today’s post brought to you by a guest
I was walking out to the mailbox when the large, gold, 10-year-old Delta 88 pulled up in the road beside me. The tinted window came down and I looked at the white haired lady in the driver’s seat. She had on pale eye shadow and lipstick and wore a rose printed blouse and one thin gold chain around her neck. I smelled lilacs from her perfume. For a minute, she reminded of my mother’s Avon lady, who would come to our house every other Wednesday during *The Price Is Right* and sit at the dining room table with my mother having
coffee and delivering her sales pitch. But the memory faded quickly and I came back to today. “I want you to know something,” the pleasant old woman said.
I smiled the way a polite boy knows he’s supposed to smile when approached by an elder. “What’s that?” I asked.
“I want you to know that my name’s not Rita and I am *not* a whore.”
I looked at her for a minute, which felt like ten. Blink, blink, blink.
“Well, my name’s not Rita, either.”
And then she drove away, probably off to the next unsuspecting stranger in the street, where she could make yet another attempt to restore her virtue.
Good luck, Rita. I believe you.
xoxoxoxox and then some,