DELUSIONS

Felicia drags her weary butt into the dreary office and plops into her saggy office chair which belches out a breathy whoosh.   A small burst of greyish stuffing springs out the side and then slowly drifts downward, adding to the light coating of dust on the thin, industrial gray wall-to-wall carpeting.  Hmm, thinks Felicia, it kinda matches.  

Sighing mightily, she just sits there for a few minutes before she begins the ush - opening blinds, allowing the drippy day to invade the chilly office; booting up the thermostat to counteract the drippy drearies; giving the old, squat coffee maker a thump to start the water flowing and the other ten or twenty things that she’s done so automatically, for so many years.  Just the ush, ma’am, just the ush.

Finally finished with the every-day start up crap, Felicia resumes her slump in the weary chair.  The telephone rings, startling her so much that she almost slides out of her chair.  Sitting up straight, she reaches for the phone and jumps again as the fax machine rings, almost under her hand.  Just as she gets to the phone, she hears someone pounding on the entry door, screaming, “Let me in, PLEASE!”

The hand reaching for the telephone freezes as the screaming voice reaches a pitch only dogs could hear and then slams into silence.  With a whiny screech, the fax machine starts chugging out its message.   Felicia jumps to her feet and starts running to the front door.  A garbage can someone has thoughtfully emptied and put down right in her path and not back in its usual spot under her desk, almost does her in, but with a powerful leap she sails over it by just a hair’s width.  “Whew, almost tripped over that!”  A fleeting thought crosses Felicia’s mind.  “I coulda been killed if I hadn’t gotten over that!”  Small and cluttered, the office is fraught with potential landmines – large, old-fashioned gray, melamine desks with sharp corners, tables on wheels, also with corners capable of taking out an eye, drills and saws and cutting blades taking up most of the horizontal surfaces – tools of the office furniture installation trade.  Falling in any direction would have resulted in a cracked skull against something nearby.  Hitting a razor-sharp corner would definitely result in massive bleeding, along with a concussion.   

Felicia reaches the entry door in a flash but it seems to take forever.  One hand on the push bar and the other on the dead-bolt lock, she peers out.  No one’s to be seen.  Something below waist level catches her eye and she glances down.  A  half-smoked cigarette lays on the damp stoop, smoke lazily drifting upward in the still air.  A reformed smoker, the smell is making

Felicia feel a bit queasy as it reaches her noble nose, causing her nostrils to flare in a most dramatic way.  It smells kinda weird and looks funny too.  An arrogant looking eagle is at the top of the white tube just below the brown, speckled filter top.  Faint pinstripes wind around the white part, hardly discernible to Felicia’s squinting eyes.  Hmm, she ponders, I wonder what kind of cigarette this is.  I’ve never seen an eagle on any Canadian cigarette I’ve ever smoked, or American or Danish (one mad-cap vacation she took ages ago) for that matter.  

Running back to her desk, this time swerving around the garbage can, she grabs a tissue from the box in her drawer and a large paperclip from the magnetic holder on her desk and goes back to the door.  The cigarette is still there and has inexorably burned down almost to the weird looking eagle.  Felicia squats down, calf muscles protesting at the unexpected exercise, and carefully pinches out the burning end of the butt with the paperclip, pressing it against the cement stoop.  Still using the paperclip, Felicia teases the now-extinguished cigarette onto the tissue and retreats into the sanctuary of the office, eyes darting back and forth trying to spot the woman (she thought) who screamed.   It sure sounded like a female voice.  Who else could have emitted that ear-splitting shriek?

Back at her desk, Felicia fishes around in the top drawer, trying to find the plastic baggie she saw there a few weeks ago.  It would be perfect to keep the butt in.  Reaching to the very back of the over-stuffed drawer, Felicia’s straining fingers finally feels the thin plastic, which is almost over the edge of the back and carefully teases it to the middle of the drawer where she can finally pick it up.  She carefully scoops up the white tissue the cigarette is resting in, folds it neatly at all four corners towards the centre, making a trim square , cautiously inserting it into the baggie, zipping the top closed with a schhhhhhhh sound. 

Sitting back in her under-stuffed chair, Felicia stares at the ‘evidence’ centered in the middle of her otherwise empty green blotter and then wonders what in the hell she’s going to do with it 

now.  No crime has been committed, as far she could tell.  There’s no body, bleeding, dead or otherwise that she can see.  Had the screaming woman been kidnapped by the Russian mob?  Even if I call the police, thinks Felicia, what in the heck would I tell them?   Just call me Spade - Felicia Spade - and she gives a  sharp tug on her imaginary snap-brimmed hat, giggling all the while.  Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.   

Lost in thought and not quite sure what, if anything, she should do next, Felicia drifts into a slo-mo day-dream, which flits across her slightly out-of-focus bright blue eyes.   Five minutes goes by, then ten, not that Felicia notices.  Just around the fifteen minute mark, Felicia once again almost topples out of her well-worn chair, as a sharp rat-ta-tat rattles the thin glass on the front door.

Felicia scrambles out of the wobbly chair, almost toppling it over as it shoots out from under her well-padded behind and makes a break for the wall, which is very close behind her.  Catching it before it can punch a hole in the thinnest drywall Felicia’s ever seen, she puts the brakes on it and then rushes toward the entry way.  Stopping suddenly, Felicia plasters herself flush to the wall so that she can sneak up to the door without being seen until the last possible moment.  Who knew who was out there?  It could be the homicidal maniac who’d been after the screaming woman earlier. 

Felicia peers around the corner and sees a well-groomed, mature, stylishly attired woman, flaming red hair (it just couldn’t be real at her age), and youthfully styled bob, which defies the damp day and clings to her head like a helmet, instead of frizzing out in a full-blown Afro, like Felicia’s.  A lit cigarette dangles languidly from impeccably manicured French-tipped fingers and smoke slowly drifts up as the stranger waits patiently by the door. 

Deciding that this older woman does not pose an immediate threat, Felicia straightens up to her full 5’ 8” height, squares her considerable shoulders, made even wider by the out-dated shoulder pads sewn into her well-worn black and white hounds-tooth blazer, which tops clean black jeans and slowly approaches the outside door.  She pauses before throwing back the well-oiled dead-bolt and scanning the surrounding area with suspicious eyes, mostly just acres of wet asphalt parking lots, serving the many industrial units the neighbourhood is comprised of.  

Not seeing any shady characters lurking 
about, Felicia unlocks the door and asks, “May I help you?”  The older woman turns to face Felicia full on and says, very slowly, “Do you speak Romanian?”  Now, that’s a stretch, Felicia thinks to herself.  She shakes her head, and repeats her question.  The drifting cigarette smoke teases Felicia’s nose and she looks at the cigarette it's coming from, spotting  the arrogant eagle up near the top.  Ah ha!  It’s the screaming woman from before.  Now, it’s the stranger’s turn to shake her head and she says, in stop-and-start English, that she just wanted to let Felicia know that she had been the one who had been banging on the door earlier.  Continuing in sparse English, she explained that she really had to use a bathroom.   When the door wasn't answered quickly, she had dashed around the corner to the next-door neighbour and went in there.   Apparently, when you gotta go, you just gotta go!

Closing the door and snicking the dead-bolt into place, Felicia returns to her gloomy space, reclaims the runaway chair and settles her bum in the dip in the middle, which her toches and a few other’s over the years have carved into the centre of the faux leather.  A chuckle escapes her generous lips, which rapidly turns into full-blown guffaws   Pretty soon, she laughs herself silly, tears stream down her face, and she clutches her aching stomach.  So much for kidnapping and murder and what a great way to start an otherwise dreary day!

      

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