The Last Time I Was Me. Cathy Lamb

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СКАЧАТЬ fingers up again. Three inches. “How could you not have a complaint?”

      He huffed and swore.

      “Please don’t swear!” I cackled, still staring, straight at that midregion.

      He took two steps toward me, which for some insane reason made me laugh even harder, and swore again.

      “Please don’t swear!”

      “Stupid bitch.”

      I admonished him once more for his foul language and he spun on his fat foot and left the store, after bellowing “Cunttttt!”

      Several older ladies with white hair were staring at me when I stood up.

      I muffled my chuckles. This was not good. I imagined what they were thinking: New gal in town. On haunches. In grocery store. Staring, laughing hysterically at Dan’s dick.

      Again, not good.

      But, the above-mentioned situation proves that most of the time you shouldn’t try to guess what people are thinking about you.

      One of them hobbled toward me, hand outstretched, smile beaming. “I don’t believe we’ve met, dear,” she said. “My name is Linda. These two crazy gals are my cohorts, Louise and Margie.”

      After the introductions, the three women ogled me through these huge, matching glasses. The frames were either purple or blue or green. Louise leaned heavily on her cane, struggled down onto her haunches, and cocked her head, exactly as I had done to Dan when I was looking at his crotch. “Is that it? Is that it?” she asked, her voice cackling with age. She held her fingers up about two inches apart. “Is that it?”

      Linda and Margie both sputtered, and the three of them, together, I kid you not, flung back their heads at the same time and laughed like hyena triplets.

      Margie scooted her walker closer to me, peered at her friends through narrowed eyes and said, “Do you like heat? I hope you like feeling as if your body is boiling!” She said the word “boiling” deep and gravelly, for emphasis.

      “I don’t date men who force their employees to live in miniscule sewage-infested pits of hell!” Linda cackled.

      “Please don’t swear!” Margie announced. “Please don’t swear, dammit!”

      “You’re a funny man,” Louise announced, shaking her finger. “A funny man!”

      The women found themselves terribly amusing and their laughter tunneled through that store. Dear me, but they thought they were funny.

      When they settled down, Linda wiped her eyes and said, “He’s trouble, Fancy Pants, you watch out.” Louise told me he was as dangerous as a rattlesnake. She hissed for emphasis. Margie said that she wished he would fall into a hole and land in hell, that everyone did, and wasn’t it disgusting how he treated the migrant workers? Shameful, horrible, we all agreed before the ladies ambled out, telling me to come to tea and vodka next Wednesday.

      Why, golly gee, why do I court trouble? I asked myself as I left. But the answer came quick: I will not keep my mouth shut about sick and horrible things like vermin-filled sheds.

      Rosvita and I had both made complaints with the state and the county about Dan the Migrant Devil. They all knew exactly who he was and all about the problems.

      Clearly nothing would get done.

      I knew that I would have to do something about dissolving that migrant camp. I didn’t know what, but I would.

      Little did I know that the problem would be taken right out of my hands.

      The next morning Rosvita and I went to breakfast at The Opera Man’s Café. Donovan was singing a song of joy, his voice booming off the log walls. When he caught sight of Rosvita, who was wearing a trio of white flowers in her black hair and a purple lace dress, he hustled on over. As soon as we were seated, menus in hand, coffee before us, he burst into song about a man in love with a woman who did not know that he existed. He sang it in Italian and English. With great gusto. He about blew my ears out.

      Rosvita hummed along with him while she glanced at the menu, her white-gloved hands tapping the table. I marveled at Donovan’s incredible voice; Rosvita hardly seemed to notice. When he was done, everyone in the restaurant clapped. Rosvita asked for a mushroom and cheese omelet. “Cook those eggs until they are almost as hard as rocks,” she told him. “Hard as rocks.”

      Donovan was our waiter, as usual, though he rarely waited on anyone else, I was told, except for Oregon’s governor, when the man was at his vacation home here in Weltana. Donovan thought the governor was a “real man, not a pansy. He says what he thinks, he does what he wants to do, and when he gets vacation time, he goes fishing.”

      As I watched Rosvita and Donovan, I was surprised to feel a bit of a smile tugging at my ole mouth.

      A wee smile. In that café with a brick fireplace, twinkling white lights, long wood tables, an ex-opera singer, and a germ fanatic.

      A wee, tiny smile, but it was there.

      That surprised me.

      Each time I ventured into the river for my daily multihour crying/drinking walk, I noticed a two-story white house across the way from Rosvita’s. The paint was cracking and chipped like dead skin; the floorboards of the front and back decks rotted through and sagging; and the siding was falling off strip by strip like a house stripper. The house looked like it was sagging into itself as a deflating silicon fake boob might. It looked like it felt done for.

      I related to that house like no one’s business simply because it looked like me. Only it was a house, I am a person and, I assumed, it did not have half the shoe collection that I had.

      A few days later, on the way back from my crying/drinking walk along the river, with a bottle of wine, I stopped and stared. No one lived in the house, Rosvita had told me. The old man and his wife who had lived there died six months apart years ago and there were no relatives. A Realtor had tried to sell it for a while, but no one was interested. The sign lay flat on the grass.

      I gingerly tiptoed up the sinking front steps and tried to open the door. At first, it wouldn’t budge. I pushed against it and it crashed to the floor. Dust and dirt billowed up in great clouds.

      While I waited for the dust to clear, I took another gulp of wine straight out of the bottle. It was only 2:00 in the afternoon, so I was restraining myself.

      I stepped on the door and invited myself in. The largish living room was to my left, the dining room to my right. Stairs climbed to the second story. It was dark and dreary inside, like an oversize cave, and the floor creaked beneath trodden-down green carpet. I smelled the expected must and mold.

      The floor in the little hallway to the kitchen wobbled and I wondered if it would give out under my weight. The mice scrambled to hide, thoroughly put out, I’m sure, that a human had invaded their home. The kitchen cabinets, dark brown like poop, hung at odd angles and the laminate counters were chewed up and stained.

      The kitchen opened up to a large family room and eating nook, but it had only one window over the sink and a cracked sliding glass door.

      I decided to do some miniremodeling and pulled СКАЧАТЬ