Day 2

Today is a Saturday and although I am not working, Salome is. She has been seated on her favorite eames chair for hours while she gulped down cup after cup of coffee with the usual tint of brandy. I am quite sure she is drunk by now but she is still working anyway. Doodling on her sketchpad, likened to a raving lunatic who claimed to have discovered a little island in the Pacific which was discovered centuries ago by the settler’s ancestors. I do not like her when she is like this. When she is drunk, not just with alcohol but drunk with rows and rows of ideas in her head, she has her own world. It is almost like she is building a wall around her and this kind of state makes it difficult for me to appreciate watching her. Her crazed eyes and wild, unruly hair scare me as they reminded me of the African witch who my nanny used to tell me about when I was little. I watched her rip the pages of her sketchpad whenever she is done with a drawing but decide that it was not good enough after all, while repeatedly stabbing her trusty chair with her charcoal pencil. At a time like this, I like to close my shutters and waste the day watching useless, irritating shows on television because I cannot bear looking at her like that. Like a rag doll in a ditch, all messed up and dirty. It was not the eames chair girl I have envisioned to get used to. Now, she is standing up and walking around unsteadily with her man shirt on and a pair of underpants to match. John Lennon’s God is blaring in her stereo and again, after an hour or so of being drummed with continuous classic rock music, the neighbors will call the authorities and complain. What else is new? She does this when she wants to clear her head and start all over again with fresh, new ideas. Any minute now, she will light a cigarette, fill her lungs with smoke and then puff them all out to form and deform circular clouds of O’s in the air. Salome, Salome, Salome, what are you thinking about? I want to pick on your brain and demand for answers while I tie you down in that chair of yours; so just, for a few minutes, you can hold still and do away with your restlessness.