By D. STRAWBERRY
The antiquated rotary phone on her otherwise empty desk rang suddenly — after she stared at it for three hours and 17 minutes — breaking the silence and jarring her in her chair like a frying pan full of kielbasa to the back of the head.
“Was it him?” she must’ve asked herself. “Could it be? Would he be so bold as to call before the time we scheduled on our calendars following our darling last convergence? Oh, my, he is a cad deep down, is he not?”
Nausea soon ensues, hearing in my mind her paralyzing self-reflections from clear across the state. For, according to the courts, she wasn’t to come within 500 feet of me. Still, I couldn’t help but shudder thinking of her sitting at home, scrawling “Mrs. Strawberry” over and over and over again on her forehead with white-out. Her world is like “The Shining” fighting against “Memento” … only nobody wins. Everybody loses.
Just pick up the phone, I said to myself. In all reality, I shouldn’t be calling her. But even stalkers need friends.
At first, I was flattered, being followed about town by a blonde woman can boost a middle-aged ego, but then it all hit the accelerator too hard. There were the coincidental sightings of her at the movies. Then we were suspiciously hit-ting the same noontime lunch spots. But the hour-plus run-ins at the laundromat, bound to be in the same room washing her panties and whatnots, were too much to take. Was a restraining order really too far behind? No, it wasn’t really.
Looking back, I was more than happy to help jump-start her car in the parking structure that night. I know how that can be. But I really thought that would be the end of it. I guess being a Good Samaritan in Southern California can be misconstrued as an all-encompassing, loin-wetting, destructive desire to have an obsessive tryst. I have since taken bolt cutters to those jumper cables.
I realize that in those treatment facilities they encourage their “guests” to be creative and use their imaginations in order to free their minds, but encouraging them to the point of delusion is just plain wrong.
“I don’t know if we should be meeting like this,” she said to me while I waited in line to buy tickets for “Tsotsi” for my wife and I. My wife, to my chagrin, was over buying popcorn and Goobers. “What if she were to find out about us?”
Of course, my wife could probably just read this woman’s column every week in the newspaper, in which she details her bouts of delusional relationships and “chance meetings” and pretend peccadilloes with yours truly.
Ultimately, enough is enough, and I’m trying to call her to tell her that her column will no longer run in the newspaper. But she won’t answer. I know she’s sitting there in her favorite red parachute pants, argyle socks and Easter hat ignoring the call.
I can hear her now. “The phone’s persistent ring harkens me back to school days of yore. Our romance plays out in the school recesses of our minds. I am giddy as a girl. What if he beckons I come right away? What if he has already sent the horse-drawn carriage to my house to usher me there? … What if I added chicken bullion cubes to beef broth?”
Well, maybe she’ll just read this column that’s appearing where hers once did.
LA LA LA LA LA LA. (Mr. Strawberry is a reluctant columnist and the target of a stalker.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2006. Read the original PDF.