So today I had another secret rendezvous with the chick who’s worried about her husband. Many of the rational bones in my head say, “Hey, um, fuckhead, you listening? Stay away from other folks’ troubles.”
But, still and all, curiosity eats me. I mean someone walks up to you and implies possible criminality, maybe a little affair or some bigamy, spy versus spy, cars following, and hells ya, I’m thinking movie of the week. I don’t need know TV set if folks just keep walking up and telling me good stories. Nope, writers’ strike don’t bother me, I got reality.
I’ll keep my wits about, as best I can. As always, I’ll work on leading the poor woman to professionals. I do think I inherited a bit of Pat’s magnet for helping lost souls. Over the years of school teaching, she sure got some terrible stories from kids who had no one else to confide. Of course, she probably had a bigger heart than me. Like, I can’t even keep a houseplant and she had five kiddies and taught.
Here’s what I know — either what the woman has told me is true, or it has elements of truth. Or, she’s out of her mind and it’s all made up. Either way, seriously bad.
She’s pretty sure there’s spyware on their home computer, rendering searching for useful info a bit hard. That seems plausible, if sucky. Easy to imagine a household where there’s people suspicious of computer use and checking each others history files and all. Shitty, but common enough. My recommendation was to pick up a cheap wireless laptop on Craig’s List, keep it in her work drawer and do what she needed to do right before or after work or during lunch using the guest network they have for visitors. Relatively anonymous network and timing it so there’s no skin off her boss’ ass.
(I know where I sit, I could probably get away with surfing all day, but in her cube ‘hood, I wouldn’t be so sure. Life in a high-class cube farm, you just can’t tell. Plus, we are surrounded by glass, making it a transparent workplace. Best to not jinx that which pays the bills.)
A few thoughts occurred during today’s convo, which just make me sad. One thought was women can be their own worst enemies. Doesn’t seem like I get into as many conversations with dudes on the order of “I know it’s wrong, and I feel bad and scared all the time, but I love him.”
Janis sang it best, “Women is losers.”
The other thought is about my own sense of self-reflection. Back in the bad, old dark days, when I dated the bad, old, asshole man, computer suspicions played into our horrid, little script. In retrospect, you know the view to the past where I am brilliantly understanding, yeah, in retrospect, I should have fucking grokked that someone freaking out if you looked over his shoulder at the screen, let alone actually touched his keyboard, opened software or sat unsupervised at his desk chair, had what you would call “issues.”
Now, both our laptops lie around the apartment never supervised. M. will ask me to check info on his ‘puter or his iPhone, upgrade, fix, whatever and will provide me the passwords as needed. He doesn’t even flinch, and the only thing that keeps him from fiddling with my stuff is the elaborate layers of geekiness I’ve concocted and my Mac-ness.
It’s amazing how the lack of hassle can feel like a positive quality just on its own merit.
Related to that feeling, my workplace has a few qualities that feel like M.’s openness with his junk. (Read “junk” any way you like.) It’s a private building down a long private driveway, where the only people who head down the drive know why they are there. It’s a rich building in a rich neighborhood where the local Barney Fife who minds the neighborhood once tapped on the window of my car when I was waiting outside the buildin to verify I belonged. On top of that, it’s all about sight lines to the great outdoors and windows and skylights.
Even if you wanted to lift your co-workers’ wallets, which is hard to imagine in the enclave, folks’d notice.
Weird it was, then, when today’s secret meeting happened in a conference room overlooking our back patio and the back periphery of grass and trees and shrubs. She noticed a middle-aged khaki-clad gentleman walking on a trail that runs behind the building. A trail that is almost unused in a space no one could possibly find from the street.
According to the mystery woman, she had seen him before. He’s one of the people she and her kids have seen following them.
If it’s true, how fucked up is that? If it’s not true, whoa, what a delusion.
The only non-work people I have ever seen in that vicinity, ever, ever, ever, have been the ubiquitous, spandex-clad, brightly colored bikers, who swarm the area generally. They know the back path, because there’s a bike path under a highway nearby. First time ever for a chubby guy in khakis.
Could be nothing, but it’s a great seed in the story.
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