Precious Pear #11

Something wakes me and I stretch my foot to feel the quickly cooling sheets. How does she keep getting up before me? I turn over and see no body. No good morning. Just her watch on the nightstand. As long as she left her watch, she would be coming back the next day. So we stare face to face and count the seconds until the door shuts. 4,3,2... gone. Two months and she's still as much a mystery to me as the first day we met. Eventually she'll have to give in. Until then, I better learn a few more phrases.

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I met Jason two months ago during my vigorous campaign to not die alone. I was terrified of becoming one of those lonely old women with no friends besides my eighty-seven cats. So even if Jason wasn't perfect, he at least walked on two legs. It's possible my standards have become a bit lax. I was in church at the insistence of my mother- apparently all the "best" single men can be met through divine intervention. Whatever. I promised to go, but I didn't promise to like it. I hid the TV Guide in my hymnal and passed the time planning my inevitably solitary week. One Sunday, I had the unmistakable sensation I was being watched. I'd been caught.

"Dieu peut être très ennuyeux parfois." I felt better disagreeing with God in another language. Besides, I learned from The O'Reilly Factor that the French were Godless cowards, so maybe He wouldn't catch on.

"Oui... La vie est belle"

He had no idea what I was saying.

"Tu es completement debile"

"Mieux vaut en paix un oeuf qu'en guerre un boeuf."

That's how our relationship began. And since then, I've kept insulting him to his face while he regurgitates phrases he must have learned from Olive Garden menus. I worked up the nerve to sleep with him, but I still can't quite stomach the early morning post-coital chit chat. Too personal. I'm too smart for him and I don't care for his sense of humor, but if I have to be unhappy, I'd at least appreciate the company.

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Even if nobody notices I'm gone until the neighbors complain about the rotten smell and constant mewing, I'm determined to leave an undeniable impression on whoever cleans out my house after I die. One of my most prized possessions is a bookcase in the middle of my living room tottering under the weight of nearly eighty identical black notebooks, each filled with the memoirs of a personality that never really existed. Number 29 is a young woman whose lover nobly put himself between a bullet and the British Prime Minister. She subsequently threw herself down the stairs, determined not to go on without him; unfortunately she succeeded only in paralysis and spent the rest of her days bedridden and heartbroken. Number 41 is a 17-year old boy whose years of sexual abuse and acid addiction have convinced him he turns into a falcon at night and feeds upon virgin flesh.

My favorite is number 55. It's about a deeply depressed woman who is tormented by the knowledge that her mother unsuccessfully carried her twin in the womb for five months.

I should have been the other twin. The lucky twin. The twin that was smart enough to hang herself with the umbilical cord before having to put up with this backwards, bullshit world.

That one may or may not have been slightly auto-biographical.

Fictitious friends aside, I still harbor a fantasy that I'll eventually meet a white knight who will fully appreciate my... eccentricities. Like Jason, the funny guy at church who doesn't realize that bitch Isabelle is always insulting him. I wish somebody would fake a language for me someday. Oh well. Time to feed the cats.