Drunken Super Stealthy Sorority Girl

I was woken from a sound sleep by a couple arguing outside my window. I knew, in that kind of sense memory you get from things that happen all too often, that it was 2 am. 2:17am, said the clock. I shifted under the covers and listened to the latest in a long series of drunken quarrels I've been privy to, living on the main thoroughfare between three popular bars in the Fan.

Whatever she'd said before I'd woken up had really pissed him off because, aside from the one thing he'd shouted that had woken me, I didn't hear much more from him aside from a deep, enraged, hissing whisper.

"Oh yeah?" she replied snidely, "And then you're just what? Going to walk away?"

His answer came in rapidly retreating footsteps. She shouted after him, mocking him. Seconds later, she realized he really meant it. Her tone changed, wounded outrage. "Come back! You can't just leave!"

I didn't hear his reply.

"Please. Please!" She begged, "I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to call my friend. I can't be out here alone. Please. Please just call someone for me."

She begged him more, becoming more and more desperate. I could picture her sodden brain, working through the facts. She was probably wearing all her fancy, doesn't-cover-anything club clothing, her high heels probably hurt and now she was tired and sore. They had a fight and he'd left. Now she was drunk and alone in the dark Fan with its flickering street lamps, cracked sidewalks and low hanging trees. She was just sober enough for this to all be terribly frightening and just drunk enough to not really know what to do.

He left. He must have left because everything was totally silent for a moment before I heard her back thump against my house and her flimsy heels skid against the pavement as she sunk down the wall, crying.

I got out of bed and went outside with my phone. Her friend probably wouldn't pick up the phone if I called for her, but it was worth a try, I just couldn't leave the poor kid alone out there. Maybe I could call a cab for her, wait with her until it arrived.

There wasn't anyone underneath my window. I walked the length of the building, went around the corner. Coming to myself I realized that I was standing in an alley, barefooted, in a t-shirt that just barely covered my panties. I stepped into the side doorway, unseen by a drunken foursome concentrating hard on stumbling home.

Where was she? It had taken me only seconds to get to the door, I would have seen or heard her clip clopping down the street. I listened, nothing. I walked back to my front door, alert now to threats for both the mystery woman and myself.

"Miss?" I murmured. "Miss? I'm here to help."

A young man in an untucked button down ambled by, changing the focus of his scrutiny from his topsiders to me. He frowned, full of child-like confusion. Was he really looking at a lady in bed clothing? Shouldn't she be in bed, looking like that? Why was she on a porch?

I was just as confused as he was, where was the woman I'd just heard? I waited a moment after he'd gone, listening for her, but she had disappeared if she was ever there at all.

Settling back into bed I wondered if I'd actually been woken up or if I'd dreamed the fight, rushing out the door to aid a figment of my imagination. That would make sense, a lot more sense than her being the punch line of one of those "hitch hiking ghost" stories, "every August 27th her spirit fights with her boyfriend but when a kind soul goes to help her...she disappears!"

In any case, if she was real I hope that the same super stealthy powers she had that kept me from finding her got her home safely.

How it should have ended

This comic strip (sorry, blurry iPhone photo) is basically just a preachy lecture about how Katie (the girl) can't keep the fawn Lucky b/c he's a "dangerous wild animal".

In the last panel she responds, "Not Lucky...He wouldn't hurt anybody, would you Lucky?"

It's so after school special you know that in the next few strips she'll gain valuable knowledge about wild animals through Lucky's wacky hijinks. Yet. The comic is drawn in that dramatic, Prince Caspian style so I read it as a cliff hanger instead of a pause.

"...would you Lucky?" dun dun DUN!

I really want it to be. It would be way better if the next comic has Katie withered away in bed w/Lyme disease. A lecture on deer ticks via jaundice would be way funnier than wacky hijinks.

And THAT'S how it SHOULD have ended.

Farmer's market

CSA this week brings us a yellow watermelon, 1/2 lb of baby onions in
red and yellow, a head of garlic, sweet peppers, parsley, a pound each
of baby carrots and tomatoes and a jalapeño so hot that they recommend
you chop it wearing gloves (holy shit!). I'll be hard pressed to find
use for this jalapeño but it's in my CSA so I paid for it so I'll take
it.

Wandering around the market I found a South African turned Virginian
wine maker. He offered a wine tasting and I'm not one to turn down a
wine tasting regardless of it being 9 am. I bought two of his
whites...there's probably something funny in buying whites from South
Africa.

I have like, 5 heads of garlic from past weeks at the CSA and from the
grocery so I think it's time to start the garlic roasting and go clean
my room for my shoot today.