"The drive doesn't seem quite so long, this time. It felt like at least two hours coming up here the other day with Melissa, but I realize now that when I am in a heightened state as I was yesterday, funny things happen to my perceptions of time. It either slows down or it speeds up. It could also be time of day. It is just eleven now, and we are already almost at the highway. Perhaps a fifteen minute drive, no more than that. I am in the back seat with Jesús and Aaron and Carl have been quietly exchanging witticisms concerning the conversation during coffee this morning.
"How did we get stuck with her?" Aaron grumbles concerning Carol.
"She is a piece of work, I'll say", answers Carl.
"Could you believe how she spoke to him?"
"And look how well Francois answered her back. Missing not a beat."
"And the way you weighed in with your fake Cockney accent!"
"Oh, she had it coming."
"How did she get here?" Aaron asks.
"The same as the rest of you dear darling guests!"
"Robert."
"But, who else? He met her at St. James, where she was attending for spiritual solace while caring for her dying mother, who moved here across the pond a few years ago, it turns out. Her official line is that she moved here five years ago to take care of her ailing mother, but there are reports, however clandestine about a handsome Canadian doctor, so they swooned off together, then he left her for some sweet young thing, and her mental health went south, and so the inevitable..."
"She is delicate right now", Aaron says.
"How can you tell?" say I from the back seat.
Carl says, "She's already made a few slip ups, most recently this morning when she made that horrible racist comment. Her mask keeps slipping and she has to fight like mad to keep it on straight. But it isn't really fair to discuss her when she is not present to defend herself. So, my good Aaron, you were going to continue your story here, weren't you?"
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