Dear Dr. Smith,

I was sorry to hear of the abscess, an unwanted pain in a region which would obviously put a damper on your social plans.  I do hope the surgeon can help you- medicine these days being what it is, I would imagine a full recovery.  Perhaps now you will listen to my advice and remove your furniture.  An ounce of prevention and all that.

As to business, my son is doing well.  The penniless ingrates with whom he deals are as grasping as ever, so I don’t have to tell you how secure his prospects seem to me.  How are the twins?  I don’t imagine dancing has paid off for them but by all means hope to be disabused of that notion.  Truly we would all live in a more magical world when removing one’s garments was a viable way to earn one’s daily bread.  Give them my regards.

You may wonder at my last letter.  The flu had taken me, I’m embarrassed to admit, and so of course the spelling left much to be desired.  Frankly I’m astonished that my attempts to leave the house and mail it were not so much as waved at by the servants.  I could have caught my death and then where would any of us be?  They must be aware that they are not in the will.  I have trouble imagining what any of them might do in the case of unemployment.  Perhaps Jonah- the gardener, and a marginal one I must say, so if you know any please feel free to recommend them in your return- would make something of himself painting decorative plates, but the rest are just as likely to end up face down in a suburban gutter.  I certainly despair of the world if they do not.

Now, the response to the response, for your comments certainly desire one.  You are a fool.  Yes, an unreconstructed degenerate fool of a man.  To posit for one instant that placing cheese below the meat on a sandwich of any kind- be it ham-and, hotdog, -burger, or the ever-divisive taco- is a foul perversion of the most egregious sort.  I’m not at all certain we can remain friends after this display.  While I waver, my mind turns to other matters on which I hope you might redeem yourself.

Whyfor the moon?  Certainly it is said to control the tides but what are its other functions?  Would we not be better off without the tides?  A beachfront home would be in far less peril without the daily regression of the firmament on which it stands.  Suppose we were to remove it?  Would anyone miss it Would the stars not shine brighter by comparison?  And what of eclipses?  Surely a thing from which we must avert our eyes would be a perfect candidate for environmental excision.  These and more are the questions I have for the moon.  I question its relevance in today’s modern world, what with our movement away from the pantheon of Gods, all hail the Sun.

I am called away.  In the event I never speak to you again, please know that for a while- in fact right up to the moment of our painful (forgive the reference) fissure- it was enjoyable to know you.  Assuming I do speak to you once more in this world, I await your correspondence and our continued friendship with bated breath and tenterhooked feet.

Your Friend,

Steven P. Zygamol,

Financier