chapter 17 Mucus Membranes

Three months in life has settled into the dull routine of never ending eternal boredom.  Honestly I was having more fun when people were trying to kill me.

I have gone through two more roommates in rather quick order.

First Lila.  She is 50ish Asian woman, fat, overly dressed for the occasion and make up applied with a kabuki actors attention to exaggerated detail.

Lila is attending a dinner party where great matters of art are being discussed.  She talks on and on in Mandarin her hands giving dramatic flourishes to her every pronouncement.

The party never ends.

2am the second night.

“Lila, if you and your dinner guests wish to continue discussing the finer points of Chinese opera could you all go out to the day room to do it?  I need some sleep.”

She gave me that look.

The help should know their place and not interrupt

And the party went on with increased volume.

So I began to sing.

“ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall ninety nine bottles of beer.”

She was not amused.

Next roommate was Agnes.  Agnes was a zombie.  She was all over one color from hair to toe nails, a ghastly yellow brown, like a cigarette butt left in a mud puddle.  She had suffered a stroke at some point in her life and so was left with little in the way of movement or expression in her face.  She smoked.  And that was all she did.  She would lift a cigarette to her drooping gray mouth, light it, and suck it down.  She never took it out of her mouth till it was completely ash.  She never said a word except for a mumbled “Have you got a cigarette?”

Rooming with a zombie other than being kinda creepy would at least be quiet so I felt pretty good about it.  Until nightfall.  It’s true, zombies really do come alive at night.

Her bed was trying to kill her, and she fought back with a fierce energy I had no idea she possessed.  She beat her pillow, wrestled with her blankets and sheets.  She rose from the bed and began tearing it apart.  Off with the blankets and sheets and pillow, tossed to the floor.  Then the mattress likewise thrown to the floor.  

She wrestled with the mattress for a bit, beating it into submission.  Then she carefully remade her bed.  My grandmother would have been pleased; she used hospital corners when she tucked in her sheets.

She lay down.  But the bed was only fooling it’s submission.  The battle once more commenced.

And repeat

And repeat

And repeat

“Hey you want a cigarette?”

I knew that would get her attention.  Her yellow brown eyes swung to me alight with greedy fire.  I hold the cigarette up, swinging it back and forth, her eyes following the cigarette.  Gave me the shivers the woman was just creepy.

“I need some sleep and your making that impossible sooo. Here’s the deal.  I give you a cigarette and you go out and smoke it and no more bed making.  If you let me sleep I will give you a cigarette every night.  No sleep, no cigarettes.

She shuffled over and grabbed the cigarette and left for the smoking patio.  She came back and..

Well, I hadn’t really believed that the bribe would work.

There were two patients on the floor who had their own rooms.  I eyed them enviously.

The next day I stopped Burt on his rounds.

“Hey Burt, I know space is limited and you are not set up for privet suites but Patricia and Lula have their own rooms.  So I was just wondering, what do I have to do to qualify for some sleep?

“Yes,mmm, well. We don’t really have privet rooms. It’s just that, Patrica and Lula, well, they have been known to bite people.

Patrica and Anna.  Patrica was a tiny little woman in her later middle years.  Every inch of her a lady, (Every inch she was like 4’9’’, I swear I have never felt so tall before at 5 6’, A height that is usually neither tall nor short. Around here I am the giant in munchkin land)  Patrica when she was patrica was the sweetest little thing ever.  But watch out when she starts giggling,  Evil Pat comes out in the giggles.  Evil Pat is a foul mouthed demon tempered little dwarf.  

Lula is a former crack ho’ dying of AID’s.  She is an African American woman shrunk down to a diaper clad toothpick in a wheelchair.

Evil Pat and Lula hate eachother.  Course Lula do love to fight.  Lula would know before anyone else when Patrica was about to flip to evil Pat and she would wheel herself over toward Patrica.  Circling around in her orbit till Evil Pat made her appearance and battle would commence.  

Evil Pat screaming the foulest racial insults, hands clenched into tiny little fists at her sides lipstick colored spittle foaming at her mouth, and Lula in her wheelchair screaming racial insults of her own brandishing her empty water bottle and threatening to bob Evil Pat over the head with it.  I found it most entertaining.

“Soo..”  I smile toothily at Burt.  “All I have to do to get my own room is bite someone?  Do I have to bite a patient or can it be one of the staff?  I mean biting the mentally ill just seems wrong but there are a couple of staff members I wouldn’t mind sharpening my teeth for.”

Burt looked decidedly uncomfortable.

They decided to try me with one more roommate.  MaryAnn, from a west Virginia trailer park, has impulse control, and anger management issues.  First night she would insist on playing Jerry Fallwell on her little tv all night.  I resonded by playing my cd of Alster Crawlies greatest hits.  Having established each other’s limits we settled in and got along.  She had a sense of humor anyway.

  I have been in the hospital for about three months when I get a very bad cold.  I have held out for two days not wanting to break down and ask the merry pill pushers for cold medication but there is a limit of misery I’m willing to put up with.

I dragged my weary self to the desk of the night nurse.

“Could I have a Sudafed please?”

“Su-da-fed?”

Odd, risperidone, quetiapine, colozapine, adivan, all roll of hher tounge easy enough but su-da-fed, like some strange language being tasted for the first time.

“Yes a Sudafed or a benadril, nyquill would be great but I don’t want to be greedy.  What ever you have will be fine, thank you.”

He frowns at me.  “Why do you want a Sudafed?”

(Why?  Well I heard ity is a hallucinogen if inserted anally and I want to test it out)  (no be nice, be nice, be nice.  She just wants to make sure I don’t intend on using the Sudafed anally),

“I have a very bad cold and I want to get some sleep with out drowning.”  It’s one of those breathing is a serious issue, kind of colds. Ewww.

She frowns at me, pursing her lips together.  "No I don’t think so.”  She said.

My brain shudders to a stop.  (HU?  They have been shoveling pills down my throat since the day I got here.  Handing out multi colored pills like pez and now I’m being refused a Sudafed?)

“There’s nothing really wrong with you.  You just have a cold.   Few days rest and you will be fine.  And Sudafed doesn’t really help, just relieves some of the symptoms.”  She lectured me.

(And what do you think a Sudafed is for ya daffy bitch?)  

