“I am sorry to tell you this, but if there was one of these creeping around,” said Manvreet pointing to the dead rat, “then it is likely that your friends are dead.”
“Darn. And I was quite fond of the team. Oh well.”
“Shouldn’t you be upset?” asked Doris.
“I am terribly distraught, I assure you.”
“If you were terribly distraught, then you wouldn’t be saying so; you’d just be showing it.”
“No really, I’m feeling completely torn up inside,” insisted William.
“Insistence doesn’t make it true.”
“But truth, at least in this case, is subjective, and since you’re not me, you can’t tell me that I’m not feeling what I claim to feel. And even if I were by some chance lying about how am feeling, you would have no way of proving it because you have no access to my feelings.”
“So you admit that you’re lying?”
“What? That’s not what I was saying.”
“But, you just said it. You can’t deny that, surely?”
“Well yes, I did say it, but that’s not what I meant.”
“You can’t change your meaning midway.”
Manvreet contorted his face in an attempt to hold back a wry smile. It gave him a nasty pleasure to watch someone other than himself get twisted in the ravages of Doris’s tongue. However, at the same time a certain feeling of kinship blossomed in Manvreet toward this fellow, who was holding up admirably well. He inched backward to where Doris couldn’t see him and then gestured to William to stop.
“It seems,” said William, catching the drift, “that my recent ordeals have left me in a state of shock. Forgive me if I have forgotten myself. In the interests of smooth and coherent communication, may I rest a while? If it pleases you, that is.”
Manvreet was impressed. Doris had been on a roll, and William had put a stop to it. And so quickly, too. Of course, thought Manvreet, now Doris had momentum but nowhere to go, which meant that shortly she would redirect her attention to him. He wasn’t going to have any of that, so he did the only thing he could think of.
“Lester, don’t put that in your mouth,” said Manvreet.
Doris took the bait. “What do you have there!” she exclaimed, leaping upon Lester with all her pent-up momentum. “Where is it? More importantly, what is it?”
Lester was empty-handed and entirely bewildered.
“You didn’t swallow it, did you? I told you not to put strange things in your mouth. Didn’t I tell you that? Well, didn’t I?”
“Okay, Wispish, you may rest for now. I want you fresh,” said Manvreet. Then, addressing his family loudly and sternly, “The man is not to be meddled with unless I say so, understood?” He noticed that Doris had stopped fussing with Lester and was now glaring at him indignantly. So he walked over to her, took her aside, and in a gentle whisper said, “If you don’t mind, that is.”
