Sunday, July 09, 2006

There's Something About Scary Mary

I have a housemate who lives, and has lived for quite some time, in the basement bachelour apartment in my house. It's a dark, dismal little cubbyhole fit for dwarves, spiders, and not much else.

Scary Mary, a late-fifty-something wire-haired woman of great personal acreage seems, on the outside anyway, to be someone terrified of leaving her home. Nearly all of her goods are delivered to her via a number of different men in cars, and she views most people with a very wary eye.

She spends some of her idle time poking peanuts through her wartime storm windows to the happiest squirrels in Calgary; the rest of her time, she spends trying to seduce me.

Or, at least, that's what i think.

Our first meeting was not long after I moved in. I had been warned that SM was a bit of a recluse, but I am so full of confidence in my charm that I saw her as more of a challenge than an obstacle. And I needed help turning on the clothes washer (it's a decommissioned coin-op with it's own set of quirks, you see).

Knock knock knocking on her door produced an awful lot of crashing about, and a nervous call to "wait a minute". More than a minute later SM answered the door, her massive corrective lens aviators riding low on her nose, a nice top, and the most moth-eaten pair of jogging pants--can you call them that when they clearly serve no such purpose?--barely covering anything. So dilapidated were these "pants" that she had to clutch part of a pantleg to cover her "bathing suit area"--even still, I saw a buffet of inner thigh that I would certainly not revisit for a second helping, regardless of whether there were popcorn shrimp or not.

SM- "I wasn't dressed when you knocked."
B- (in my head) "You still aren't." (Out of my mouth)"Sorry to interrupt. . . I can't work the clothes washer."

SM moves like those large-boned beasts you see moving around MacDonald's; they always seem to be falling forward, rather than walking forward, and as a result move in a series of small hard stomps.

After a helpful tutorial on the washing machine, SM got serious on me:

SM- "If you find me lying in the hall, don't worry--unless I'm bleeding. I have epilepsy."
B- "Should I do anything? Put you in a recovery position?"
SM- "Just leave me."
B- "Good to know."

Weeks later, SM furthered her seduction of B when she approached me, in the glow of basement twilight, to tell me:

SM- "After 11pm I have my bath, and usually don't have any clothes on when I go to my bathroom."

Her bathroom is by the laundry room, outside her apartment.

B- "Oh!"
SM- "So if you could not come down--I'm not dressed."
B- "I will avoid it at all costs--I promise."
SM- "Thanks."
B- "My pleasure."

I couldn't tell if I was being propositioned or warned. I've been treating it like a warning.

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