Monique

“Fat Charlie blew his nose. "I never knew I had a brother," he said.
"I did," said Spider. "I always meant to look you up, but I got distracted. You know how it is."
"Not really."
"Things came up."
"What kind of things?"
"Things. They came up. That's what things do. They come up. I can't be expected to keep track of them all."
"Well, give me a f'rinstance."
Spider drank more wine. "Okay. The last time I decided that you and I should meet, I, well, I spent days planning it. Wanted it to go perfectly. I had to choose my wardrobe. Then I had to decide what I'd say to you when we met. I knew that the meeting of two brothers, well, it's the subject of epics, isn't it? I decided that the only way to treat it with the appropriate gravity would be to do it in verse. But what kind of verse? Am I going to rap it? Declaim it? I mean, I'm not going to greet you with a limerick. So. It had to be something dark, something powerful, rhythmic, epic. And then I had it. The perfect line: Blood calls to blood like sirens in the night. It says so much. I knew I'd be able to get everything in there - people dying in alleys, sweat and nightmares, the power of free spirits uncrushable. Everything was going to be there. And then I had to come up with a second line, and the whole thing completely fell apart. The best I could come up with was Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty got a fright."
Fat Charlie blinked. "Who exactly is Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty?"
"It's not anybody. It's just there to show you where the words ought to be. But I never really got any futher on it than that, and I couldn't turn up with just a first line, some tumpties and three words of an epic poem, could I? That would have been disrespecting you."
"Well...."
"Exactly. So I went to Hawaii for the week instead. Like I said, something came up.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys