2004-04-20

A woman named Deborah lives near the place where I work. She's under fifty but she looks like she's sixty-five. She's bone thin, with pointy ears and big eyes and grotesque knobs on her cheeks. Because her legs have gotten all water-swollen in recent months, I made the mistake of fetching her some groceries. She then asked me to pick up a phone card for her; she's sick and alone and it's her only connection with the outside. Okay, miserable elf woman, sure. But then she starts calling me almost every day -- she's using her minutes like mad and she needs more minutes. Soon, I've gone to the H&R Block around the corner to meet her friend "Glenn," from whom I'm supposed to get $20 and with whom I must refer to Deborah as "Sarah" -- because that's what she told him her name was. Glenn is a fat elf -- round and weirdly-bearded, with twinkling eyes. He's nervous around humans and the best guess is that Deborah is blackmailing him.

���� So I don't know how many times I've dropped stuff at her apartment -- maybe six or seven -- but it feels like eighty. It's an awful thing. She lives in this little dingy place with trash piled up and mugs of soured milk left everywhere. A lot of the time she sits on the stairs -- to breathe a little, I guess. As I come up on whatever floor it is she lives on -- third or fourth, I don't remember -- she starts moaning: Chris, I feel like crap, I've got the runs, look at this -- my legs are like wood.

���� Fuck.

���� But that's not really what I think. It's the experience, but I've got a really strong sublimation faculty so instead of reacting to the reality of things -- that's she's chosen to wait there for me in nothing but a loose tank top and briefs, that her first words are about diarrhea, and that as always, she's going to ask me if this stuff I've brought her is a gift -- I decide to stand there and talk to her for twenty minutes like a normal person, about family and the nice weather and the movies. Because really what else is going to make any kind of difference?

���� I usually like helping people, but all this just makes me unhappy. Deborah is perfectly lucid and even decent to talk to; she's just -- and I guess this is probably true of all elves -- a bit of a sociopath.


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