Strange girl stands by the mailboxes. Today she is wearing a leopard-print T-shirt with a cursive Y and red pants with green stripes. She reminds me of a leftover Christmas decoration gone very wrong. Her shiny black hair splays against her shoulders in chunks that are not chic, just indifferent. Odd neighbor pretends to read her mail. Behind old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses her eyes are moving too fast to really be taking in words. She is practically in the REM stage. The lingerie catalog she is looking at belongs to the woman in 12C. I know this because I got it by mistake yesterday and placed it in the mail-swap box this morning…along with a note asking 12C to please notify all her favorite exotic clothing distributors to correct her address on file.
I sense I am supposed to speak to basement-dwelling neighbor, but I am dragging; I just want to walk on by. My vow, as of late, has been to not ignore these tugs at my heart. I’m hoping they will eventually lead to something life changing rather than just polite mailbox encounters.
“Hi…” I say this with the pause where her name should go. How does one forget a name that begins with Y?
“Oh. Hey. Do you have cable?” She looks up from a display of garter belts to ask me this most important question.
“Yes. And you?” I regret the conversation already.
“No. But I’m thinking about it. Have you traveled to Asia?”
“Not yet.” But it sounds good about now.
“What do you do for fun?” She surprises me with a normal get-acquainted question. My mouth opens to introduce the long list, but my mind spins trying to pick up on anything that I do outside of work, let alone “do for fun.” Little does she know she has brought up a touchy subject for me. I must wear my lack of frivolity on my sensible sleeve.
She offers some assistance. “I’ll bet you do fascinating things like rock climb and go to art exhibits.” Her activity pairing is as compatible as her top and pants.
“Well, not lately.” Now I am disgusted with myself that I have no plans to scale the wall of the Tucson gallery.
“Do you spend a lot of time online?”
This exercise in chitchat is not making me feel better about my life. “No, hardly ever. Though I did just get email at work.”
“I had you pegged for a real active type. Like dating a lot and going out. Having friends…” her voice trails off as she starts to walk away, leaving me dazed and confused.
“Good to see you,” I say to her small backside with a bit of sarcasm. How do I go from following a tug of the heart to being sarcastic?
I gather my mail and quickly survey the bills vs. correspondence ratio. All bills except for one Golden Horizons envelope, which must be my W-2 forms. For some people, this is a momentous occasion, even a welcomed event in the cycle of their year. I have never found it to be such.
Elmo, my cat, is waiting for me in the entryway. I rush past him to the bathroom. “Sorry, guy,” I offer as he follows me and waits for me to appreciate him. On my way to the kitchen, I scoop up this blob of gray-and-white fur and kiss his tummy. He hates this and regrets greeting me at all. I feed him his usual half can of nondescript mush and deprive myself of any people morsels until I have made a call to my new accountant.
A brusque, nasal voice answers the phone. “No One Lewis’ Accounting, can I assist you?” He says this with great reluctance and without a hint of the humor (albeit terrible humor) the business name suggests.
“Yes, you sure can, Lewis. This is Mari…Mari Hamilton…Sadie’s friend?” I wait for recognition and get zilch. “You said to call when I got my W-2s.”
More silence. I can hear the tap-tap-tapping of a laptop computer on his end. He is busy helping people who have assets worth assessing.
“Well, I got ’em. The forms. Those forms you mentioned. Got ’em.” I say this over and over until he interrupts.
“Can you meet after hours?”
“Sure.”
“How about eight. And bring that other paperwork I told you to round up.”
“Tonight?” I feel rushed. I am one who likes to gently enter the arena of financial details.
The fingernail to chalkboard sound of an inkjet printer reminds me that Lewis awaits my response. “Tonight is great. So your office will be open?”
“I don’t meet here. Too many banker boxes. I like to do business at LuLu’s. There is a booth I practically rent there.” He snickers at this. I knew his sad sense of humor had to surface eventually. Great. My accountant works his numbers like a bookie from a back booth at the most archaic restaurant chain in America. I believe this location is one of its last links.
“Do you know the place?” He asks this seriously. As if anyone can miss the bright green roof and the purple-coated brick front. Should I inform him that there are days I deliberately drive a different route to work so that I do not have to face this building before 9:00 A.M.?
“Should I ask for you at the counter?” I jab.
“Margo will be expecting you,” he reveals, once again, his brilliant lack of humor and hangs up the phone without ending the conversation. Apparently, when numbers are your friends, social niceties are not required. I run through my multiplication tables in case there is a long-buried passion and the excuse for indifference I have been seeking all of my life.
Nothing. Just bad memories of lining up in fourth grade on Fridays for math flash card competitions.