He wasn’t laughing at his own expense, at his fresh corpse father’s expense. All closed up and proper when he wasn’t slipping.

But he had slipped. All Chris had to do is find another patch of ice – or maybe bring it back to the same one.

The silence stretched. Chris took another pleasurable inhale of his cigar. It was like eating a cake, but it made a girdle less relevant. The only way he got a boy thinner is if there was literally nothing for him to eat.

“Oh, little orphan,” Chris smiled, with a cutting sincerity. “No one feels as bad for you as I.”

Was there any room for a kind misinterpretation? Chris made certain there wasn’t: he snubbed his barely smoked cigar on the brat’s expensive, ‘little orphan’ sleeve. He carelessly chucked the mostly unsmoked cigar on the ground, as though its lone mass did not cost double all of the slender little sticks in a box he was enslaved to.

“Let’s see what death’s done for the old man.”