Sunday, November 7, 2010

A visit from Ruthaline

'Hey!" she says, sitting on the corner of my desk.
I don't know how she does that because she is a big mama. Big.
Her name is Ruthaline and she doesn't look best pleased with me.
"Oh, hi. How are you?" I gush in insincere tones.
Her eyes narrow to slits the size you squeeze your bank card into at the money machine.
"Who gives a sweet ding dong how I am? What do you think you're doing?"
I gesture to my computer.
"Well, just warming up - checking my emails, writing a Sunday blog entry- which by the way," and here I sound really perky and upbeat, a regular 1950's stewardess in business class, "which by the way, is about you."
She doesn't even respond to this pathetic attempt to halt her purposed strut into my private space. And she can strut. For all her weight, and I know this is a cliche, but for all her weight she is graceful. She is wearing a cotton shift, the sort my mother might have worn in the summer, covered in twisty green vines and big orangy-red flowers. It is bursting at the seams and she is bare-legged but has gold high heels on, one of which she is nudging off with her other while she looks at me. Looks at me with a not-good look.
Her silence and look propel me into another explanation.
"I'm going to get to my revision right away. I'm at an exciting part - a real tricky bit - that I think I've figured out but it does call for a fair bit of rewriting and even some new writing. I was hoping...I ...uh..."
She has leaned down in the middle of this and taken that shoe right off her foot, her left foot to be exact. She is peering into the shoe and poking with one her long fingers into it. Her bottom lip is pooked out a bit as if it helps with concentration. Could she be more bored? I don't think so.
She looks up at me, smiles a slow dangerous smile and puts her shoe back on.
"I'll be back later, darling. And I'll have something for you if you've dicked around all day. Yes, my goodness, I'll have something for you."
And Ruthaline jumps off my desk and sashays out of the room.

6 comments:

Talli Roland said...

Whoa. Ruthaline is one scary momma. I'm afraid!

Hart Johnson said...

*giggles* I think we all need someone like Ruthaline! But don't forget to also have someone like an Hernando come in to bring you good chocolate as a reward when you succeed...

Jane Kennedy Sutton said...

Ruthaline sounds like a muse you don’t want to cross. I’d get to those revisions if I were you - no telling what she'll do with those shoes if you don't!)

Patricia Stoltey said...

This post is so good and so funny and so scary...Ruthaline reminds me of my Nagging Whisper. These are not gentle voices...

Natasha said...

Now I am sure I could do with having a bit of Ruthaline in my life!

Jan Morrison said...

Hey Talli - you should be - she said she was going over to your place next!
Tartlette - whoohoo - I would rather a mojito but hey!Bring on Hernando or Raoul or anyone but Jimminy Cricket - I'm allergic to him.
Jane - done and done! She's happy - she took me to a juke joint last night where we danced those shoes to bits.
Patricia - she is only she does not whisper!
Natasha - I'm sure as soon as she finised with Talli she'll swing by your place and yikes!