Days passed like water through a small-bladdered diabetic. I spent time catching up on my “Braille For the Sighted” home study course and making frequent trips to the cinema, often to see a film. Then one evening, out of the blue the blond turns up at the apartment. She was dressing down these days. I’d seen more expensive-looking dresses on second hand Barbie dolls.
“You look like a million Lira,” I offered. She didn’t reply, and handed me a bottle of wine and told me to uncork it carefully as it was an expensive vintage.
“I’m a committed oenophile,” she confessed, but I wasn’t interested in her sick perversions, as long as she was listed on the public register. I poured into the only two glasses I had –one was from my fraternity days and was in the shape of a naked woman, the other was a graduation present from my father and was in the shape of a naked woman. Like a teacher at a Chinese school exclusively for second-born children, he had no class. I bought out the drinks. Looking into my eyes, she took a sip and started to enthuse about the wine in a way that bordered on sexual.
“Oh my god!”, she purred, “Just taste it…mmm….just let your mouth experience all those subtle flavours…I’m getting hints of vanilla…I’m getting luscious blackberry…I’m getting oak…mmmm…” I was definitely getting wood.
We made smalltalk and polished off the bottle. She went into the kitchen and returned with cocktails made with every bottle in my drinks cabinet, and some apparently from my cleaning products cabinet. I asked what the rumpus was with her errant hubby.
“There’s a rumour he’s been laundering counterfeit money by using it to pay anorexic prostitutes.” A phoney buck for a bony fuck seemed fair enough to me, but the blond wasn’t impressed. “I wasn’t sure about you at first. After all, no-one got your ‘corduroy pillows’ joke in the last episode, but I realise now you’re my only hope. I want you to find out exactly what he’s up to and look this gift-sheep in wolf’s clothing in the mouth. I’m gonna rain on his parade where the sun don’t shine.”
If only she’d mixed her drinks as well as her metaphors, I’d have found it all a bit easier to swallow. One thing was clear, though – she was pretty ruthless. In fact, I was suddenly struggling to remember a time I’d ever seen less ruth.