“Mon?” Bennington looked up from his paper. “More bacon, please?” My wife sauntered over to him—I never want to see her saunter over to my cousin like that again—and gave him some more bacon. Real pork, mind you. We’re not vegetarians, we just don’t eat our own kin. “Some coffee, too?” Monica, my wife, behaved like a proper garçoness with a checkerboard apron and red, red curls, walked back to the kitchen and got Bennington his pot of coffee, and stood by while he requested refills and demanded the pot be put back on the stove. “Coffee’s getting colder,” Bennington said, “and we’re all getting older. Come here, Mon.” My wife walked away and told me what he said to her. “Come here, Mon.” This was an invitation into sexual evil.
Things had to change. I had to stand up to Bennington, so I called a duel, on the spot. “What? When?” Bennington was not happy: rusty and out of shape, he hadn’t fired a gun since he was in Cuba nearly six years ago. He didn’t expect me to fire back when aimed at with a gun. “You expected me to know you’d fire back if I aimed my gun at you?” I didn’t shoot Bennington, merely singed his trousers (blue), and his hackle (yellow) was muddied and darkened with gunpowder, but otherwise he was healthy as Holly. “Look, Rooster—you’ve obviously had a long day…” I cocked my pistol. “You can take two steps back now, Bennington.” He started to shake. “Look, Rooster, Rooster—you can have the barn back. I’ll leave. I’ll become degenerate again. Or sober A1 completely. Look… You don’t… Monica and I have only been together three times and last week was different—”
I didn’t need to hear about my cousin sleeping with my wife. So I fired my pistol into the hair and told Bennington to scamper over to me. “You lost the duel,” I told him, “you’ve given yourself only shame and indignity. Are you not proud? Or are you stubborn, bitter, and afraid?” He’d already fallen asleep. Bennington had a curious reaction to stress: narcolepsy. In the midst of Monica’s compound fracture in the Bahamas, he went right for the chaise lounge and slept through the whole ordeal. Monica has been icier with him ever since. “Oh, you want to fight like Queen Elizabeth? Okay. Faint when you see blood.” Monica always makes fun of him when he gets close to violence. It’s pretty funny, not gonna lie.
“Draw your guns, Bennington.” He started crying. “I just wanted my bacon!” I paused. He kept crying, and screaming his breakfast order. “And my coffee! And orange juice! Toast, poached eyes, jellies, cakes, potatoes, and jam!! I’m HUNGRY!” Well that I can understand. We went inside and had a fine meal, everything he wanted and more. Monica didn’t even have to cook, we’ve had a caterer for three years. (Maurice doesn’t like publicity, so I’ve written him out of our history. He cooks our meals. He’s a very, very nice man). So Bennington, Monica, and I all had a glorious breakfast with our aforementioned servant and discussed plans for the day.
“Goose hunting?”
“Monica, please. That’s a bird.”
“Not very elegant, if I may say…”
“You may not! They have as much of a right to life as the peacock or the pheasant.”
“Could you perchance kiss a cockerel for a thousand dollars?”
“Oh please, I’ve had to look at you for all these years…”
“Where’s my mash?”
“It’s next to the coffee, Bennington.”
“COFFEE!!”
Even if Bennington relapses, we don’t care. As long as he’s eating, caffeine is okay with us.
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