Is That You, Rose Comfort?

After several minutes of waiting for the rain to let up, I decide the odds are against me and make a desperate run for the door. It only takes a few seconds but I'm soaked to the skin by the time I turn my key in the lock and am immediately trounced upon by four, anxiety-ridden dogs who do not react well to storms.

Is that you, Rose Comfort? I hear Michael yell.

One look in the hall mirror confirms it. I see a small bedraggled, half drowned woman with no makeup and her wild, frizzy hair in a tangle. She looks tired. She looks old.  Her shoes are full of water.  In her camisole and flimsy harem pants, she looks like a refugee.

Guess so, Michael, I call back and shiver like a dog shaking off the rain. What's the emergency?

He's sitting at his desk amid an avalanche of paper and debris. Magazines, stacks of unopened mail, not one but two overflowing ashtrays, several soda cans, a couple of magnifying glasses. A Wandering Jew he picked up at the Dollar Store sits precariously near the edge of the massively cluttered old desk. There's a shoebox full of nails and screws and picture hangers under the crooked lamp, a random pile of paperclips at his elbow, his partly open checkbook is hanging from a side drawer. There are pieces of what look like a broken cell phone scattered here and there and a raggedy-edged plastic bag of dog treats nearly buried under an almost never used telephone book. Everything is littered with yellow sticky notes. I'm thinking if I close my eyes and pinch myself, maybe I'll wake up.

The emergency? I prompt him and sigh.

Oh, he says absently, right. I need you to see if you can find my wallet.

It's a wonder you can find any..... I began and then stopped. I was cold. I was dripping. My shoes were squishing and I'd just realized that I'd forgotten my teeth. I tried to tell myself I'd misheard him.

You called me out, I said slowly and as articulately as anyone whose dentures were in a glass of Polident'ed water on her kitchen counter could, after dark. On a Sunday night. In a fucking monsoon. Because you lost your wallet? ARE YOU DERANGED? ARE YOU STARK, RAVING, OUT OF YOUR MIND MAD?

He looked so surprised - so comically wounded! - that I began to laugh. I couldn't help it and I couldn't stop it. I took a step backward, tripped over one of the dogs and half fell, half stumbled into one of the good leather chairs.

Do you want a towel? he asked uncertainly and I laughed harder.

It was one of those absurd moments between friends when you realize that all storms will eventually pass and that there's no remedy for life except laughter.

Do you think, I finally said, that maybe this could wait until morning?  

He nodded and I dripped and squished my way to the door and back into the rain. Just before I turned the key, I yelled that he'd better hope I didn't come down with pneumonia. He yelled back thank you! and I could hear him smile.