Needy Greedy Love (Part 18)

"Gunn, you're in danger!" Emily/Cat purred dangerously.

"What should I do?" Gunn duly asked.

"Act casual," Emily/Cat said casually.

Gunn struck up a casual pose, looking eerily like a mannequin at Old Navy. "Now what?"

"Look more casual," Emily/Cat said more casually.

Gunn struck up another pose, looking exactly like Mel Gibson only not as handsome, hairy, or Australian.

"I hear you're trying to have a baby with Thais," Emily/Cat said in a baby's shrieking voice.

"How did you know?" Gunn asked knowingly.

"You said we were having fifteen kids once, remember?" Emily/Cat reminded him numerically.

"Oh yeah. Fifteen. I'd settle for one right now."

"It takes nine months," Emily/Cat said.

"I didn't mean 'right now' as in 'right now,'" Gunn said rightly. "I meant I'd settle for a baby ... You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

"Do you what?"

"Do I know?"

"Know what?"

"Do I know what you mean?"

"Do you?"

"Do I?"

"Do you what?"

"Do you know?"

"This is pointless."

"Like those little silica packs in your clothes that they tell you not to eat but then they spill out of your pocket and onto the floor for the cat to lick up days before it expands to the size of a bus and eats the neighbor's Rottweiler."

"Like that extra button they give you for a shirt, as if anyone can keep track of it or had a needle and thread handy to put that sucker back on."

"Like the proof of purchase doo-hickey square on Ritz cracker boxes, as if I'd ever need to use it anywhere."

"Like your appendix."

"Or your gall bladder."

"Or your tonsils."

"Or ninety percent of your brain."

"Or politics."

"Or ninety-nine percent of a politician's brain."

"What did you want me to do?"

"I said," Emily/Cat said, "for you to act casual."

"Wait," Gunn said.

Emily/Cat waited. She even hummed to make the wait almost fun and full of frolicking frolic.

"How should I actually act?" Gunn actually asked.

"Casually," Emily/Cat repeated for the umpteenth time.

So, Gunn acted all uninterested and aloof and detached and remote and standoffish, even though Emily/Cat smelled of cinnamon and spearmint, and found himself humming show tunes from Broadway shows that still had some gumption and get-up-and-go like in the Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin days as if he were in the elevator or in a doctor's office full of snot-nosed kids digging for gold.

Emily/Cat fell asleep.

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