How is it that I manage to attract these damaged souls? Em? Any ideas Mom?

The last time I saw her I was off hailing a taxi, and by the time I got back she was gone. POOF. Vanished. I got out of the taxi, and I looked up and down the street, walked a little ways, but I could not find that lady in red, with her plush black chapeaux.

We had been walking outside, enjoying the dawn, as she mutter about going back to her SOHO home, via Shelton town, which I had to inform her was not on the way to my village. I had for some reason decided to bring her home with me, like a stray dog I’d found on the side of the road. But she wasn’t, and she isn’t, and …and….

Or maybe I panicked Mom? That’s my guilt this morn. At the time I had no thoughts of letting the taxi go, and no thoughts at all of getting out of that car to go out and find her. She was not well, not altogether well, but she was functioning, and not crazy, crazy, eccentric is all. At first.

At one point I saw her shamanic and tortured soul peek through, as the madness began to whisper sweet nothings to her. And I’d seen that kind of madness before. Yet, I guess if I’m honest, if any crazy, crazy is going to be in my life, it may as well be that lad I saw last banging on my front door, as I quietly sobbed on the other side. It might as well be he.

Last night, Mom, I think the madness almost caught me; but I didn’t let it get me.

So, it began as a fun night out with MsLora (or so she was first known, if you’ll remember), whom I had not seen since the Memorial that Palliative Care unit did for the previous years families who had lost a loved one. There a few rows ahead of us, in that big auditorium, sat her, her sister, and her Dad in the audience with us. It was 2002, and before that I hadn’t seen her I think since the late 80’s, when I’d seen her briefly at the fair, pregnant with her first child.

We sat at this great little bar downtown, ensconced behind this pillar, positioned so that the karoke patron’s (we later discovered), wouldn’t drown us out. And we yattered away all eve, about love, life and loss.

When she messaged me last night on Facebook…”wanna get together?“…I was like HELL YEAH…and so we did. Forty-five minutes later there she sat on that old green velvet settee. We chatted for so long that by the time we ventured across the road for some liquid libation, a long line had formed. Hence why we ended up on those stools, in that bar, when that extravagant damsel and her kind paramour did appear, and we were off on an adventure.

I swear Mom, how DO they find me? Or I them. Whichever, I do have to wonder if I give off some pheromone or other to these damaged souls. They are somehow drawn to me, or I them.

And so, sweet MsLora and I, found ourselves up into the wee hours of the morn, chit chatting, and having an adventure. And as the sun crawled up the side of that concrete, and shine golden off the balcony’s, one by one, the players left the stage.

Today I am worn through, and I do believe MsIsh is but getting a meandering stroll through town. After yesterdays LOOOONNNG walk to Euston Meadow and back, and after the libations, the friendship, the brush of madness, and of course seeing the dawn rise, I ache right down to my core.

I will always wondered though what became of that lady in Red. And you know, just before we swung out the door, I caught a glance of her swigging down one of her pills, and so I believe she too could smell that madness creeping up on her.

And, so, perhaps, once her meds kicked in, venturing off to the lair of a stranger seemed dafted, and so she turned around and is right now sitting in bed up there in their luxurius 1911, like some aged Yoko and Lennon. And they are laughing over their bacon and eggs at the hicks of last eve. I can see them that way.

And Mom, that niggling of guilt I feel, well, I know wherever she happens to be, it is exactly where she needs to be. I guess, in the end, no action or inaction of mine could ever stop what is meant to be. Or, maybe, I merely played my role as scripted. I suppose I will never really know.

And that’s all, and exit stage left went she, back up the elevator to her paramour she left behind in 1911.

The rest of today I think will be spent swigging java, and reveling in the laughs had with an old friend, and the madness and mayhem I left back there on those quiet downtown streets, will bring me many smiles.

Always,