An Unexpected Lunch
Apr 28, 2009 18:39:39 GMT
Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2009 18:39:39 GMT
Do you associate with any certifiably insane people? I do. This morning my office phone began to ring long before the official opening time, and my caller ID quickly informed me that it was a personal call from someone who had no reason to call me at that time of day. So I ignored it.
I went down for coffee with my other early colleagues, and when we returned 15 minutes later, I saw that 4 messages were waiting on my phone. I didn’t give it another thought and figured that I would listen to those messages a little later. However, my phone rang and office hours had begun. The number was masked, as the work calls often are, so I replied. It was the crazy friend again. I had been caught out, because she is as sly as she is crazy.
“There you are,” she says. “So, do you agree about the pizza later on?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Oh,” I say. “I just arrived. I see the message lamp is lit on my telephone, but I haven’t had a chance to check the messages yet.”
“Well, I called the sales department number, too, [fuck!!! She is crazy! And a stalker!] and your colleague said that you must be busy. So, can I bring the pizza? I have business to do on your street later on, so I’m going to be right next to your office.”
I desperately tried to think of reasons why she couldn’t bring the pizza (or herself), but it was too early in the morning to be clever. I said, “Pizza isn’t really something that I eat.”
“It should still be warm when I arrive. You have to help me with my diet. If you eat it, it means that I won’t,” she replied. “It’s really good.”
“You know I only have 30 minutes to eat,” I say desperately.
“No problem. So, what time?”
“I have to eat really early, between noon and 12:30.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you downstairs at noon.”
Shit shit shit shit shit. I met this person in Budapest about 25 years ago when she wasn’t quite crazy, albeit unusual. She was travelling with a Vietnamese friend and both had left their husbands back in Paris. Anyway, we became friends (?) and I was there for the birth of her children, her divorce, her cancer, her splitting up with her other friends, the family visits from Eastern Europe, but I slowly but surely increased my distance from her.
Only about once every 3 or 4 months might I receive a phone call to tell me about her ex-husband having her arrested, the time she was interned in a psychiatric hospital, her bank problems. All this was interspersed with completely good-humored tales of trips to Cuba, Poland or Dubai, more details than anybody could ever want to know about her sexual adventures, then another round of police interventions, court orders, restraining orders and psychiatrists.
The clock meant nothing to her since she spent most of her time living on sick leave. I might get calls at 7:00 or 19:00 or midnight depending on her whims. If I hung up immediately, no hard feelings, though – I have to give her credit for that. Her ex got custody of her two sons, of course, and she would call me in distress if they were afraid to spend their school holidays with her or did not want to participate in the weird activities that she proposed.
She realized at one time that her apartment shared a wall with a large office that had been abandoned several years earlier. So she knocked down an opening and moved into the extra space. I visited her and it was totally weird to wander through these empty areas. She had moved her television and a couple of chairs into the big office, but nothing else. She was expelled a few years later. They must know her well at the police office.
Anyway, I put an alert on my computer for 11:45 so that I could steel myself for her arrival. It made its little Microsoft ding as scheduled but just 5 minutes later the building receptionist called me. Oh, poor Khaled. He has seen it all. “There is someone here for you. She says the pizza is still slightly warm.”
“I’ll be right down.”
She was beaming as she saw me. We hurried out of the building. “There’s a bench,” she said.
“No, let’s go down the street.”
“You mean you don’t want to sit in front of your office and have all of your colleagues see us?”
“Exactly.”
We went to Place de l’Alma and a few steps farther to Place de le Reine Astrid, where there is a small square with benches and an old stone statue of two women embracing. “To Belgium from a grateful France.” Queen Astrid of Belgium died in a car accident, so I suppose that it is appropriate that it is right at the entrance to the tunnel in which Diana Spencer died in a car accident.
She says, “At least you accept to see me. My two sons don’t want to have anything to do with me.”
It’s terrible to get points just because you are weak and don’t know how to reject somebody.
“I ate half of the pizza on the metro. I couldn’t help myself. And I drank some of the wine straight out of the bottle on the train. People were looking at me.”
I say, “Of course they looked at you. If you are going to be a metro wino, you are supposed to sit on the seats in the station and watch the trains go by. You know that.”
“Yes, I do. In fact, there was this man sitting across from me and staring at me and I told him, ‘yes, I know that I’m not supposed to be doing this!’ But it’s a really good Burgundy and it was only 1.75€ at Lidl. If I had gone to Nicolas, the Burgundys start at 8€.”
