Eric was excited at the thought of going to a dinner party, because he'd never really known anyone who was in the habit of throwing dinner parties. Certainly not Steve or Mal, and most of the people he considered his friends were up in Queensland so that left his dinner party prospects in Melbourne pretty slim.

Still, he'd never been very good at conveying excitement, so the best he could manage was to say to Rona "That sounds nice" when it became obvious that Rona and Miranda were expecting him to say something.

"It will be!" Rona said, looking pleased that Eric was enthusiastic about the idea. Obviously she'd calibrated her ability to detect enthusiasm to a level appropriate to Eric's output. Eric rolled his eyes as he thought about how nerdy this sounded in his head, and Rona, not being able to detect what was in his head, laughed nervously when she saw him roll his eyes and said "What?"

"What?" Miranda asked as well; but of Rona, because she hadn't seen Eric roll his eyes. She'd turned the sound back up on the T.V. and was watching it again. Confusingly, someone on the T.V. said "What?" too, at almost the same time, and that freaked everyone out for a few moments.

"Nothing" Eric said when he snapped his mind back into focus. "Just thinking of something else."

"What?" Rona asked again, meaning, What was he thinking of?

"A song" Eric lied. "About food", he lied further, because he thought that made the lie sound slightly better, or slightly more acceptable, or something.

"Didn't Frank Zappa write about stuff like that?" Rona asked, and Eric kept his mouth shut because he didn't want to start talking about Frank Zappa. He might never stop, and no-one would thank him for it.

An ad-break came on and Miranda said "Fuck it, I'm way too tired to watch this show sober", and Rona said:

"I think I saw half a bottle of vodka in the cupboard last time I was cooking dinner."