On Saturday, I leaned across to Emergency Contact and hissed, “Remember me telling you stories about that horrible Miss G?”
“Yes”, hissed back EC.
“Well, that’s her. Eat what you can as fast as you can, we’ve got to time our escape.”
EC and I were in a café having breakfast and Miss G was filling the doorway. She’d had to lose weight before even being allowed to have lap band surgery. After the surgery, she made up for the lack of room in her stomach by permanently having a straw attached to a flavoured milk carton hanging out of her head. The surgery procedure was doomed to failure. Filling a doorway was no challenge.
While Miss G was eating two cakes washed down with litre of Diet Coke (diet, so it’s alright) I threw a handful of cash at the counter and we made our break for the car.
A little later, realising we needed to stop at a supermarket, EC started to reverse-park into a spot right out the front. I started to panic.
“She’s there. Oh Christ she’s there. Fuck. Don’t stop. Don’t park. We’ve got to go.”
EC’s panic reaction was to lapse into helpless giggling and stop dead, halfway through the parking manoeuvre. I had turned my back on the window and was facing into the car so Miss G wouldn’t recognise me. I was terrified and staring wildly at EC who was really starting to laugh.
I couldn’t stand it, “I can see her in your sunglasses. We HAVE to get out of here. Oh god oh Christ oh shit.”
“What’s soooo bad?” Asked EC, finishing the park.
“She liked me,” I explained, adding Puss-in-Boots eyes to the affect.
“Oh,” said EC.
Watching Miss G in EC’s glasses, I timed my exit from the car and went as quickly as I could without running, to the nearest knot of people so I could lose myself in them.
While EC was in the supermarket, I kept an eye on Miss G using reflections and glances. To make it look more natural, I engaged with the small group around me as naturally as I could. They had a card table and some pamphlets and were really interested in me. I gave them two neurons of attention. What was really getting to me was why hadn’t Miss G moved on? She was just hanging around the side of our car. Why wouldn’t she just, bloody, move on? Get a life! Get away from the car!
As I was concluding whatever it was I was doing with the card table mob, EC came out of the supermarket and thankfully, Miss G started to move down the street. We could make it back to the safety of the car and then all would be alright.
In the car, I looked at the envelope, key ring, tax forms and various other bits of paraphernalia I’d collected while I was performing surveillance on the car.
It turned out that I had signed up to give the UNHCR $40 a month for the next year.
And in a couple of ways, I don’t mind. The thought of undernourished people getting dollars from me because I was scared of an over-nourished person, appeals to my sense of universal balance. That, and the fact that it could have been so much worse than saying goodbye to $480.
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