So we sit on a bench and she starts rooting around in her plastic bag.
“It’s not a pizza at all,” she says. “It’s a 3-cheese tart.”
Half of it is gone. It is sitting in an aluminum tin.
“I wasn’t going to eat any of it, but it just smelled too good in the metro. So I started digging at it, but as you can see, I trimmed it with the knife so that it doesn't look like rats attaced it now.”
The knife is a huge heavy dagger, not at all a kitchen knife. It is the kind of knife that crazy people use to stab people unexpectedly. I cut the tart and pick up a piece and start eating it. I don’t want to annoy her.
“Wait, let me decorate it with salad.” She pulls some pieces of lettuce out of the bag and places them in the aluminum tin. “And I just brought one glass for you. I figured that if there were two glasses in the bag, they would break.” It is a champagne glass. She fills it with wine.
She babbles about bailiffs and having possessions repossessed and she shows me the envelope that has brought her to the neighborhood. I keep eating. And I must confess that the ultra cheap Burgundy is indeed excellent. Her ex-husband was from a family of winemakers. “Can I drink out of your glass?” Of course she could. She is also munching on lettuce leaves that she is dragging out of the plastic bag.
The envelope is just an ordinary mass mail envelope containing some sort of advertising but with a return address just a few street numbers from my office. What has disturbed her is that it says “Mme. K….. Null” as the recipient. To me, it just looks like the computer program that prepared the envelope had a family name but no first name and it put ‘Null’ by default. This anomaly has set her off.
“Don’t you have anything better to do with your days than go and ask about this?” I say, keeping my eye on the knife.
“Absolutely not!” she exclaims. “I have nothing to do with my days now that I am on permanent sick leave. And I want to know why they wrote to me.”
Okay. I look at my watch and say “Better start getting back.” Which we do.
Safely back in my office, I start working again, some crap about credit cards, and the phone rings. There she is again. “I just had to tell you that there is a spectacular alligator coat at Hermès for just 78,000€!”
“Oh?”
“And it’s real. It looked fake to me, so I went in and asked and they said it was real. I guess the fake stuff is done so well now that when you see the real stuff, it doesn’t look authentic.”
“You’re probably right. I’m really busy now, so I have to let you go. Keep in touch.”
I know she will.
I went down for coffee with my other early colleagues, and when we returned 15 minutes later, I saw that 4 messages were waiting on my phone. I didn’t give it another thought and figured that I would listen to those messages a little later. However, my phone rang and office hours had begun. The number was masked, as the work calls often are, so I replied. It was the crazy friend again. I had been caught out, because she is as sly as she is crazy.
“There you are,” she says. “So, do you agree about the pizza later on?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Oh,” I say. “I just arrived. I see the message lamp is lit on my telephone, but I haven’t had a chance to check the messages yet.”
“Well, I called the sales department number, too, [fuck!!! She is crazy! And a stalker!] and your colleague said that you must be busy. So, can I bring the pizza? I have business to do on your street later on, so I’m going to be right next to your office.”
I desperately tried to think of reasons why she couldn’t bring the pizza (or herself), but it was too early in the morning to be clever. I said, “Pizza isn’t really something that I eat.”
“It should still be warm when I arrive. You have to help me with my diet. If you eat it, it means that I won’t,” she replied. “It’s really good.”
“You know I only have 30 minutes to eat,” I say desperately.
“No problem. So, what time?”
“I have to eat really early, between noon and 12:30.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you downstairs at noon.”
Shit shit shit shit shit. I met this person in Budapest about 25 years ago when she wasn’t quite crazy, albeit unusual. She was travelling with a Vietnamese friend and both had left their husbands back in Paris. Anyway, we became friends (?) and I was there for the birth of her children, her divorce, her cancer, her splitting up with her other friends, the family visits from Eastern Europe, but I slowly but surely increased my distance from her.
Only about once every 3 or 4 months might I receive a phone call to tell me about her ex-husband having her arrested, the time she was interned in a psychiatric hospital, her bank problems. All this was interspersed with completely good-humored tales of trips to Cuba, Poland or Dubai, more details than anybody could ever want to know about her sexual adventures, then another round of police interventions, court orders, restraining orders and psychiatrists.
