!‘”
“Okay, now you’re getting into a whole weird territory,” said Brigid.
“Oh, Brigid deVille!” sang Greg. “Brigid deVille! If she doesn’t scare you, no evil thing will!”
Brigid shook her head and buried her face in her hand. “I’m sorry I said anything now,” she said, and headed back towards her room.
Greg raised his eyebrows and puffed the pipe. “‘I think she means it, Jasper,'” he said to himself, then went back to his typing, singing Kanine Kwunchies Can’t Be Beat under his breath as he worked.
-The Gneech
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