(Be nice, be nice, be nice)

“Excuse me but relieving some of the symptoms is what I need a Sudafed for.  As for that now honestly you give me pills every day not one of which actually cure anything.  The best you can say for any of them is they relieve some of the symptoms for some of the people some of the time.  Sudafed on the other hand relieves some of the symptoms for most of the people most of the time.  So on that scale Sudafed is a far more effective medication.  Not to mention the pills you all give me every day have possible side effects ranging from weight gain (thank you all so very much for that one) and constipation, to sleep disorders to possible liver damage.  As to any long term effects of the drugs you ‘give’ me (I have some trouble with the word give but people who are forcing you to do things rarely like the word force to be used) You can’t really say most of the pills you all handout haven’t been around long enough for even ten years worth of study.   Sudafed on the other hand has far fewer and less troublesome side effects”

“No there’s nothing wrong with you.  You just have a cold go to bed.”

And once more my innocent faith in the persuasive power of logic has been completely misplaced.

(Think, think, must think, need Sudafed, can’t think)

I take out my sodden handkerchief and blow my nose. Trying to clear some space in my brain for a thought.

She looks up and frowns at me again.  “Ohh and you shouldn’t blow your nose.  It doesn’t really help and can damage delicate mucus membranes.”

(MUCUS MEMBRANES……..Ohh that did it.)

I took two steps forward and sneezed explosively right into nurse mercy’s frowning face.  Nurses have certain preprogrammed responses to external stimuli.  Case in point, health lecture 101.3a.

“You should always cover your mouth when you sneeze you can spread germs that way.”

“That’s right.”  I said and stood there giving her my best slow and evil Grinch who stole Christmas grin.  “And if I don’t get a Sudafed . Right. Now. That, is, exactly , what, I, am ,going, to, do.”

Her brain shuddered to full stop.

I took a step toward her waving my sodden hankie.  She pushed back rolling her chair as far away from me as her desk would allow.

“I am going to drag my feverish bleary eyed self from floor to floor, ward to ward, room to room, seeking out each and every one of you sanctimonious sadists, every doctor, every nurse and orderly in this hospital.  And don’t you worry hun.” I snuffle wetly into my hankie.  “My mucus membranes are producing more than enough to go around.”

I snuggle into bed sighing happily as the Sudafed begins to take effect.  Forget the Adivan, give me the Sudafed every time.

chapter 16 Of Barbie dolls and Quilts

For the first week I am restricted to the ward. They want to make sure I don’t go rabbit and jump the fence.  

I am bored, bored, bored, bored.  I rather thought being in a mad house would be more interesting.  I am still put out by the whole no basket weaving thing.  I tell you when Chinese Karaoke night begins to look good to you, you know your life has taken a wrong turn somewhere.  Imagine being trapped in a doctors waiting room 24/7 without even the old national geographic to browse through and you have it.  

There is a TV, but over half the residents are Asian and they camp out in the TV room, making sure the station stays forever on the Asian language channel.  I became a fan of the crime fighting noodle chief.

After the first week I am allowed to explore the rest of the facility.  Down stairs there is an activity room a computer room and a small store where the residents are taught how to run a cashregister,.  The store has coffee, real coffee. It costs a dollar.  We residents are given a ten dollar a week allowance.  I am thinking I may have to switch from my camels to hand rolled, ten bucks, it don’t go far.

Activities room that sounded promising, still considering my last encounter with ‘activities’ I approached the room with some trepidation.

First thought, ( So this is what happens when the roomer toom kids forget to put away their toys.)  The activities room is a bright sunny room with several long tables, a couple of sewing machines, a sitting area with a round coffee table covered with magazines.  Every table top,every semi flat surface is covered with things, odd bits and bobs, material, plastic toys, a few old and war scarred GI Joes.

Even though there was much evidence of activity laying about the only one in the room doing anything was one little Asian woman bent over a sewing machine.  The other people in the room were all sitting around the coffee table thumbing through magazines, or playing with dolls.

This is Rose’s domain.  Rose is five foot two with eyes of corn flower blue  a mass of long tangles of white hair with a large purple silk flower stuck in it.  She struck me as a Pekinese sort of woman, short, fluffy, cute, and rather over excitable.

“Hi there,” I introduced myself to her.”New here, just need a corner to set up in so I can do a bit of painting.”

“Ohh ohhhh, oh, hummm., well, we really don’t have a lot of paint.”  She tells me, practically vibrating in place with nerves.

“Not to worry I have my own.”  I hold up my yellow tackle box.  “Even have my own canvases, so not to worry.”  I smile.  

I had brought down some of my collages and she seemed impressed.  But then I figure people are overly impressed when mad people do anything creative, their judgment standards are lowered. 

“Ohh your so creative.”. She croons.

“Where can I set up?”  I ask.

“Ohh hum ohh, have you ever made dolls?”

“Dolls?  No I don’t make dolls, I paint, make beaded jewelry.”

“Ohh there are so many wonderfully creative people making dolls these days.”

She turns andflutters off returning with doll magazine, which she shoves into my hands. On the cover a leering Rhett Butler

I try to hand the magazine back but nothing doing, she flutters off to fetch more doll magazine.

“I so love creative people.”  She says.  “ You know, I tap dance.  There’s a group of us, the post menopausal women’s tap dancing group.  And I walk on stilts at charity events.”

I can’t help the image in my head.  This fluffy little white haired woman tap dancing on stilts and then I imagined her tap dancing on stilts with a group of short older women, all tap dancing on stilts, line dancing on stilts.  I imagine her doing the can can on stilts.

“oh now the dolls, let me show you so many lovely dolls being made these days.”

I try again to hand the magazines back.  Being as nice as I can about it.  She hands me more doll magazines.

“Yes, I know, many people doing wonderful things with soft sculpture.  But I paint, do collages, sometimes I make beaded jewelry.  Can I set up in a corner of that table over there?”  I look over to a table that looks a bit less cluttered then the others.

Once more I try to hand the magazines back to her, juggling to keep hold of my tackle box.

“I really don’t care for dolls.  I paint.  Thank you but I really don’t have any interest in dolls.”

I am being very very nice. I hate dolls.

You can use the sewing machines and I have lots of scrap cloth.  I bet you had lots of dolls and made all their clothes didn’t you?”

Ohh yes I had dolls. Lots of them.  My grandmother imagined having a granddaughter who was cute and giggly in pretty dresses and hair ribbons, cooing over dolls and running from spiders.  She did everything in her power to make me that girl.  Her efforts in this regard did nothing but annoy us both.

I got dolls, lots and ,lots of dolls.  Every birthday, Christmas, even Easter.  I got dolls.  I wanted Lincoln logs, I got dolls.  I wanted an erector set, I got dolls.  I wanted a bow and arrow set I wasn’t surprised I got dolls.  One memorable Christmas I got a doll you actually fed Imation baby food to and it crapped it’s diapers.  I held that doll wondering exactly how you are supposed to feel when your grandmother gives you a present that is supposed to shit on you.

