Dean's World

“Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose.” (Macbeth, Act II, Scene 1)

Ann Arbor, February 2005 CE

I was kind of depressed. For about a week after our last meeting I hadn’t heard a word from her and she didn’t return my phone calls. Finally one morning she called and asked me to meet her at her hotel room, so I drove on out. I was still mystified and a little hurt, but I tried to keep it off my face as I knocked on her hotel room door. Then, when she opened the door, I looked at her and covered my mouth to stop myself from laughing. She had a dead serious look on her face, and her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail. She was wearing a long green floral-print housedress and, of all things, a pair of pink bunny slippers.

Her face was cloudy. “You are amused?”

I straightened my face. “No, no. You look great. Glad to see you.”

“Thank-you,” she said crisply, her back straight as she stepped back and gestured me inside. I walked quietly toward the suite’s generous sitting area and chose the large overstuffed brown chair. As I sat, I watched as she walked archly toward the leather couch, the floppy bunny ears bouncing with her footsteps. In spite of the incongruity, she had a new look in her eye that kept me from snickering. I hadn’t seen her look that way since the first week we met; guarded, distant. She sank into the large couch and it practically seemed to swallow her as she crossed her arms, dropped her chin, and regarded me levelly, unsmiling. I leaned back in the chair across from her and tried to relax.

“So what’s on your mind?”

She crossed her right leg over her left at the knee and bounced her dangling foot, the bunny face on it smiling bizarrely at me.

“I am considering terminating our relationship,” she said bluntly and I shook my head and looked back up at her.

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