Continuing this story
While I stared at the soup pot held at cleavage level, Laura beamed and said she was there to take care of me. She slipped inside and commenced chopping vegetables. Had I not been stoned on DayQuil (not to mention been a huge, sick baby feeling sorry for himself), I would have stopped her. But I didn't. So she made me soup and I felt woozily flattered.
While sauteing the celery, Laura swallowed hard and admitted that she was interested in me. No, really. She extolled my many imaginary virtues and concluded that she even loved me...but she was with this other guy and found it all terribly confusing.
I'm not sure how I was supposed to respond, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't "Well, really, that all works out, 'cause I'm interested in Kristi."
Laura left my house in a fluster, and two days later, I was back at work. Kristi sat in my guest chair with such violence that it bordered on furniture assault. She was trembling, enraged. At me. She told me she was giving me one chance to explain myself. Laura had just told her about the soup event, except her version had a slanderous flourish: it seems that while she was there, I had touched her inappropriately and made her so uncomfortable she fled.
"Uh," I said.
I barely managed to convince Kristi that Laura was lying. Following longstanding policy with established psychopaths, I decided not to engage Laura any further. That's when toys started to disappear from my office. They appeared, of course, in Laura's. If I wanted them back, I would have to engage her.
"We have a bunny boiler!" Dorkass observed. Indeed, during one encounter, Laura even used the phrase "I will not be ignored."
Eep.
I began to worry about Laura's willingness to indulge her psychoses at my place of work. Wanting to get ahead of any bogus accusations, I talked to my boss about it. He was typically understanding.
"Waitasecond. That wants to bang you, and this is a crisis?"
Not coincidentally, he was my last male boss.
Covering my bases, I asked her in writing to return the items to my office and to leave me alone. She cooperated. After she returned my stuff, I never heard from her again. She moved to Florida to be with her fiancee, and I dated Kristi.
Until four months later, when Laura found Kristi an admin assistant job in Florida that actually paid for her relocation from Seattle. For an admin job! Bitch.
Kristi and I tried to date long-distance, but we were ill-suited even under the best of circumstances, so that relationship eventually disintegrated. But I did learn that she and Laura were no longer speaking. It seems that soon after Kristi's arrival in Florida, she and Laura were battling for the attentions of the fiancee.
Tomorrow: this story's surprising modern-day conclusion