Untitled- Character Sketches

     Mary Ellen tugged at her shirt, perfectly aligning the bottom with her waistline and the waistline with pant line, carefully placing her necklace perpendicular to her belt.  She gazed at her mirror, laid precisely parallel to her face, checking the makeup she’d taken 30 minutes each morning to apply.  Always.  Foundation below the eyes.  Right cheek.  Left cheek.  Pale pink lipstick.  Blot it twice.  She frowned at her pale skin, a result of unsuccessful tanning, and noticed the crow’s feet that beamed from her eyes like sun rays in suffocating heat.  Her age showed.  And as much as she resisted her employer’s daily selection of danishes and scones and donuts and bagels---and jogged on treadmills until her vision exposed dot pixels, she couldn’t escape that fact that she was 40.  An astute 40 though.  With habits of uncontrollable slumber at 8pm daily.  Hurried like the Alice In Wonderland rabbit in times of punctuality. Everything always in order.  And precise.  And able to breath easily when things flowed just so.  And just like her parents who’d instilled in her essential advice during her adolescence.  “Stand up straight—2^nd place isn’t winning—If they’re not in our class, they aren’t worth your respect.”

    I watched Mary Ellen as her fidgeting became my fidget.  A bundle of nerves if you asked me.  A case of undiagnosed bipolarity.  *Being overwhelmed caused emotional panic.  Tears flowed like streams that ran into rivers into waves into tsunamis.  Her voice octave raised like a lucky poker hand.  I would count down 5-4-3-2-1 in anticipation of her childlike outbursts, tucking in my uneasy giggles.  She amused me.  Always, the same outfit every week as though the labels were marked as Monday, Tuesday and so forth.  Always hoarding information that she liked to dish out to colleagues who already knew the answers.  As though she was important.  I watched her once while we were locked in our suite.  A guy came in to ask directions.  No tie.  Just a t-shirt and jeans asking for innocent directions.  Her face shriveled to the bone as though her life had been sucked out of her.  “Well I never!  How did you get in anyway?”  He just walked away—no gun in sight.