I turn to her and really this doll thing is starting to work my nerves.

“Actually the only thing I ever did with my Barbies  was strip them naked shave their heads and throw them at passing cars.”

“Ohh but why oh why would you do such a thing?”  She puts her hand to her face her corn flower blue eyes wide with horror.  All conversation in the room stops and everyone turns and looks at me with shock.

“Why would you do such a thing?”  She repeats her voice trembling.

I look around the room at all the horrified faces and I can’t help but think that being in a mad house the standard of shocking behavior should be set somewhat higher than a little prepubescent Barbie mayhem.

Look at her and completely deadpan I tell her.

“It was one of my first performance art pieces.”

“Performance art?”  He hand still to her cheek her voice still trembling.

“Yes, I called it. ‘Plastic women never know when to stop smiling.

“Well they are made of plastic aren’t they?  They can’t stop smiling.”  She said.

Finally convinced of my unsuitable nature for dolls she finally allows me to hand back the doll magazines.

“If you should change your mind.”

“I’ll be sure to let you know.  Now if I could just set up over there?  I’ll just clear off a little space shall I?”

“Ohhh oihh, hmm, ohh yes now over here.”  

She leads me to the sewing machines where an Asian woman is busy sewing bits of cloth together.

“This is Carol, she is working on a really wonderful quilting project.”

“I don’t quilt.”

“Ohh quilts these days are soo creative. I attended a modern quilt exhibit and I was just blown away.”

“Yes, yes I know, many people have been doing great things in modern quilting.  But I don’t quilt, thank you.”

Ohh lord she is handing me quilting magazines.  

“And this project we are working on is soo wonderful  We are making quilted sleeping bags for the homeless.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s a wonderful project but I don’t…”

She hands me a little brochure about this quilting project.  On the cover of the brochure a drawing of what looks like an unkempt, bearded, very sad giant patchwork caterpillar.  (Poor sad caterpillar who has lost his hookah).

“Ive been involved with this project for three years.  You see we make the top quilt here then send it off to a woman’s shelter where they do the top quilting and the zipper.  Then they get handed out free to the homeless.”

(Three years?  She’s been doing this for three years.  Why is it that I have never seen a single homeless person wearing one?  If a giant patchwork caterpillar were inching it’s way down the streets of San Francisco, I’m pretty sure that I would have noticed.) 

Carol is busy sewing scraps of cloth,  Rose is busy talking and as she is more than capable of handling both sides of the conversation my mind wanders off contemplating the question.

Three years she’s been working on these things and I’ve never seen one actually in use.  

I know what she thinks she is doing.  Her good intentions surrounds her like an overly sweetperfume.  Quilts to her mean home and family.  I can see her imagining the women in the shelter all gathering around and quilting together in a lovely picture out of some dull chick flick.  Empowering themselves with shared stories of life’s miseries over the warm quilt.  And she sees the homeless person receiving the quilt as some colorful warm reminder of home and care.  All good things, why haven’t I ever seen one?

First problem the colorful nature of the gift.  The homeless by and large have the same survival instincts as pigeons.  They want to blend in with the surroundings, not stand out.  You stand out you get noticed most often by people you don’t want to be noticed by.  Also dark drab colors don’t show dirt as much.

I lightly finger the fabric Carol is so busy sewing.  It’s the lightest cheapest summer dress material.  That would last all of five minutes on the street.

It is made with a very long zipper.  Zippers get jammed with hard use and a broken zipper must be replaced, this would be difficult for a homeless person to do.

The most popular blanket on the streets is the army green wool felt blankets.  They are made for hard use, can air dry, and best of all even when damp will still keep a body warm.

Quilts on the other hand take in moisture like a sponge. When wet a quilt is nothing but a heavy heat sapping mess.  Air dry a quilt and you have a damp quilt.  Laundry I would think is not high on the homeless what do I do with this dollar list.

Three years, she has been doing this for three years and in three years she hasn’t once thought if what she is doing is in anyway useful.  So wrapped up in her good intentions all reality is blissfully ignored.  There are times I really hate liberals.  Honestly sometimes they seem to think that if you have good intentions you need never bother about using your head.

(Be nice, be nice, be nice, be nice)  The thought running through my head like a mantra.  (Be nice be nice, be nice, she means well be nice)

“I’m sure it’s a wonderful project but I don’t quilt.”

She hands me a video tape.

“You can watch this it will tell you all about it.  People are doing this in cities all over the country.”

(Ohh my God. ) I imagine  all the wasted effort going on all over the country.  People churning out thses ugly useless things, feeling very very good about themselves.  (A Fucking video tape.  People all over doing this and not one actually taking even a minute to think about the homeless as other than a sad abstraction a thing to work out the personal karma on.)

(Be nice, be nice, be nice)

“Really it’s nice, but I just don’t quilt.”

She finally gives up and allows me to clean off a space on a table.  She flutters around worriedly as I move things.

“Please be careful.”  She mumbers something about a project.  I am being careful, I swear.

I lay out my brushes, I take out a couple of tubes of paint.

“Be careful please don’t make a mess.”

I’m being careful, I’m not making a mess.  I am not taking my bright yellow tackle box and bashing nervous annoying little yattering munchkin over the head with it.

“No no bad mental patient, eat your own crayons.”  I wrestle one of my water color pens out of mouth of a man who looks like an Evil Buddha.  

I give up.  Pack away my brushes and paints and take my yellow tackle box  and go back up stairs.

Chapter 15 The girl from someplace else

I get a room equipped with a bed, locker, and roommate.  The room is bland enough, like a college dorm room except for the plastic covering on the mattress.  This I understood the reason for, easier cleaning for the incontinent.  I tried very hard not to think of how many people had piddled on my bed in the past.

My roommate was Laura.  She was a little Asian girl about five foot three with thick owl glasses and the squashed face of one born dinged in the head.  She was hyperactive and unfortunately she was one who went from hyper to an upward spiral of super charged hyper.

There are assumptions regarding the mad that I had that I quickly had to change.  The first of which was in the matter of sleep.  I was looking forward to getting some sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.  I had assumed that the mad, especially those in a hospital mad house with enough drugs in their systems to fell a rhino, would have no trouble in the sleep department.

