Strangers in the night
Jan. 4th, 2003 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misfoksThe dog get at least two daily walks; every morning and evening we go down the block, cut across the big, vacant corner lot, and finally to the nearest patch of grass. She doesn't like doing her thing on sand.
While we were out the other night, we heard someone talking behind us. It wasn't very loud, so I figured someone was on their cellphone. By the time we'd started across the empty lot I heard something about "dog" and soon realized the woman'd been talking to me the whole time from her distance behind. So naturally I walked towards her to give das pooch a chance to socialize more. In the darkness I could only make out that she was light-haired, fairly slim, and had a voice and scent that hinted strongly at a long-time smoking habit. Dog didn't like her at all and growled.
We chatted briefly; I gathered that she was forty-three and had moved in with her mother nearby as she dealt with going through a divorce. The reasons weren't entirely clear, but seemed to suggest he had cheated on her. Naturally, she had a lot of anger, and it showed. I nodded and sympathized with her situation, but eventually indicated that I wished to continue the walk I'd started. She wanted us to meet back outside after she'd gotten a soda at the nearby convenience store and Dog had done her thing in the grass. We didn't meet back up, and I didn't particularly mind.
Today I ran some errands, and was greeted by name as I pulled back into the driveway. You already know by whom. She'd apparantly gotten a better look at me in the dark than I had of her, but in daylight it was more apparant that the years hadn't been particularly kind to her. But she was terribly keen to get together with me somehow--to get me to drive her home, to take nude pictures of her when she noticed the omnipresent camera over my shoulder, to get together that very night. She showed me the recent knife wound across her back, a present from her husband she said, then with a furtive look about told me that the PLO was out to kill her, and how Prince Charles himself had warned her when the two of them were in Utah that she would run into this trouble. And it went on and got ever weirder. I played up my cold a bit more in an effort to break off the conversation politely and eventually extricated myself by accepting her phone number and nodding some more at her insistance that I call her. It occured to me that she's only the second person I'd ever remembered hearing the dog growl at, and made a mental note to trust her character judgement more in the future.
I could leave the story at that, with a laugh at this freak and dismay that she knows where I live now. Truth is I do feel sorry for her, in no small part because her pattern of nonsense reminded me rather a lot of someone who's been close to me for many years. She'd been fine for quite a while, had a solid, professional career, and seemed to have a bright future ahead of her. But she too had herself gotten involved with an abusive boyfriend, had a dramatic car accident, and somewhere along the way she lost her mind. I flew out soon after she'd snapped to see how I could help her; she swore that UFOs had implanted messages in her brain during our drive home from the airport (and was amazed later that I didn't remember seeing the lights in the sky), that local professionals were conspiring against her to keep her out of a job, and once again all manner of paranoid delusions I can't even remember anymore. With help she'd eventually gotten checked into a clinic and got on medication, but as soon as she was out she decided she was just fine and dropped off her meds forever.
Today after numerous evictions and public nuisance arrests she's living in a motel somewhere, and calls every once in a while to either enthuse over one thing or rant angrily over another; either way, she makes little sense. Best as we can make out she's making a living at a topless club, but she refuses to talk much about what she does or even where she's living. She doesn't want help, and those of us who care about her are helpless but to watch and hope she'll be OK.
Unrelated quote du jour: "Yo, FRODO--eyes up here!"
While we were out the other night, we heard someone talking behind us. It wasn't very loud, so I figured someone was on their cellphone. By the time we'd started across the empty lot I heard something about "dog" and soon realized the woman'd been talking to me the whole time from her distance behind. So naturally I walked towards her to give das pooch a chance to socialize more. In the darkness I could only make out that she was light-haired, fairly slim, and had a voice and scent that hinted strongly at a long-time smoking habit. Dog didn't like her at all and growled.
We chatted briefly; I gathered that she was forty-three and had moved in with her mother nearby as she dealt with going through a divorce. The reasons weren't entirely clear, but seemed to suggest he had cheated on her. Naturally, she had a lot of anger, and it showed. I nodded and sympathized with her situation, but eventually indicated that I wished to continue the walk I'd started. She wanted us to meet back outside after she'd gotten a soda at the nearby convenience store and Dog had done her thing in the grass. We didn't meet back up, and I didn't particularly mind.
Today I ran some errands, and was greeted by name as I pulled back into the driveway. You already know by whom. She'd apparantly gotten a better look at me in the dark than I had of her, but in daylight it was more apparant that the years hadn't been particularly kind to her. But she was terribly keen to get together with me somehow--to get me to drive her home, to take nude pictures of her when she noticed the omnipresent camera over my shoulder, to get together that very night. She showed me the recent knife wound across her back, a present from her husband she said, then with a furtive look about told me that the PLO was out to kill her, and how Prince Charles himself had warned her when the two of them were in Utah that she would run into this trouble. And it went on and got ever weirder. I played up my cold a bit more in an effort to break off the conversation politely and eventually extricated myself by accepting her phone number and nodding some more at her insistance that I call her. It occured to me that she's only the second person I'd ever remembered hearing the dog growl at, and made a mental note to trust her character judgement more in the future.
I could leave the story at that, with a laugh at this freak and dismay that she knows where I live now. Truth is I do feel sorry for her, in no small part because her pattern of nonsense reminded me rather a lot of someone who's been close to me for many years. She'd been fine for quite a while, had a solid, professional career, and seemed to have a bright future ahead of her. But she too had herself gotten involved with an abusive boyfriend, had a dramatic car accident, and somewhere along the way she lost her mind. I flew out soon after she'd snapped to see how I could help her; she swore that UFOs had implanted messages in her brain during our drive home from the airport (and was amazed later that I didn't remember seeing the lights in the sky), that local professionals were conspiring against her to keep her out of a job, and once again all manner of paranoid delusions I can't even remember anymore. With help she'd eventually gotten checked into a clinic and got on medication, but as soon as she was out she decided she was just fine and dropped off her meds forever.
Today after numerous evictions and public nuisance arrests she's living in a motel somewhere, and calls every once in a while to either enthuse over one thing or rant angrily over another; either way, she makes little sense. Best as we can make out she's making a living at a topless club, but she refuses to talk much about what she does or even where she's living. She doesn't want help, and those of us who care about her are helpless but to watch and hope she'll be OK.
Unrelated quote du jour: "Yo, FRODO--eyes up here!"
