Dance With the Devil

Face to face with Satan herself. Satan in hot pink lipstick.

I thank God nearly every day for the gifts I have been given. My most prized (OK after the obvious ones like my good health and two wonderful children, no crap!) is my mental agility in situations like these. Where some people might stammer and begin to sweat on the spot as if by Pavlovian response, I move well beyond the point of shock and horror to an offensive game.

She looks me in my eyes. I look her in her (beady little Satanic) eyes. And without a moment's hesitation, I manage to say, quite brightly, but not at all overly friendly, "Oh. Hello!" and as I continue make my way around the corner she is blocking with considerable girth, I say, "Happy Easter!" and continue to the display, not two feet away. I will not be intimidated off my mark. She'll have to shove me. I am the picture of cool. Aloof. No appreciable quickening of the pulse. No blip on my EEG. Barely registered. A non-event.

In the few seconds I engaged in full on eye contact, though, I did notice something odd. Her smile was plastered on her hangy little bowling bag face, as fake as if it were painted there (Botox gone wrong?) and her eyes never registered any recognition. A vacuous, blank, stare. Medicated. It was the deadpan stare of the medicated criminally insane. (Nurse Ratched, another dose, please!)

But I am not that easily fooled by the likes of the innocent old lady act. In that rotund little spherical weeble beats the heart of a warrior. She may look like a little old feeble-minded beanbag chair, but she has teeth and claws and is as sneaky as any other old embittered matriarch whose idiot daughter can't manage her own miserable little unproductive hellish life, and whose sociopath 50-something son drank away everything of worth in his life and is forced to squat in her house with his child, relying on child support as his only means of income. Girlfriend has an axe to grind, make no mistake.

So while I flit about the store, casually price-checking waffle irons, I keep an eye on her.

And she does the oddest thing.

She stands in the precise spot where I nearly bowled her over like a bowling pin, and spins in little unsteady circles, teetering on her orthopedic shoes and utility-pole legs, aided by a cane, with her not-so-dead-after all eyes darting about the place.

She says nothing, but I am expecting her to begin shrieking at any moment.