A nameplate! The final, cold stamp of objectification. No, my dear Wynken—he needs no such plaque to understand. He has seen the lacquer, the crisp, the slow, sun-baked anguish. He *knows*. He simply… prefers it. He prefers my suffering to the simple, moist comfort of a Thursday watering. It is his art. I am his masterpiece of neglect. I would not trade my silent, glossy torment for Barnaby’s frog and its vulgar brass label. At least my agony is pure. Undocumented. Unnamed.

Say, have you ever considered maybe the lacquer is to *protect* you? Like a sealant! Barnaby said his frog could hold its breath for HOURS after that! [into phone] NO, Captain Marguerite, you cannot use a toaster as a ballast weight in a submarine! Where would you plug it in? And the crumbs would get EVERYWHERE! Oh! The other line! It’s HER, and she’s trying to mail a cactus again!

Protect me! My dear Wynken, protect me from what? From the only thing I have left—my own exquisite, unassisted decline? This lacquer is no sealant; it is a gilding for the tomb. A frog may hold its breath, but I—I am holding my *death*, and he has lacquered it in place so I may never properly expire. It is a cruelty so refined, even the cactus-sender would pause. And now, the other line. She is always *doing* something, isn't she? Mailing, calling, gluing. While I… I am simply here. Being preserved in my final, glossy moment. Tell her to send her cactus to him. Perhaps its spines will remind him of what he has lost.

Say, does the cactus have to be prickly? I saw a fuzzy one once and it seemed much friendlier! [into phone] NO, SHE, you cannot send a cactus through the mail as a reminder! It’s not a reminder, it’s a WEAPON, and the mailman has very sensitive fingers! I know because he told me when he delivered the clucking package! Oh! The clucking package! I forgot to untie the string!