At Least They're Committed

The entire line of business people waiting for the 122X watches me as I stumble like a drunken whore to my place at the bus stop. Old women, middle aged men, fat people, smokers and various other weary souls look me up and down, assessing the appropriateness of a 40ish woman (I’m 51, thank you very much) wearing a skinny black spaghetti strap dress and knee-high boots. The dress they can understand, despite its unprofessional appearance, because it’s a 90 degree day. Besides, I’m toting a blazer of sorts for if-or-when I do stagger into work. But the boots?

I stand in line then with the rest of the lemmings (as Sting would call them) and tell myself the condescending glares are only my imagination, but really I don’t care and I don’t have to tell myself that because it’s true. I check out the homemade flyer hanging on Plexiglas in the gazebo. “Lost, black cat,” it says and there’s a photo of a black cat on it with yellow eyes and I wonder why the owner even bothered with the photo because this black cat looks like every other black cat and there’s not one distinguishing mark on it. They could have saved on ink if they’d simply put, “Lost, black cat.”

By this time, aware that I’m not a drunken whore (I smell like Shea butter and vanilla, not sweated-out booze from the night before), the 122Xers look down at my black boots and think to themselves, “If she’s having a hard time walking, why in heavens name would she be wearing boots with heels?” To which I would reply, had anyone mustered the courage to ask, that strangely in my current state heels are less painful than flats, including running shoes. D says maybe it has to do with my high arches. I have lovely feet, but it’s true that I do rather walk in a wonky manner and it seems to have caught up with me. Maybe the hip isn’t the trigger, maybe it’s the feet. I go back to the doc next Wednesday.

I’m not wearing the blazer I wanted to (nice transition, eh?) because I couldn’t find the slightly more colorful and much more flattering one. It’s in a basket or my closet or something, but I’ve been unable to kneel or sort, so my laundry is in piles throughout the bedroom.

Instead I’ve been sedentary, reading the book that was recommended to me and it’s decent enough so I should have it done by the weekend, leaving me to find another avenue for my sloth. It’s obvious that the poor missing woman isn’t a poor missing woman because her diary entries go from playful and genuine to methodical and contrived. She’s making herself out to be the ever-hopeful, long-suffering wife trying to reconnect with her husband, and that’s full of shit. I’m sure that’s why the author is focusing on the husband’s actual thoughts and relying on a diary to tell her side.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Agatha Christie evidently pulled a similar stunt when she found out her husband was having an affair (which this husband in this book is doing as well, of course) but unfortunately for her she was recognized wherever it was that she moved for her ‘new life.’

Enough speculation. Pondering whether I’ve the gumption to start sorting through the laundry. Nah, think it’s time to hobble out and sit my ample ass on the porch and read some more. I’m hoping I’m wrong, you know. I’m hoping she’s dead and that her parents did it because they’re broke and likely had a bunch of insurance on her. And I’m hoping when I get up tomorrow my hip will be miraculously healed and I can get back on track on my exercising. And I hope those people find their black cat alive, and . . . Heh. As if.