Three

The woman was wearing a bulky grey cardigan covering what looked like a bright peach satin prom dress. Over this she had a hot pink organza shawl with political campaign buttons attached at regular intervals. There were at least ten rings on every hand, and her neck was strung with so many necklaces (including one made of macaroni) that they almost covered her chin. A tiara crowned her head, and a glittery wand was sitting on the counter in front of her, next to a cup of steaming tea. And it looked like she had turquoise cowboy boots on her feet.

“Um. Hi?” I did a quick mental inventory of last night. Wedding, dinner, open bar, dancing, Jack’s Karaoke Shack, very bad rendition of Blaze of Glory, promise to Sabrina to go to dog park, home, alarm clocks, bed. Nowhere in there did I remember inviting a poorly dressed homeless woman to stay over. Perhaps that last drink at the Shack was a bad idea – good old Jack must have slipped me some bathtub gin and now I’m hallucinating.

“Good morning, sunshine! You certainly do take your time, don’t you. I’ve been waiting for you for at least forty minutes. I was about to get the gong ready.”

“Gong?”

“The wake-up gong, of course. Certain to wake up even the deepest of sleepers.”

“Why would you start with a gong? Why not just try shaking me fir – hey, wait a second! Who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my kitchen?”

“I’m Fatima, of course.”

“Of course. Fatima. And what, may I venture to ask, are you doing here?”

“I’m here to start you on your journey.”

“Journey. Right. And, um. Who sent you?”

“The agency, obviously. Haven’t you been through briefing? You should have been expecting me.”

“Well, Fatima, I can’t say that I was.” Unbelievable. This woman not only had bad taste in clothes, she was obviously psychologically disturbed

“Oh, dear. That does make things a bit more difficult, doesn’t it? No worries! We’ll manage. It has been a while since I’ve delivered the orientation speech myself – one doesn’t have to do that when they’ve reached my level of expertise, obviously – but I’ll struggle through, and I’m sure there will be no problems. Now, where should we start?”

“Let’s start with you leaving, and me going back to bed.”

“Now that wouldn’t be a very useful way to get started! We’d be wasting a lot of time!”

“A lot less time than we will when I call the police.” I turned to reach for the phone.

“Pish posh. Don’t get those silly police mixed in with this. Sit, sit, and we’ll get started. First I guess we should go over the whole identification process. Please state your full name, date and place of birth, and your favorite flavor of ice cream.”

“Yeah, I’ll get on that, as soon as I finish talking to the nice police men.” I picked up the phone and dialed 911. All of a sudden there was a puff of pink smoke and the phone disappeared. In it’s place I was holding a silver charm bracelet with several shiny charms dangling off of it.

I don’t know whether it was the shock of the disappearing phone, or my body trying to remind me of how hungover I was, but I started falling backwards. I braced myself to hit the floor, but found myself reclining in a lavender bean bag chair instead. I looked up to see Fatima putting her wand back down on the counter.

“Who are you? What did you do to my phone? Where did this bean bag chair come from? And why do you care what flavor ice cream I like?”

“I can see I may be going about this in the wrong way. As I said, I am Fatima. I am your Life Choice Guide. I temporarily displaced your phone so that we could go over our business uninterrupted. The bean bag chair came from my attic, where it will be returning shortly, and I want to know what ice cream you like because I’ve found that eating ice cream can be a great cure for a hangover such as yours.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, vanilla, then. With rainbow sprinkles.”

“I guess it is okay to skip right to that part. We’re not following protocol at this point anyway.” This she said with a wave of her wand, and suddenly a bowl of ice cream appeared in my hands.

“You actually wave your wand. Are you, like, my fairy godmother or something? Do I get some glass slippers out of this?”

She sighed deeply. “You, dear, need to work on your listening skills. I am your Life Choice Guide. I’ll guide you through the different choices you’ll be making over the next week. As for glass slippers, they went out of style centuries ago. They were not very comfortable – left horrible blisters. Though, between you and me, I’ve never found anything else quite as good for matching with everything I own.”

“Life choice? So… you’re an activist for the pro-lifers?” An activist who appears in my kitchen, uninvited and proceeds to perform what can only be called magic. I did not realize how powerful their lobbying had gotten.

“Hmm. Not quite in the sense you mean. But if you’ll be so kind as to join me here at the table, I’ve got all the forms necessary to get you started on your Journey of Choice, the Opportunity of a Lifetime.”

A million other questions were crowding my brain, but I decided to hold on to them for a while to see exactly where she was going to go with this ‘life choice’ stuff. I took my bowl of (really delicious) ice cream and moved towards the table. As soon as I moved away from the bean bag, there was a whooshing sound, and it disappeared, presumably back to Fatima’s attic.

“So, what did you do with the preliminary questionnaire?”

I stared back at her. I vaguely remembered getting a large purple envelope in the mail the week before. “Do you mean that envelope that was marked ‘Important’ and ‘Open immediately’ and smelled like cooked cabbage?”

“Of course that is what I mean. Though I can’t imagine why the questionnaire would smell that way. Generally, they try to make it smell like lilac or sea foam. This must be a new experiment. Where is the questionnaire now?”

“Probably being made into tomorrow’s newspaper. I tossed it in the recycling bin.”

“You didn’t even open it?” I was almost amused with how utterly aghast she sounded. “I’ve heard of situations where people have not finished the questionnaire, or hadn’t performed the requisite three hours of meditation for the two days prior to my arrival, but to not even have opened the envelope…” she trailed off. I would have laughed, but she really looked like she was on the verge of tears.

“Well, why don’t you just summarize what I would have found in the envelope? I’m a quick learner, and you seem like you know what you’re talking about. It shouldn’t take long.”

She brightened a bit at my words. “That sounds fantastic! Let’s get started!” I could barely believe that I was encouraging this woman. I wasn’t entirely convinced that I was not dreaming, or stuck in an elaborate hallucination emanating from my champagne-soaked neurons. “Okay, before you embark on your journey, you’ll need to sign this consent form, and this waiver releasing us from any liability for damage to your property, body or soul.”

“No. First you need to tell me exactly what is going on here. What is a Life Choice Coach, why do I need one, and what is this ‘journey’ I’m about to embark on?”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Betsy, tell me: why are you who you are today”

“Is this a philosophy lesson?”

“No, it’s not. Tell me, what makes you you?”

I decided to just give in and let her lead me. Even if this did turn into a high school philosophy class. “Well, I guess I’d have to say that I’m a twenty six year old girl living on her own who doesn’t like her job, is often lonely, but has good friends around her to cheer her up when she’s feeling down. I graduated from college a few years back with a degree in English, which does me no good as a drug rep. My dreams are to have a good family, a puppy and my own bookstore.”

“Okay, that’s a start. Go on.”

“Go on? Um. I like old movies, and Beat poetry. On winter mornings, I like to get up to go break the ice on puddles because I like to be temporarily destructive. I get a manicure once a week. I have a hard time with change and I like to be right all of the time.” I felt like I was drafting a statement for a personals ad. “Is that enough?”

“It will have to do for now, especially since you didn’t get your meditation time done before today.