ladies what lunch

It’s lunch with the ladies again. Clare’s going on about the man she’s getting ready to dump and the one she’s trading him in for. “He doesn’t have Roger’s money, but with a body like that, who needs money?”

Gill does. “Puhlease. A nice body never got a girl anything but a house full of brats. Money, on the other hand,” she pauses. Sips her wine. Flashes her ring. “Gets you a whole lot more.” She’ll take money over muscle any day. She has a Porsche and a fat fiancee to prove it.

I want to talk about skin cream and facials and this vein below my 29 year old eye, but Chaz is discussing her arranged marriage.

“I’ll marry him. I’m not bothered.” She really isn’t. “I don’t have time to find my own husband, and the whole scene bores me.” Chaz is Bollywood gorgeous. With perfect skin and perfect hair and a Balenciaga stash I borrow from at least once a week. “But I’m not going to Pakistan, and I’m going to work, and I’m not changing my hair or my clothes.” She means it too.

Luisa says she wishes someone would arrange a marriage for her and then asks how I managed the whole trans-Atlantic-continental thing for so long.

I say “I’ll tell you, but I’ll have to kill you,” and am only half joking. “The world really doesn’t need to know about the devilish persistence that can be me.” I also remind her it’s been a few years since we had to tackle border patrols to be together.

“Are you moving back to Italy with him?” Clare is talking to me, but she’s looking at Gill.

“No. I think it’s France or Amsterdam. Something like that.” Is Gill’s reply.

“He’s Italian,” says Chaz who tries rattling off the name Palenzona and looks at me for affirmation.

“He’s English,” I say. “He’s always been English.” The elusive Mr T. “And he’s not going anywhere at the moment.”

Chaz is hungry and bored. “Oh anyway, what are we having?”

I order a starter only, fork it around the plate, and try not to frown. The weekend woes are too fresh.

I’m still on Ryvita.

weekend woes

One minute I’m fine. The next, not so much. Two hours doubled over the toilet bowl, followed by fits (momma hates this word) and faints.

T makes a bed of towels on the bathroom floor. Gets a cool cloth for my forehead. Feels like it weighs a ton. I try to sit up and throw up but I can’t. So I lay down and do it. Because it’s all I can do. Not a good idea. ‘People die like this’, I think, and pass out again.

The guy with the glasses and the real soft hands gets there first. He smells like my grandmother. I’m hallucinating and I know it. I tell him “Ma, there’s a baby in the wall.” He puts an IV in my arm, one of those double header kinds, and rubber bands an oxygen mask to my face. I like it. O. Fresh. From the can. It’s great.

In the ambulance my chest goes tight, and starts to hurt. A lot. I can’t breathe and I’m still sick. I throw up in my mask and the woman next to me straps on another. Four hours later I still feel like I’m dying; but I’m pretty sure I’m not. I’m too young and too healthy and there’d be more than three nurses hovering around if I were.

I ask for a blanket ’cause I can’t stop shaking. I get no blanket and a fan – a flashback to age six, Scarlet Fever and an ice bath. My blood pressure is higher than its ever been (excluding a bad anesthesia trip when I was 17) and I can’t feel my left leg, but my stomach is emptied and the drugs are kicking in.

By the next day almost-normal is on its way back. That semi-shock state the body goes into after being violently ill is settling in. I say a prayer for a poor somebody going into cardiac arrest in the corner, and then spend more hours than I’d like listening to an old lady across the ward squeal ‘I gotta weeeeeeee’.

T is asleep in a chair next to me, looking worn and tired and gorgeous.

tag or something like it

Any questions: See HattiGrace.

I AM: a talker.
I WANT: to breathe long deep breaths and then relax.
I HATE: bitterness and pretension.
I LOVE: a lot.

I MISS: mountains I’ll never go home to. sun that shines when it should.
I FEAR: too much.
I HEAR: the laugh of a man. my brother’s sigh. city streets.
I WONDER: how I’ll cope. when I’ll finish. what will be.
I REGRET: wasted days. promises not kept.

I AM NOT: patient.
I DANCE: in the dark. in pajamas. with my eyes closed.
I SING: when I’m all alone.

I AM NOT ALWAYS: the person I want to be.

I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: stories and margaritas.
I WRITE: all the time.
I CONFUSE: people with my accent.
I NEED: deadlines.
I SHOULD: stop dwelling. get on with it.
I START: and then get bored.
I FINISH: fruit and nut flapjacks.