The Emergency Meeting

My Dearests, I don’t even know where to begin. (I’m lying. I’ll begin at the very beginning. But it covers my feelings very well, as in the “I don’t even know where to begin”, you know that feeling, right?)

There I am, enjoying a peaceful Sunday evening that I greatly needed after the arrestations (of Harry, Myrna’s potentially soon-to-be-ex husband) and Vasoline’s party (about which I couldn’t complain, because when she called the police to tell them there are screams about murder in my house it was TRUE) when suddenly the screen of my smart phone lights up and it shows Myrna’s name. I nearly didn’t pick up, because I really wasn’t in the mood to hear how Myrna still isn’t talking to me. But instead, Myrna was calling, in a nervous voice, to announce there was an Emergency Meeting at Ethel’s (why at Ethel’s, you might wonder, such as I had?) and her closest friends all needed to be there. In fact, she said and didn’t sound like she was joking, I, her best friend, had to be there especially!

Now comes the awkward bit. You see, Myrna is also friends with my sister, Petunia. I would rather experience the dinner with the arrestation again than sit there with Petunia. So, I said, “no Petunia, though?” and I heard Myrna nod, which I took as a yes, but when I disconnected, I realised that could have meant, “yes, Petunia will be there,” or “yes, Petunia will indeed not be there.” Which caused me to stand in front of a difficult conundrum. But I am a good friend and I would be quite alone without Myrna and Ethel ever speaking to me again and only Petunia calling me four times a week to ask why I never call her, so I went into the lion’s cave (Ethel’s house).

Now, I am not the judgmental type, as I am sure you know. But Ethel’s house is quite, how do I put it, it is indeed quite. Ethel, you see, loves surfaces. Clean surfaces. Shiny ones. Made of marble. Everything is black and white and shiny, and when I step in I voluntarily remove my shoes, praying that the stockings I am wearing are neither slightly aged (every woman needs what I mean and men don’t need to know) nor unwashed for over 24 hours, and even then I feel like the fact that I am someone in possession of sweat glands dirties Ethel’s house. It’s like being told you are going to a pajama party and finding yourself at the premiere of a very posh art installation where everybody is wearing tuxedos and speaking in low tones about the latest symphony recorded using only panflutes made by monks employed by Gwynoth Paltrew and symbolical violence replacing violins, and there I am with my bunny slippers. This didn’t actually happen to me, but Ethel’s house is like this. Yes, I am stalling.

So, if you follow me on Twitter which you should be doing because I put my thoughts there in real time, you will know that Harry is a mad fan of Simple Red, which is a pop group popular in the 1980s with a hit “If You Know Me By Now” which I personally danced to once and never again. So, Harry has this thing where he collects everything even vaguely adjacent to Simple Red. He has cassette tapes (!!!) with “demos” which means that the singer croaks over the sounds of “pop, pop, pop” and electronic Kasio keyboards. And LP-only pressings (he taught me that word) on vinyls released in 9 copies only in one village on South Korea. (But he needs the red one that was released in 2 copies in the forests of Amazonia, and will never waste an opportunity to ask my designer Paolo, because Paolo has a name that could mean he knows where Amazonia is, whether he knows someone who knows etc.) So, by this I mean he is a bit of a fan of Simple Red. Robert, his secretary and lover, who is devastatingly handsome and devastatingly smug in equal proportions which makes him rather average, really, in a way that would fit in Ethel’s house once she moved out of it because she, too, can’t stand the prick (I apologise for the cussing, but you’d have to meet Robert just once and you would know what I mean) arrived to speak to Myrna about the pre-nup, which she has conveniently misplaced (shredded) and remind her about things such as “court of law” and “legal representation” and other solicitory words, and then he suddenly silenced.

Silence befell the room. (Myrna’s living room, because Harry obviously doesn’t keep his collection in Ethel’s house, where he couldn’t see it at all times. I feel like this needs to be clarified.)

“What is this?” Robert asked, slowly, pointing at the display of Simple Red platinum record for their something or other. They apparently made a lot of pressings of their platinum records and Harry has them all.

“This is the pride and joy of me,” said Harry in the tone that I use when somebody asks me about Lassie, although not in the tone that Robert had used.

