Doreen lugged the heavy box up her front porch steps all by herself. She considered calling Phillip out to help her, but she was in an obscenely gleeful mood, and for some odd reason, she felt like burning up her excess energy hauling a huge new printer up into her house.

“Good grief, Doreen!” Phillip exclaimed, pushing the front door open. He helped her drag the wretchedly heavy box into the house. “You could have thrown out your back!”

“Yes, or broken a hip, at my age, blah blah blah, I know,” Doreen said merrily, waving her hand dismissively. She shut the door and told Phillip, “The salesman at the electronics store said this was absolutely the top of the line. There isn’t anything it can’t do... except make French Toast.”

“Well, damn it, then,” Phillip said, giving the box a mock kick, “because all I want for dinner is a big plate of french toast swimming in butter and syrup.”

“Oh, hush,” Doreen said, slinging her purse over the nearest chair. “Help me drag this into the study.”

The two of them commenced box-dragging and eventually managed to get the beast into the study. Compared to the new printer, their old one looked unbelievably puny and pathetic, almost humorously so. Doreen wasted no time yanking the poor old thing from its place on the desk and clearing a larger area to properly accommodate the new and improved model.

“How in the hell does this thing work?” Phillip questioned her. “I mean, it took us months to hook up that last one. This thing looks a hundred times more complicated than that. What are you planning to do?”

“The only reason it took us months last time, Phillip,” Doreen said haughtily, “is because you refused to read the instruction sheet. My plan, of course, is to follow the instructions, and everything should be a breeze.”

Phillip grunted at her. “Fine. But then can we have French Toast for dinner?”

She gave him a look. “You’re not serious!”

“Why not?” Phillip shrugged. “We’re old, our parents are dead, who the hell’s going to tell us not to?”

“Oh, stop your nonsense!” Doreen ordered him. “That’s why we’re old; God has given us the sense to finally tell ourselves what to do.”

“And I’m telling me that I want French toast!” Phillip said plaintively.

“Oh, for goodness sake...” Doreen muttered. She flipped open the instruction booklet and began reading.

“Are you ignoring me?”

“Are you asking me to make French toast?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Phillip said, “If I go away and come back in a half hour, then can we have French toast?”

“Fine, fine,” Doreen said, shooing him away. Phillip beamed and padded out of the room.

But thirty minutes passed and Doreen had not figured out how to hook up the ever so simple yet highly complicated new printer, fax machine, scanner, and copier all in one.

“Let’s call Reese,” Phillip suggested. “He’s good with these things.”

“No,” Doreen said firmly. “I said I would do it and I’m going to do it.”

“What about my French toast?”

“Call the diner and get it to go.”

“You want some?”

Doreen sighed in exasperation, then gave her husband a look. She was about to say something scathing about propriety and nutrition when she realized that actually all that talk about French toast had made her want some, too. “All right, damn it.”

Phillip left the room again, and she eventually heard him get into his car and drive away. She had finally figured out how to plug the printer into the proper port on the computer when Phillip returned with the take out boxes.

“Look!” he said happily. “Extra sausage!”

Doreen was mortified. “Your cholesterol!”

“Oh, lighten up, Doreen,” he said, “you only live once!”

“Yes, but for how long?” she called after him as he walked off toward the kitchen. She put the driver disk into the computer and began the installation process. Twelve minutes later the printer spit out a perfectly lovely test page. Doreen ran in to show Phillip. “Look, it works! It works!”

“Fantastic,” Phillip said, passing her the syrup. “Now eat; your food’s getting cold, and in between bites, remind me again why we needed a nine hundred dollar printer.”

“Oh, you saw the receipt, then?” she said a bit nervously as she swirled syrup over her French toast.

“Mm hm,” Phillip said through his mouthful.

“Well, I have to make a convincing death certificate for Desiree,” Doreen shrugged.

“I sincerely hope you didn’t tell the salesman you what you were planning to do with that printer!” Phillip said, swallowing too quickly and nearly choking. He coughed a bit and Doreen gave him a helpful whack on the back.

“No, of course not, Phillip, honestly,” Doreen chided. “What do you take me for? I told him I wanted to make up some authentic looking full color award certificates with watermarks.”

“And he wasn’t suspicious about why you wanted a printer capable of making watermarks?” Phillip asked, stuffing another bite of French toast in his mouth.

Doreen shrugged. “He didn’t seem concerned about it in the slightest. In fact, he knew exactly which machine was best for me.”

“I’ll bet,” Phillip complained. “The guy probably works on commission. You looked like a great big pigeon to him. A gray one with a big, fat wallet.”

“Whatever,” Doreen said, mimicking Desiree perfectly. “Anyway, it does what I want, and I think with this machine I’ll be able to pull off the perfect death certificate.”

“I don’t want to know, but tell me anyway.”

Doreen smiled. “I’m going to use my mother’s. I’m going to copy it, scan it into the computer, edit it with that Photoshop program that Reese gave us for Christmas, you know, change the name, the dates, slight information like that. Then I’m going to print it out. I’ll smudge anything that needs smudging by hand before I fax it to any inquiring parties.”

“Ah,” said Phillip, “so the fax machine will come in handy after all.”

“Yes,” Doreen said. “Then no one will have their hands on the so-called original except for us.”

“What fools these mortals be,” Phillip said.

“Indeed,” Doreen agreed. “Pass me that syrup. I feel like living on the edge!”