"Ghj!" he said, clutching at his breast, his chest, the table cloth and the rest. "Gurgh!" once more unto the speech, a screech, and down onto the floor. Heavy with a sigh and a glistening hope of drool out the side of his mouth.
"Bravo! Bravo!" said Marzi Pan, an easily excitable but very judging act of character and voices. "I do say, dear host, that was a most impressive display. You call it a stroke then? Wonderful. Interesting indeed."
"..."
"I say, darling Marzi," whispered his wife, her fingers in the fingerbowl fingering the bowl with a pause three cents short of a dollar to elicit a change, "he does seem to fully commit."
"Truly the work of one who takes his craft seriously," said Marzi with a shot of cocktail sauce to doff the act lying prone on the floor, awash in the dappled headlights of the fireplace, flickering, crackling with leathered applause.
"..."
Silence more as the guests returned to their feast of meat and their eats so sweet. Not sickly so as to run headaches and visions of temples collapsing, but caressing and full of nosh.
"Say," said the wife, "our host looks rather ill. I do hope this penultimate charade will not intrude with the rest of the night. Or, still, not ill."
"Now, now, we are but guests and we are but the intruders."
"Say," said the wife, swishing a tongue of '51 Rauzan-Ségla, "that the tearing out of phone lines seems to have bitten our unexpected host in the ear."
"Quite."
Written on Sunday, 27 March 2011