Yes, well, come to find out, the mad, by and large don’t sleep.  During the day they might seem zombiefied but night charges them with a disjointed restlessness that just won’t quit.  They fight sleep with every fiber of their being, tossing in their beds as if the sheets were attempting to strangle them.  They mutter moan and take up long conversations with the voices they hear.  (why those voices never seem to say anything interesting is what I want to know)

Laura was a squirrel.  A busy hyperactive squirrel.

I lay in bed trying very hard not to move.  Every time I turn over, the plastic sheeting on the mattress crinkles like Christmas wrapping paper which wakes me up.  Having a bed that wakes you up every time you move in bed is I think rather defeating the purpose of having a bed in the first place.  I learned to sleep with corpse like rigidity. 

Laura was a squirrel.  A busy hyperactive squirrel.  Laura would lay down.  Twist, moan, fight the sheets, then turn on the light and go digging in her locker.  Her locker was packed with paper bags.  Somewhere in the bottom of all the paper bags was her squirrel cache of snacks.  Bags of Cheetos extra crunchy.

That was another assumption blown all to hell.  I thought mad people liked pudding.  Nice quite pudding.  Not so, turns out mad people like crunchy snacks.  Cheetos extra crunchy was a particular favorite of many.

Laura would rustle the bags finally finding the cheetos, spend a goodly amount of time snapping the bag around like she was subduing it, then finally she would dig in with much enthusiastic cheeto chomping.  Snacking urge satisfied she would mangle the dead carcass of the empty bag and bury it in the bottom of her locker.  

She lay back down and turned out the lights.

And half an hour later repeat.

And half an hour later repeat.

All night long.

Morning arrived and I stumbled from my bed, not in the best of moods.  (Why ohh why has the world turned against me?  Ok so people are trying to kill me.  Ok so I’m stuck in a mad house.  But is a single nights sleep too much to ask?  )

I shuffle my way to the outside patio and sit lighting one of my camels.  I stare out through thechain link feeling a bit like a monkey in a zoo.   A cross sleepy monkey who needs a cup of coffee.

The only other person out on the patio is Wilson.  Wilson is a elderly black man with silver hair and a dignified posture.  He wears a walkman its headphones permanently attached to his ears.  I don’t know what he is listening to.  I imagine an endless ball game.

We sit smoking in companionable silence for a few minutes, then he turns and looks curiously at me.

“What are you doing here?”  He asks me.

(Ohh lord, what mad house rule have I broken?  No girls on the smoking patio before breakfast?)

Seeing my confusion he takes his ear phones off (A huge gesture.  It was the one and only time I ever saw him take off his walkman earphones) He leans toward me looking at me with concern.

“What are you doing here?  There an’t nothing wrong with you baby girl.  Why are you here?”

I had no idea what to say.

(Well you see it was all a big misunderstanding.  I thought paranoia was like totally in this season.  My bad)

That look of deep concern on his face and in his voice.  I almost started crying.  (Concern, Fuck, who could have seen that coming?  )   

“My landlord is trying to kill me because I got in the way of his drug business.  No one believes me, so I’m here.  Which is better than being killed I suppose.”  I shrug.

He nods and grunts and puts his ear phones back on.

(How odd.  What does it mean when a mad person thinks your sane?)

As it turned out he wasn’t the only one with doubts about my insanity.   Not the staff of course, they were perfectly content with the diagnosis as given.  My fello mad people however, simply refused to believe that I was one of them.  

At first they thought I was one of the Doctors, or an intern.  “Or maybe a nurse?”  Oddly I was more often asked if I were a Doctor then if I were a Nurse.

After awhile the majority seemed to come to the conclusion that I was a spy of some sort.  They just didn’t know who I was spying for.  Some thought I was spying on them, either for the staff or for some journalistic endeavor or research.  Some thought I was spying on the staff, even that I had some strange power over the staff. 

 Every once in a while I would get some tug on my arm and someone would ask in a furtive stage whisper “Tell them I’m ok to go out on pass.  I’ll be good, really I just want to go out for a walk.”  Or  “Tell them to please cut down on my medication?  I know it’s good for me but it makes me feel so bad if they could just cut it down a little?”

To each request I had to reply that “Hey I’m just a patient here, they won’t listen to me.”

Then they would give me that look, that ‘you could if you wanted to but you’re just being mean’ look and walk away, totally unconvinced.

A few days into my enrollment at Nutter’s U I was sitting on one of the day room couches, the furniture all look like they had been extruded by a playdough fun factory, when Mike stepped up for his try at the ‘figgure out why she’s here. Thing.  

Mike is a beautiful boy, looks like a Calvin Kline model except for eyes that peer out at you too brightly.  He introduces himself to me by telling me he used to be friends with leather head, “The real leather head, you know from that movie the Texas Chain Saw Massacre was about.”  He asks me what I thought about that.

“I think you should chose your friends with a bit more care.”  I said.

After that we got into the “No really I am a patient here.  I don’t work here.”   (I have one group of people constantly asking me if I hear voices and the other group of people who hear voices are constantly asking me if I am a Doctor.  What the hell has gone wrong with my life?).

Then he asks me where I was from originally.  San Francisco is a city of transplants.

“Maine.”  I said.

“No you’re not.”   He says.

“Yes I am. Really I’m from Maine originally. Grew up there till I joined the army at eighteen.”

“You’re not.”  He insists emphatically.  “You don’t sound anything like a person from Maine.”

Which is true, people usually seem to think I’m an Americanized Brit.  I don’t know why, too much BBC radio as a kid maybe.

“I know you., I know where you’re from.” He proclaims as though he has uncovered my secret identity.

“You’re the girl from someplace else.”   

A part of me feels a high school sense of rejection over it all.  (What kind of fucked up shit is this even the mad people don’t want me as part of their group? )  My fate in life, to be forever sitting at the rejects lunch table.

My second night with Laura was a repeat of the first.  I couldn’t figure out how she kept going, even batteries run down eventually.

My third night two am,  My roommate Rocky the busy squirrel is digging through her piles of paper bags for her secret stash of crunchy munchy cheetos.

The Elmer Fudd in me is coming out. (Be verwe, verwe, qwiet, we are hunting sqwuiwells,  he, he, he, he)

“Laura, please,” I groan. “ If you need to eat will you please take your cheetoes out to the day room?”

She paused in her busy digging.  She peered out at me through her owl eyed glasses.  She raised an accusing finger at me.

“I know you.”  She whispered at me, half in horror half in fear.  “I know you, You’re evil.”

This was the wrong thing to say.

I get cranky when I don’t get any sleep.  (For heaven’s sake, why doesn’t anyone want me to get any sleep?)

