MORE NOSH

BUFFALO: Still can't sleep, Fifi.

FIFI: Want to hear more about Drusilla?

BUFFALO: Yes, pliz.

FIFI: OK.

"Eating caviar alone was not Drusilla’s idea of a lively night out. Nor was she used to being ignored. Time for a reality check. She delved into the sleeves of her shroud and found, amidst the lint and souvenirs, a cracked compact. She brushed away the grave dust from its mirror and peered at her image. Hmm. A little green around the gills. She pinched her cheeks for color. Her skin was a wee bit parchmenty, so she poked around in her left sleeve until she came up with a nearly squeezed-out tube of Oil of Olay. Pressing from the bottom up, she managed to release a good-sized dollop of the stuff, enough to do the trick. “That’s better,” she said, and winked at her reflection. “You still got it, kid.” She heard someone along the path. It was only Count Dracula loping by in his wolfish guise, hot on the trail of a nubile virgin. Times like these there was no talking to him. Once in a while he’d stop for a pre-dawn chat, but since Drusilla’s veins yielded formaldehyde, not blood, he rarely wasted his spectacular smiles on her. As she sat like an out-of-sorts Patience on her monument, she saw Buzz Bipple dragging toward her. At last, someone who would pay her some attention! Buzz was the least presentable haunt in the place, what with his molting pelt and his buck teeth that made him look like a garden rake in heat. Still, he fancied himself a ladies’ man, though he wasn’t particular and was said to chase anything in a shroud, male or female. Drusilla waved her arms to get his attention, her funereal raiment frantically flapping a distress signal. But Buzz didn’t stop. Pointing at his jaw, he mumbled, “Tooth ache! Going to the lagoon to find me some toads!” And Buzz buzzed off. To be rejected by the graveyard pariah was quite a comedown for the late Sweet Potato Queen of Swampwater County. Not one to suffer low esteem, Drusilla looked for possible sources of her sudden loss of appeal. “My clothes! They’re just plain dowdy, and this shroud—it’s so yesterday!"

To be continued...

BUFFALO: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

FIFI: Film at eleven.