Image by katiecarman via Flickr She stood framed in the splintered doorway of our spacious loft apartment, her full lips stained and puffy from an excess of pistachio nuts. I knelt in the far corner, the random fragments of my Berlin Wall Commemorative Beer Stein clutched in disbelieving hands. Her glare traveled across the room like a retired postal worker on a three day excursion through Fort Lauderdale, pausing momentarily near the singed potted palm for directions to the pitiful loser, then parking a few inches from my tear stained face and delivering her scorn through a passenger door window cracked open enough to let the contempt out and keep the air conditioning in. There was a pause during which I was meant to do or say something, but my copy of the event’s script had accidentally made it into the washing machine with my Day-Glo Buddhist robes, the words running together so that all I knew for sure was that I was supposed to do something with a ‘P’ and an ‘E’ in it.
The moment passed, lost like a child in Sears, and before I knew what had happened, she spoke those fateful words.
“Squeaky cheese,” she said.
Then the door slammed shut, and I could hear her turn on her heels and stalk away huffily. I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat like an olive laced toothpick. That was it. She was gone.