“Is this” he asked (Robert) and disturbed venom made little holes in the carpet, “Simple Red“?

And this is how Robert quit his secretary job on the spot and is no longer Harry’s lover. Harry, understandably, cried for a few minutes while trying to wrap himself around Robert’s calves and weeping “you’re breaking my heart” while Robert did that thing where he is too above all this to react, and Myrna got an attack of hysterical laughter not unlike that I had when she suggested men with male pattern balding have affairs. So, Robert finally unclogged himself from Harry’s tentacles, and removed himself from the premises.

At which point Harry suddenly jumped up from the floor and tried to embrace Myrna with a loving embrace, since he had made a mistake, just once (more like three times a day, I thought, but didn’t say, since I could tell from Myrna’s and Ethel’s faces they already thought it too), but their love was uncrushable by little mistakes and he was, in fact, brutally seduced by Robert, who wanted to use him to climb the career ladder. Myrna, obviously, immediately believed it all and took him back. ‘Lol’! Myrna told him to get out of the house. Not without my Simple Red collection, Harry said. This put them in a bit of check-mate, because his Simple Red collection would require a truck to transport to another place that he doesn’t even have. So, Myrna, who is a woman of class, lifted her chins up and said she was leaving. Then she thought for a moment and specified she was leaving for the night. Then she thought for a moment and said she was leaving for the night tomorrow night, i.e. that night on Sunday when we were having the Emergency Meeting, because locksmiths probably don’t work on Sundays, and she had an unpleasant feeling that Harry might try to protect his Simple Red collection by locking her out of the house.

But then, Harry raised his chins and his shaven head with the bump that I now hope is not benign at all, although I say that in a kind and loving way because I would never wish harm on anybody, but then it’s not like I get to decide what his bump is about, so I can simply pray for his speedy recovery. Also, I am very ashamed. and said “well, then I am leaving for the night tonight,” and left for the night indeed. Myrna did spend most of the night wondering where he had gone, because she was rather certain it was not Robert’s place, although on the other hand he might have wanted to plead and weep and make a scene until he exhausted Robert sufficiently. (I don’t think Robert gets exhausted easily. Staring disdainfully isn’t all that much work.) And then she spent the rest of the night breaking the platinum records one by one with Harry’s golf clubs which he had bought when he had delusions that he would advance up his own career ladder faster if he played golf.

And then she ran away at five a.m., because she knew Harry would kill her for that.

So, now Myrna lives in my spare bedroom, and I have been gogling how to get a restraining order against a husband whose Simple Red collection you just noticeably diminished (she didn’t have time for all of it) and he’ll definitely kill you for that, but it turns out that due to destruction by Myrna he might be seeking a restraining order against her, and she needs to “lawyer up” except the only one of us who can afford a lawyer is Ethel with the surfaces. And, I am ashamed to admit, myself, with my Swiss bank account which I should look at sometime soon, due to previous circumstances when I escaped the Colombian drug lord’s yacht, which is a different story I have already alluded to. But I can’t admit that, because I would have to explain how a modest housewife with an unemployed Prongles eater husband can afford lawyers, and… you see?

So, I feel like a bad friend now, properly, and I am gogling how to pretend you won the lottery that specifically pays for lawyers. And I blocked Harry’s number on my smart phone, on Myrna’s smart phone (she isn’t smart enough for it to block numbers by herself, which is not judgment, but simple observation of a fact). Myrna is hiding in the spare bedroom, trying to yell quietly, so Vasoline doesn’t call the police upon my house again, and then weeping, in turns. And the fact that today Harry has gone to work having to do the stocks and bonds and stuff like that without a secretary and without a lover is not much consolation for anyone, really, even Robert, who will find it difficult to explain to his next employee why his career ladder suddenly broke a step.

I’m taking Lassie out for a very long walk now and if Vasoline says something to me I will murder her with a broken Simple Red record (this is a metaphor, of course, since I don’t have any of those). How am I ever supposed to finish harrassing negotiating with my designer Paolo about the leather hardcover cover edition of the Omnibus in those circumstances?

Yours, exhaustedly,

Karen xoxo