The clock meant nothing to her since she spent most of her time living on sick leave. I might get calls at 7:00 or 19:00 or midnight depending on her whims. If I hung up immediately, no hard feelings, though – I have to give her credit for that. Her ex got custody of her two sons, of course, and she would call me in distress if they were afraid to spend their school holidays with her or did not want to participate in the weird activities that she proposed.
She realized at one time that her apartment shared a wall with a large office that had been abandoned several years earlier. So she knocked down an opening and moved into the extra space. I visited her and it was totally weird to wander through these empty areas. She had moved her television and a couple of chairs into the big office, but nothing else. She was expelled a few years later. They must know her well at the police office.
Anyway, I put an alert on my computer for 11:45 so that I could steel myself for her arrival. It made its little Microsoft ding as scheduled but just 5 minutes later the building receptionist called me. Oh, poor Khaled. He has seen it all. “There is someone here for you. She says the pizza is still slightly warm.”
“I’ll be right down.”
She was beaming as she saw me. We hurried out of the building. “There’s a bench,” she said.
“No, let’s go down the street.”
“You mean you don’t want to sit in front of your office and have all of your colleagues see us?”
“Exactly.”
We went to Place de l’Alma and a few steps farther to Place de le Reine Astrid, where there is a small square with benches and an old stone statue of two women embracing. “To Belgium from a grateful France.” Queen Astrid of Belgium died in a car accident, so I suppose that it is appropriate that it is right at the entrance to the tunnel in which Diana Spencer died in a car accident.
She says, “At least you accept to see me. My two sons don’t want to have anything to do with me.”
It’s terrible to get points just because you are weak and don’t know how to reject somebody.
“I ate half of the pizza on the metro. I couldn’t help myself. And I drank some of the wine straight out of the bottle on the train. People were looking at me.”
I say, “Of course they looked at you. If you are going to be a metro wino, you are supposed to sit on the seats in the station and watch the trains go by. You know that.”
“Yes, I do. In fact, there was this man sitting across from me and staring at me and I told him, ‘yes, I know that I’m not supposed to be doing this!’ But it’s a really good Burgundy and it was only 1.75€ at Lidl. If I had gone to Nicolas, the Burgundys start at 8€.”
So we sit on a bench and she starts rooting around in her plastic bag.
“It’s not a pizza at all,” she says. “It’s a 3-cheese tart.”
Half of it is gone. It is sitting in an aluminum tin.
“I wasn’t going to eat any of it, but it just smelled too good in the metro. So I started digging at it, but as you can see, I trimmed it with the knife so that it doesn't look like rats attaced it now.”
The knife is a huge heavy dagger, not at all a kitchen knife. It is the kind of knife that crazy people use to stab people unexpectedly. I cut the tart and pick up a piece and start eating it. I don’t want to annoy her.
“Wait, let me decorate it with salad.” She pulls some pieces of lettuce out of the bag and places them in the aluminum tin. “And I just brought one glass for you. I figured that if there were two glasses in the bag, they would break.” It is a champagne glass. She fills it with wine.
She babbles about bailiffs and having possessions repossessed and she shows me the envelope that has brought her to the neighborhood. I keep eating. And I must confess that the ultra cheap Burgundy is indeed excellent. Her ex-husband was from a family of winemakers. “Can I drink out of your glass?” Of course she could. She is also munching on lettuce leaves that she is dragging out of the plastic bag.
The envelope is just an ordinary mass mail envelope containing some sort of advertising but with a return address just a few street numbers from my office. What has disturbed her is that it says “Mme. K….. Null” as the recipient. To me, it just looks like the computer program that prepared the envelope had a family name but no first name and it put ‘Null’ by default. This anomaly has set her off.
“Don’t you have anything better to do with your days than go and ask about this?” I say, keeping my eye on the knife.
“Absolutely not!” she exclaims. “I have nothing to do with my days now that I am on permanent sick leave. And I want to know why they wrote to me.”
Okay. I look at my watch and say “Better start getting back.” Which we do.
Safely back in my office, I start working again, some crap about credit cards, and the phone rings. There she is again. “I just had to tell you that there is a spectacular alligator coat at Hermès for just 78,000€!”
“Oh?”
“And it’s real. It looked fake to me, so I went in and asked and they said it was real. I guess the fake stuff is done so well now that when you see the real stuff, it doesn’t look authentic.”
“You’re probably right. I’m really busy now, so I have to let you go. Keep in touch.”
I know she will.