“I might as well be injecting meth,” said Lulu, who was smoking an “adult cigarette” in her garage, dressed in her husband’s bathrobe and wearing a shower cap.
If you remember the original Mock Chicken, I should tell you that Lulu is no longer in the city with me. Alas, she moved, and is now about two hours away, in a quaint little town famous for its Mennonite community. Some of them ride around in buggies and wear traditional dress, though most don’t. It’s the “most don’t” contingent that worries Lulu. “They’re everywhere!” she says. “And they want to steal your soul.”
I need to set the record straight here. Lulu is maybe a twice a year smoker of adult cigarettes, which, I hasten to add are PERFECTLY (sort of) legal here in Canada. I cannot join her, because inhaling anything into my lungs besides fresh air and, like, the bus exhaust of my mega-urban street, gives me a panic attack.
So on our last visit/slumber party, Lulu had me all set up. “Have a seat,” she said, ushering me into the garage, where she had set up two camp chairs. A bottle of wine had been uncorked for me.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “Have a drink.”
We were in the garage because of the aforementioned soul stealers. Lulu felt that the eighth of an inch of daylight between the edge of her blinds and the window well might be playing host to some of her neighbours’ eyeballs, and so she’d planned a retreat to the garage.
I sipped my Chardonnay and she reappeared looking like a cross between the ghost of Christmas Past and a beauty school drop out.
The robe—her husband’s—was so large that it pooled on the floor and covered her hands. Charles Dickens could have stashed not only Ignorance and Want there, but there would also have been room for Overindulgence and Maybe Just One More, But Only If You Insist, Thanks. Between it and the shower cap, only her face was showing. It turns out that although Lulu enjoys the occasional adult cigarette, she doesn’t enjoy the lingering smell.
“I might as well be injecting meth!” she shrieked, taking a puff and looking around as if she expected a horse and buggy bearing an unmerciful neighbour to come charging through.
Well, no. But Lulu is prone to hyperbole and that’s why we love her. How lucky are we to sit back and sip our Chardonnay and bask in her paranoid glory?