I smiled at her, slow and evil my eyes going cat feral.  I began to sing.  A little lullaby my grandmother used to sing to me.

“The worms crawl in the worms crawl out when you’re dead they’ll crawl in your mouth.  They will dance on your elbows and over your toes.  They will have a little party inside your nose.”

Trust me, people from Maine do have a certain morbid strain in their genes, it’s not just Stephen King.

She stared at me, her eyes going wide behind her owl glasses.

“You, you, you’re a witch.”  

“Yes that’s right I am.”

(Close enough, I’m an American free market pantheist:  That is I accept the idea that the gods exist on the grounds that that which can neither be proven nor disproven I chose to operate on which ever idea is the more colorful.  Having gods is more interesting then not having them.  And all art has its beginnings in a church of some sort.   

Being that the Gods exist I like any good American am always looking to cut a deal.)

She leapt up and went rumplestiltskin spinning around like wild a top, screaming.  She threw her empty plastic cup at me.

I bopped it out of the air one handed, not raising from my bed.  (Bed=Sleep= I’m not fucking moving from this bed)

She launched herself at me.  The flying fists of munchkin fury.  I fended her off one handed.  My other hand had decided enough was enough and was trying to pull the blankets up over my head.

She was trying to slap me on my fore head open handed and she was screaming at me.

“Spirits of evil come out.!  Satan come out! “

2am and a mad person is trying to perform an exorcism on me.

The staff finally alerted to the commotion arrived and dragged the girl off to the third floor for heavier meds and a more calming atmosphere.

I felt a little bad about it.  Teasing the mad isn’t nice.  But as I said, I get cranky when I don’t get my sleep.

I snuggled into my blanket and slept.

chapter 14 SMURFS

The powers of bureaucracy had a hard time figuring out how to fit me into their paperwork, but the wheels turn, if but slowly.  I was called into the small bland office of paper shuffling so a boring little man in a dull brown suite could tell me my fate.

I sit, he shuffles the papers in front of him, stacking them neatly he takes out his blue bic pen.

“Well good news, we have found a place for you at the MHRF.

At first I thought he had said that they were sending me to the Smurfs.  Which confused me a bit as I didn’t know that San Francisco had any Smurfs.  For a moment I had a vision of myself the lone white smurfett in a town of little blue men who all lived in magic mushrooms.

So yeh, that sounded pretty cool.

He hands me a nice little booklet:

The MHRF is located on the grounds of the San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center campus.

Our Mission is to provide long term care services to the sub-acute psychiatric population of San Francisco.  While you are residing at the MHRF, you will receive culturally and spiritually competent services which include evaluation, diagnoses and treatment.  The intent of our program and services is to help you become more independent and to help you to achieve your personal goals.

It is my hope and that of the MHRF staff that your stay here is beneficial and helps you move closer to fulfilling your personal goals and dreams.

Well isn’t that nice?

I am bundled into a small van and transported to the building next door.  It is the sort of building that was designed to look good in a miniature model sitting on the architects table.  Which is to say completely non offensive in its every carefully bland line.  It’s only original feature was the statue of a whales tail out front.

Why a whale’s tale?  I puzzled it.  It must be supposed to represent the dive into the subconscious, I thought.  It seemed to me that the whale was flipping me the bird.  Inside above the reception desk another example of money spent on art intended to be soothingly cute.  A ten foot long tile collage of kindergarten art  in all it’s crayola glory.  

I find myself thinking of a funeral I attended as a child.  I was about eight or nine and one of the kids in my class had broken one of the cardinal rules of Maine living.  Never, ever, try to cross the rural roads of Maine without checking twice for speeding trucks.

My grandmother had been concerned that the open casket funeral would give me nightmares.  It wasn’t that, it was the music.  They played the theme song from sesame street.  The idea that grownups went to heaven or hell but children went to Sesame Street, well I never looked at a Muppets the same way ever again.

When Burt came down and introduced himself to me I almost started giggling.  Smurfs and Muppets dancing in my head I enter the home of the mad.

First stop physical.  Height, weight, blood pressure, a peek into my eyes and then the nurse shoves that ear o scope thingy into my ear. 

Ohh my,you don’t have any ear wax at all.”  The nurse says.  Her tone is so complementary I expected her to pat me on my head.

“Thank you. I have always prided myself on the cleanliness of my ears.”

I took note of the event as the first and probably the only time in my life anyone would complement me on the condition of my ear wax.

The physical done I am moved over to the next event, the filling out of paperwork/  The nurse filling out the papers was Chinese and she had a bit of an accent.

She takes my basic medical history, medications, allergies, do I hear voices?

Again with the voices.  I think about inventing a voice just to make them all happy.  I shall call my voice Bob and he will be the old and cranky ghost of an Appalachian sin eater.  He will be full of wonderful old hillbilly shaman wisdom and will be bothering me constantly to build him a moonshine still.

She asks me if I intend on engaging in any special activities while I was there?

Special activities?  That sounded promising, but mustn’t seem too eager.

“Well I suppose that depends on what kind of special activities you have here.”

Now at this point I am imagining her passing me a colorful little brochure.  Something like the learning annex for the mad kind of thing and I am already checking off things to try.  (Basket weaving, yeh that has to be there and I’m defiantly signing up for that.  How cool would that be learning basket weaving inside an actual mad house?  Perhaps I would take up crochet again, make myself a crocheted straight jacket.)

I look up and notice that there was no brochure in front of me.  Instead the little Chinese nurse seemed to be blushing.

“  well first you have to take a class on,, hmmm, safe hmm, practices.”

(right right, don’t run with the scissors, don’t eat the glue.  As interesting as the how the use a seatbelt demonstration on an airplane but ok everyone has their useless little rituals.)

“Ok fine.”  Now where was that brochure?  She really was blushing, how odd.

“Then you have to ask the staff for the hmmm, errr, hmm, condoms.”

(Hu? Condoms?)

“Well hun, honestly, I was thinking more along the lines of crochet.”

We look at each other blinking in a moment of perfect cross cultural misunderstanding.  Then the light dawns.

“OH you meant sexual activities.”

And I was really disappointed.  Apparently there would be no basket weaving.

Just then I noticed a couple of male heads turning in my direction and the full horrifying implications of what was going on hit me.  

This was a co- educational facility.  Co-ed mad house + condoms= Ohh My God.

My hand slaps down on the table.  The little nurse jumps back in her seat.

“NO! no! there will be no sexual activities of any kind.  I’m not even going to be playing with myself while I am here, thank you very much.”

