Mirror

I was helping to take down the mirrors in the bathrooms when I saw it, kitty. I have my first grey hair. At least my hair isn’t falling out. I would rather have grey hair than a poor, sad attempted comb-over. I don’t think Claire would appreciate trying to run her fingers through my hair and finding out I only have three strands bouffanted out Trump style. She loves to run her fingers through my hair when I’m sleeping. Usually she does it just before I wake up as her way of saying goodbye in the morning. She knows I’m a heavy sleeper, which is why she is able to slip out of the house before I wake up. She’s always been awake before me. There’s only been a couple of times when I’ve been able to get up before she leaves, but she’s always gone before I can get any breakfast made.

I wonder how long it’s going to take for me to go completely grey? You know kitty, I probably had this grey hair for a long time. I don’t spend that much time looking in a mirror. My hair is cut short enough I don’t need to style it and shaving is pretty automatic. Men are fairly low maintenance so it’s not like I spend hours studying my features. I get told I’m cute often enough I believe it. I wouldn’t have stopped and looked in the mirror at all if I hadn’t seen movement behind me. There was the shadow of a figure in the mirror but none of the other workers were in the room. Whatever it was disappeared too fast to really make it out.

Oh, there’s my phone again. Unknown number. Maybe I should let it go to voicemail, but it might be Claire. Hello? Hello? Claire? Hello? Holy crap! What was that? You heard it too, didn’t you, kitty? You’re ears perked up as soon as I need to go to the phone store and hang out there until I get one of these calls. Maybe they can make sense of them. This is the first time I’ve ever heard a scream come through the phone before. It had to be feedback of some kind, but it sounded too human. Do you think I should call the police, kitty? I don’t know what I would tell them. This phone is driving me crazy.

Claire should be here soon. She said she would come over as soon as they let her go. I don’t understand her sometimes. She talks about work, but refuses to tell me what she does. I can smell smoke on her, but I’ve never seen her smoke a cigarette and the smell of smoke fades away and then comes back stronger than ever. She comes over late and leaves early and I can’t convince her to eat or drink anything. I’ve offered her water, soda, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, wine; she turns everything down. She says she has everything she needs and just wants to be with me, but she always looks like she’s in pain. Her eyes are so sad.

When I told her I was moving into the duplex for a couple of weeks she got real quiet and sat completely still. I asked her about moving in with me, but she shook her head and told me they wouldn’t let her move so far away. I wish I knew who is hurting her. I want to help her, but she’s not letting me in.

What’s that noise? Dang, the wind blew the back door open again. I thought we fixed this door. The lock is actually ripped out of the wall. I guess it’s back to propping a chair under the knob. This is one of the doors getting replaced anyway so I think I’ll be OK keeping this door blocked.

There she is, kitty. I knew Claire would make it. I hope I can get her to talk to me tonight.