Lunatic

In the kitchen your roommate has pulled a chair up to the kitchen sink and is sitting with a pile of age-black thrift store cookware in front of her, grubby little blob of steel wool in her right hand, cigarette hanging out of her mouth, tight pink foam curlers in her hair. Wearing nothing but underwear and a white camisole, sheer in patches with splashes of water. Looking for all the world like June Cleaver hopped up on some Very Good Shit. You try to slink out the door without being noticed but of course you have to walk right through her line of sight and nothing really escapes her notice, no matter how absorbed she is in scrubbing. "Where are you going, daddy-o?" "I have an appointment." You figure it is the only safe bet, nothing else will get you out of scrubbing old pots. She blows out a blue, blue cloud of smoke from the side of her mouth in what you know is her very best spaghetti-western-hardass-cowboy impression. "It's two a.m., you don't got no goddamn appointment in the middle of the night." "Yes I do." Busted. "New shrink, very exclusive, only takes appointments between midnight and four." You're making your way out the door. "Well fuck you and the horse you road in on, pard-ner." She's narrowed it down to John Wayne, or maybe Clint Eastwood, you are not sure of the difference. "Somewhere under all this baked on black shit, there is some pree-moh steel cookware." "But what if it was nonstick and you're chipping off the Teflon?" She stops scrubbing for a moment to ash her cigarette and then wiggle her fingers at you. "Oooo, what if." Back to scrubbing, more furiously than before. "More cigarettes." It's not really a question, or a request, but you'll find yourself gliding through the aisles of 7-11 anyway, trying to remember what she smokes, and trying to make an excuse for yourself as to why you're there. She won't pay you back, she never does.