She shuffles the papers in front of her.

“If you should change your mind.”  She says, almost hopefully.

“I’ll be sure and let you know.”

She looked disappointed; I think she really wanted to know what this strange perversion called crochet was.  Something to write home to her mother about.

chapter 13 would you like to play a game?

I slept until noon.

My fan club outside were still screaming their fool heads off.  The thing under the floor was still vibrating in  seeming frustration.  The computer geek the fish wife and Allen were still arguing.

I yawned and got out of bed.  For once I didn’t go out to paradise doughnuts.  I changed out of my night gown into jeans and t shirt and fixed myself a cup of tea.

The thing under the floor tried to follow me.  (Oh please!  Their little toy couldn’t catch me before I knew what it was)  I made a bit of a game of it for a while.  Standing still, letting it almost catch up to me then moving away and waiting.  

I finished my cup of tea and sat on my bed, thinking.

Now that I had blown their nifty keen booby trap how much longer before they cut the dumb shit and just cap me in the back of the head next time I leave the apartment.  I’m not fucking bullet proof and I can’t stay inside my apartment forever.  I’ll run out of tea eventually.

I settled back on the bed and crossed my legs in a comfortable half lotus.  Breathing in a few cleansing breaths.  Out goes the bad air in goes the good.

I began to meditate.

I have never been able to do the whole free your mind of all thought thing, (I think it’s a failing of my puritan upbringing.  A mind not thinking feels like sloth which is The deadly Sin.)  That’s not what I need right now.  Enlightenment can wait, I need a way out.

The mind free not from thought but emotion, from need, from desire.  Past, present, future, possibilities, probabilities.  Like a four dimensional chess game  I move the pieces around in my mind seeing how the games play out.

Hour after hour I sat.  Getting up every once in a while to fix a cup of tea and go to the bathroom.

“What the hell is she doing?”  I hear one ask.  “Just fucking sitting there.  She hasn’t moved all fucking day.”

Watching someone mediate is about as much fun as watching grass grow.

I sat.

The day past.

I sat.

Night came.

I slept.

Day came.

I sat.

My fans were getting restless.

A plan was taking shape.  

Night fell.

I sighed and curled into sleep.  Hugging my familiar pillow  to my face for the last time.

And now we rejoin our story back in the room with my rapt audience of baby doctors.

I finish my story and smile at the faces of the baby doctors.

“Ok, now I have a question for all of you.”  I lean back in my chair.  “How do you know I’m insane?”

“People see what they expect to see.  You are brought here into a mental hospital, you are introduced to a woman you are told is, ‘unbalanced’.  Well, your expectations have been pretty well set haven’t they?  Can any of you honestly say you have even once looked at me and wondered about anything other than finding as many multisyllabic words from your overly expensive medical education you can use to make your agreement with your teacher sound as original as you feel you can get away with?”

They shift in their seats uncomfortably and chuckle self consciously

“I don’t want an answer, after all our time is almost up here isn’t it?”  I glance up at the clock on the wall.  “I leave you with that one question to ask yourselves.  How do you know that I am in fact delusional?”

“You all are in training to be doctors, so at some point you all are going to have to step out from the comforting shelter of books and teachers and make your own decisions, reach your own conclusions.  As a student the most important thing for you are the answers.  When you are out of school you will find that questions are far more important than answers and more interesting.”

I rose from my seat, smiled to all and went back to my coloring books.

