Twat. One solitary, gratuituous word. I think I was worth more than that. But, on waking, and making my way down to my my morning espresso to find that note, this was its sum verdict on our time together. I think she’s left me.
I was explaining this to one of my colleagues in my lab earlier. She was a woman. She’d understand why Sophie would leave me, as for the life of me I can’t think of a logically sound reason myself. My colleague smiled thinly, politely, adopted an expression that spoke of her heartfelt sorrow tinged with an undertone of what a sad fuck I was, and shuffled out respectfully, mind awash with macchiato and carbon double bonds.
He spoke. “I hope you don’t mind my intruding on this point?”
Her froth would be cooling now, a coquettish dusting of cocoa about the puffy meniscus.
“I have always known, instinctively, that it’s never good to be offered agony advice by a Chimp.”
He grinned a toothy yellow grin at me thorugh his cage, nonchantly unconcerned at his faux-pas. “Well, firstly”, he continued undaunted, “If mother heard you talking like that about me, she’d rip your intenstines out with her bare feet.”
The cunning bastard had put me on the defensive, with unsubtle accusations of racism. Again. He always does this. I offered insincerely, “My apologies to you and your mother.”
“Apology accepted. Now, if you’re having difficulty with your private life, that’s something I can help you with.”
I stared at him doubtfully. I wonder if the grinds were properly tamped?
“No, really”, he reassured, “what you need some form of proper conclusion to the doomed former relationship. Your woman has made off, and has given you four letters as the sum or her assessment. You’re obviously a crap boyfriend.”
I glared at him hurtfully.
“But that’s not going to happen, is it?” I pointed out.
“Well, it could do.”
“How?” I asked.
“We could try a little roleplay.” He explained at length his idea, the upshot of which is that he would pretend to be Sophie, and ’she’ would tell me what she thought of me, as if dictating the letter she meant to write, rather than the four-letter postcard that she delivered. At the end, I would thank her for her letter, and we would part ways.
"This scheme has a number of flaws, not least that Sophie isn’t a monkey, and this is basically an opportunity for you to insult me without interruption." I said. But lacking a better idea, or any desire to work, I let him.
“Go ahead.”, I encouraged.
He looked deadly earnest.
“I promise.”
He smiled, that same yellowed grin, dripping with simian foetor, reached through his cage, and handed me his lukewarm coffee.
He told me. I listened.
I said nothing as I moved to the other side of my lab, and opened a cupboard. Inside were a number of oily phials, full of thixotropic unguents. I read through the clipboard laid underneath the phials, and selected sample 4.
He stopped, clearly finished and looked at me, with an air of satisfaction, awaiting my response. I sipped my cappucino.
“Now you say ‘thank you’,” he reminded.
I moved round to the front of his cage, removed the cap from the phial in my hand, and squirted the contents into his left eye. Too much milk.