And She Was…

“I feel good,” Rosa told me warmly today as we were walking back to my house from the convenience store.

She was puffing on a cigar and twirling a lock of her stringy brown hair around her index finger.

“We need to get you some of those skinny feminine cigarettes to smoke,” I told her. “Smoking cigars is just so unwomanly.”

Rosa smiled and said, “I really don’t give a shit what other people think. I am not looking for dates unless you are interested. Besides, those ‘feminine’ cigarettes cost an arm and a leg.”

Here we go again. Rosa has been steadily pursuing me these past few weeks. She makes little constant remarks that reek of sexual innuendo.

“Why can’t we just be friends?” I asked her as we passed the retired professor’s house who smokes a pipe when he is working in his yard. “The whole ‘us’ sleeping together thing was just weird. You are ten years older than me.”

“That crazy chick you were dating was ten years older as well,” Rosa said of Carolyn, rightly. “You didn’t complain about her age.”

“Let’s just drop it,” I said, growing uncomfortable.

“I love to see you squirm,” Rosa said as she chuckled and put her arm in my arm to pull me close.

She leaned her head upon the side of my arm as we walked quietly the rest of the way to my home. I know we looked like an interesting couple to all the prying eyes of my many nosey neighbors; the odd couple, indeed.

Rosa took a nap in my lazy boy while I busily prepared the social security disability papers for Ferret to fill out to get his disability back. I am going to drive him down to Opelika tomorrow to talk to a representative if he stays sober long enough and see if we can’t get him an emergency advance that I read about online. The money from his last paycheck is quickly running out. He has been drinking it up like a fish. I did tell him to just drink the cheapest beer or whiskey he could find and lay off the mouthwash. So far he has. That will put a good decade upon his life at his current rate of drinking.

I also talked to my father on the phone this afternoon. He wanted to know how I have been doing on my new medications. I told him I feel pretty good despite the extreme insomnia I have been experiencing. He said even my voice sounded different and I wasn’t so manic.