chapter 12 Now I lay me down to sleep/ or the princess and the pea

They wanted me dead and now that there was a hundred thousand down on the deal they redoubled their efforts.  The screaming the honking people trying my door, the traveling thing under the floor, it never stopped never paused, never let up.  I was wearing down.  I am a stubborn woman which is fortunate stubborn was all I had left to keep me going.  I was operating in pure zombie mode.
Day after day after day.
It was Sunday.  My last Sunday.  I knew it like you know when a thunder storm is coming.  You feel it over every nerve in your skin.  They were so certain so certain, like hungry animals gathered around the prey run to ground. Waiting, hungry.  Sunday, my last Sunday.  Today I would die.
I sewed the last bead onto my coat and snipped off the thread.  It was beautiful, the big cheerful yellow submarine, the blue meanies, glovey a rainbow across the back.  I put it on and admired it.  No matter what, despite it all, I had made something beautiful and that was a victory. I hung the coat up on a hook on the wall with a smile of satisfaction.
Nightfall, death was coming for me.
I lit some candles and drew a steaming hot bath pouring into the water bathoils of sweet grass and jasmine.  I turned off the lights, in the candle light and in the flashing red neon of the Emprie Massage sign I began to strip.
I hear them, my screaming hooting fan club and ohh my aren’t they enjoying the striptease.  Much to the growing displeasure of angry girl friends.
“Stop watching her.”   Shrill angry voices in both English and Spanish.  (Again I wonder about the dating habits of urban gang members. )
I sank under the warm water.  It was so nice, so quiet, I could still hear them, but muffled, like a world away.  Quiet, peaceful, but I had to breathe so I sat up and started washing my hair.
I rose from the bath and towled dry.  I take my bath oils and sitting on my bed I massage the oil over my skin.  I am enjoying the feel of my foot in my hand.  The scent of sweet grass and jasmine, the feel of my foot in my hand, soft candle light and the flashing red neon of the Empire Massage sign that somehow inside my apartment by some weird alchemy of light, is transformed from garish red neon to a muted warm rose glow.
I put on a long black silk night gown, it settles over my skin like a dark enchantment.
Tired, I was so tired, so ready for sleep, or death.  I didn’t care anymore.  At least dead I would get some rest.
Mind you, I do believe in some sort of after life.  On the premise that either there is an ‘after life’, or there isn’t, if there isn’t then I won’t be around to listen to anyone say I told you so.  So I figure I might as well go with believing in an ‘after life.’  That being said, one thing is for dang sure.  If they did kill me I wasn’t’ going on to the ‘happy hunting grounds’ ohh no. I would be using my ‘afterlife’ to plan one hell of a reception party for when my killers eventually ‘cross over.’  And maybe I’ll check out that whole poltergeist thing, that sounded like a career with the potential for a few laughs.
I lay down.  A childhood prayer ran through my mind. ‘now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’  I pulled my blankets up and lay there waiting for sleep or death which ever, what ever, I didn’t care any more.  Too tired to care.
My demented fan club screaming up at me,  the car horns honking.  No don’t care.  Won’t care.  Sleep need sleep.
Upstairs, the computer geek the fish wife and Allen begin yet another loud argument about the timing of my death.    The fish wife as always urging them to ‘shoot her now, now god dame it!”
I sighed. (Honestly, just fucking do it.  It seemed to me that having to listen to them argue about killing me was just unreasonable)
Oh great, the thing under the floor was moving again.  One more irritation.  No, no, I don’t care, scream honk your horns, argue, the thing under the floor, I was just going to ignore it all.  I was going to sleep.
“Now, now, God dame it shoot her now! The fish wife screamed.
The thing under the floor was now right beneath me.  I could feel it vibrating the spot right between my shoulder blades.
“Now!”
My eyes flew open and I snapped out of bed falling to the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs and blankets snarling like a feral cat.
“GodDameMotherFuckerSonofacamelhumpingbitch!!!”
It was a gun.  The thing under the floor.  I could see it in my mind some radio shack remote control atv packing heat.  That’s what the computer geek was here for.  Murder by video game.
God dame I was so stupid, so fucking dumb.  Why didn’t I figure it out before?  Fuck!
I tried not to be too mad at myself, after all lack of sleep and stress will slow anyone’s brain down. ( And really who kills people like this? This, this, Rube Goldberg, Mission Impossible bullshit. Fuck.  Who did these people think they were the fucking Mossad?)
I untangled myself from my blankets and stood hands on hips glaring up at the ceiling.
“ You know. “ I yelled up at them. “I am quite sure that there are in fact more cowardly acts in the world then shooting an unarmed woman in the back while she sleeps.  But I would be hard pressed to name even three.”
“You want me dead?  Well come on then, quit the dumb shit.  You come on down here and Fucking Kill Me!  And since I know not one of you has the stones to take me on your own,  Well, go ahead, make a party of it!  Open Fucking House.  Surely two dozen to one odds are high enough for you!  Come on and Fucking get me!”
For once there was silence from them.
“Well now an’t that just something.  The whore is the only one here who isn’t a fucking pussy?”
Still raging, using all my ‘for special occasion words’, I set to work tearing my bed apart.  The bedding hit the floor in a pile, then I threw the mattress off and tore apart the pine board slats.  Still cursing a blue streak I began to rebuild my bed.
I took the hard bound books from my shelves, my books of art, history, philosophy, all big heavy books and I lay them out on the floor under my bed.  I went to my kitchen and took my cast iron skillets, steel wok, other assorted pots and pans and I piled them under the bed.  I replaced the pine board slats adding on top another layer of hard bound books, then replaced my mattress and remade my bed.
I smoothed out the sheets and blankets fluffed my pillow and went to bed.
I am drifting off.  All the shouting, honking, all the calls for my death.  Sweet sweet lullaby.
Upstairs Allen says something, for once his actors voice fails to carry, a soft rumble without meaning.
“You’re in love with the bitch.” Shouts the fish wife.
(Yeh it’s a warped old world some times)
Just before the soft welcoming darkness took me to a place not even dreams are allowed to intrude on, I thought of my least favorite fairy tale.  The Princess and the pea.  Stupid whiney princess whinging on about how poor her couldn’t sleep on top of a hundred feather beds because of one dried pea at the bottom of all those mattresses.

chapter 11 ET TU BRUTE?

Monday, everything stopped.  I woke up that morning to silence.  No screaming crack heads no blaring horns, just normal everyday traffic. 

I go out for my morning coffee.  The cars are gone, Queeny and her court have retuned to their usual corner by the alley in front of the Christian sceince church.  They watched, silent and weary, as I crossed the street to paradise doughnuts.

I returned home and read my newspaper in the blissful quiet.  The day continued quiet.  I took advantage of the respite to sleep most of the day.

Tuesday, the odd quiet continues.  It’s like that eerie calm center of the hurricane.  Well while the calm lasted I decided to make a quick shopping trip.  I was out of tea and I needed some more raid and cleaning supplies, ohh and more glue mustn’t forget the glue.

Before I head out I take a large heavy pane of glass that used to be a table top (I had kept it in the back of my closet as a might be useful someday object.  I had at the time been thinking of using it to make some shelves).  I used the pane of glass and some monofilament fishing line to rig a dead fall trap over my door.  Just in case the lock picks in the group had gained any skill.  My door was set off from the main room of the apartment, a little alcove that I had tacked a blanket over the door way of.  The door was there for the one place in the apartment where the cameras were blind.  Once the trap was set, open the door the wrong way and somebody has an unpleasant surprise.

I return from my quick run for supplies to find a new tenant moving into the building.  I met him as I was waiting for the elevator.  He was about six foot, pale skinned dark brown hair in an expensive hair cut, designer glasses and very nice shoes.

“Hi.” He said, friendly like.  “I’m just moving into apartment 501.”  He extended his hand.

He had soft hands.  Everything about him screamed ‘computer geek chic.’  The building wasn’t even wired for cable and people wearing a least a thousand dollars worth of clothing from his designer glasses to his envy me shoes, they don’t live in the slums, not even in San Francisco.

“Welcome to the neighborhood.” I said.

“Nice to meet you.  If I’ too noisy or anything just let me know.” He said.

“Oh don’t worry, if I’m not happy, you’ll know.” I said.

He laughs

They always laugh.

I head upstairs, carefully unhooking the booby trap before I enter.  I put away my ‘groceries’ and set on my little bed thinking.  Was it over?  Had they decided on a live and let live policy?  Nothing about their behavior over the past few weeks had lead me to think them capable of such reasonable behavior.  But as things were quiet I might as well enjoy it.  I caught up on my sleep.

Thursday, I go out for my morning coffee.  It is one of the oddities of inner city living that people are quite capable of ignoring anything.  So the coffee shop people I meet and greet each day,  the shop owner and his many brothers, Alan puttering around fixing the coffee the old men who gather around the coffee pot each morning as if sharing communion, I smile, they smile, we exchange ritual morning greetings. ‘Long time no see’ good morning, going to be a beautiful day.  We keep a careful distance.  I never talk about what is going on, they never ask.  I have never talked about what is going on because by doing so I would be either a. Exposing myself to the risk of talking to some one involved in this whole hallaballo  and nothing good would come of that or b. I would be involving some innocent shumck who just came in for his morning coffee in something that could get him killed.  And that is just not a nice thing to do to anyone.  

Cops, I suppose people may wonder why I wasn’t yammering for the cops.

I gave up believing in officer friendly before I gave up believing in Santa Clause.  (Actually in the matter of Santa Clause the jury is still out).

When I was nine I was in a car accident.  It was a beautiful summer day and I was out on a shopping trip with my grandmother.  My grandmother waited for the light.  My grandmother checked both ways.  My grandmother pulled out of the shopping center parking lot and we got broadsided by a cop going ninety miles an hour.  The cop had been chasing a speeder.  The cop had been running neither lights nor siren.  The speeder managed to get away without crashing into anyone.

My grandmother was thrown from the car and left most of her knee on the road.  I go off light with an ugly scar of stitches running down my leg. 

The cop got off without so much as a black eye, which just seemed unfair as all get out to me.  What really got me steamed was that the cop never stopped by to say sorry.  Didn’t even send a dime store Hallmark.  Not that Hallmark makes ‘Sorry I squished your Grandmother’ cards but still it’s the thought that counts.

This was the first time I ever met a cop and it left a life long distrust for the uniform.  But I do always use my seatbelt. 

When I was twenty I was raped.  The cops wired me up to a polygraph and enquired about the state of my virginity and what sort of kinky sex I was into.  At least the rapist never asked if I got off on having the crap beat out of me.

One day, my husband (at that time I was still reasonably happy to be married) and I are driving home when we are pulled over by two cop cars.  Four cops, guns drawn screaming at us to “Hands up, Exit Car, Don’t Make any Sudden Moves, On Your Knees.”  (four screaming men with guns, this could end badly)

Just then the real kidnaper drives by a woman sticks her head out the window as the car speeds by and screams for the cops to help her.

I worked for a short time in a hotel where the owner of the hotel let cops have free use of the rooms for an hours time in exchange for the cops ignoring his taste for chicken.

One day  (I wasn’t living in San Francisco at this time) I bought a light bulb.  Just that, a light bulb for my kitchen.  I get home, put in the new light bulb and there is a loud rude knock on my door.  I open my door and what do I find?  Six cops, three cop cars lights all aflashing in my driveway.  They accuse me of stealing a ratchet set from the hardware store where I had bought the light bulb. 

They demand to see my receipt for the light bulb.  Now it occurs to me that I had paid for the light bulb with a credit card which is of course how they got my address.  Still they want to see the receipt ok fine.

First thing I had done when I got home, even before changing the light bulb was, clean the cat box using the bag from the hardware store.  I hand them the bag.

“It’s in there officer.”  Yeh ok that was a bit mean but it made me feel good for the first time in my life to be able to give the police shit.                

The police accuse me of using the ratchet set to change the light bulb.

“Excuse me?  What sort of men are you that would use a ratchet set to change a light bulb?”

The owner of the store who I guess came along for the ride, peeps up.  He tells the cops it wasn’t me that took the ratchet set.  It’s on tape, me., the light bulb, my complete lack of ratchet setness.  Still the cops tell me to just confess.  Tell us you did it or we’ll be back with a summons

How many cops does it take to change a light bulb?

Six.

Honestly there is a point where you can’t help but take it all kinda personal.

Cynic that I am, I want to believe.  I think that’s what Fox Mulder says about UFO’s .  I want to believe

I want to believe in Matt Dillion and Aadam 12, I want to believe in.  Starsky and Hutch, I want to believe in ‘The Good Guys’.  If wishes were fishes my what fine fat fellows we would be, as my grandmother would say.

According to statistics kept by the FBI, San Franciso has the most corrupt and or incompetent police force in the entire country, with the lowest arrest and conviction rates for violent crimes like murder and rape, of any police force in any major metropolitan city in the entire country.  Congratulations San Fran your number one, a hard fought battle, I didn’t think it possible to beat out New Orleans.

Not long after I moved into my apartment the politicians were suddenly shocked to discover that there was crime in the city.  There was lots of chest thumping morality and the obligatory confessions of perhaps less the perfect actions though of course never less then angelic intentions.  The practical upshot was that the street walkers were cleared off O’Farrell street.  Since that time my neighborhood has had beat cops patrolling the street on a pretty regular basis. 

I haven’t seen a beat cop on the street since the murder rave started under my window.  Its possible they have been there but I haven’t seen them.  I don’t spend much time looking out my windows.  The view never changes. 

If the cops are walking the beat and they don’t see a mob of crack heads screaming bloody murder, hour after hour day after day, well then I guess they aren’t going to be smart enough to be of any help.

 If the cops aren’t there, why?  Have the cops been deliberately shifted away?  Then again Einstein was wrong, God does play dice with the universe, all the time.  The cops not being around could all be just chance.

/Bottom line,  I don’t feel that involving the police will in any way be helpful.

“Long time no see “ Hussein says.

“Long time no see and good morning.”  I answer.

Allen is there, this morning he is being extra special friendly, his Irish bard/humbug persona.

He, from time to time, has worked as an extra in movies shot in San Francisco.  He is most proud of his role as one of the pirates in hell in that Robin Williams film ‘What dreams may come.”

 He comments on how nice it’s been the past few days. “ Much calmer” He says.

This is the first time he has even obliquely mentioned ‘the troubles’.

“Well yes it’s been nice.  But it’s going to take more than a couple of sunny days before I step down the threat level.”

He wants me to go with him to Tiboron on a picnic.

(Picnic?  People have been trying to kill me for the past few weeks and he wants to go on a picnic?  There are times you have to wonder about men you really do.)

He was at his most,’ trying to charm the lass from the improve class,’ best. 

“It’s going to take more than a couple of quiet days before I go wandering out anywhere.”  I tried to beg off.  “I seriously have to do some grocery shopping and laundry?  A weeks worth of doing nothing but laundry before I even begin to get that mountain chipped away.”  People trying to kill me verses the desire for clean sheets, weigh it.  My laundry hamper over flowed.  “If I’m going anywhere it’s to the laundry mat.”

He kept insisting, extolling the beauties of Tiberon.  It would be good for me to get out.  He wouldn’t let it go.  Finally I relented.

“If it’s still quite by Thursday, I’ll consider it.”  He took it as a promise that I would go and looked as pleased as a puppy that had just been given his favorite wooly ball.

Later that day, I lay on my bed in the blessed quiet.  Just the soothing sounds of city traffic.  Laying there in the warm afternoon drinking in the peace.

My new upstairs neighbor is pacing the floor above my head.  His cell phone rings.

Unintended consequences,   ever since they had installed the mics and camera’s, sound from the upstairs apartment had  become easy to hear.  Like listening to voices in another room with the door ajar.

“Yeh.” He said.

“Ok, Tiburone, Thursday. Got it.”

He wasn’t the only one who ‘got it’.