We had met Mary at a wedding party in a nearby town. None of us had wished to attend, but the bride had once got us out of trouble after one of our famous high school escapades and it was only fair to go. We had all shared a first impression of Mary: she was hideous. Annoying voice, long greasy hair, split ends, nine-inch nails and a nasty pink bow dangling off the top of her head. But she was sitting at our table and it would have been exceedingly rude of us not to let her blend in; and later on when she happened to go to the toilet right in the middle of our “joint break”, well, let’s say we just had to share.
We all figured we would never have to see Mary again after the party, and we went home feeling we had complied to make the world a better place by allowing a poor friendless soul to have a fun, isolation-free evening.
Four weeks and a half after the wedding, we were called on by the inevitable. We were having happy hour drinks at our usual spot, when Christine though she had maybe seen someone who looked slightly like Mary. After the others’ faces transfigured (and I’m pretty sure so did mine, only I didn’t have a mirror at hand), Christine added she had just lost one of her contact lenses and that she was probably very mistaken. She wasn’t.
Mary’s ubiquitous magpie voice echoed through the room with the sole purpose of delighting our ears. Julia felt her heart, as if begging it not to stop, Kirsten gasped and Christine rolled her eyes. I couldn’t tell exactly what my reaction was, but I’d say it was somewhere along the lines of sighing and praying to the Lord for mercy. Oh, and I think I also wondered if He wasn’t punishing me for spending three hundred and fifty dollars on a pair of designer boots the previous week.
Mary hugged us all vigorously and dropped the bomb without further ado, or anaesthesia. She had moved to our very own neighbourhood. That was when we all exchanged accusing looks and wondered who had been the silly duck (or rather, the incredibly stupid platypus) to let her in on our current location -Kirsten had drunk ten margaritas at the wedding, so she was suspect number one. Mary went on about getting a promotion and saving for a holiday in
It seemed as if our tiny token of phoney affection at the wedding had empowered her, and she was now hideous times ten.
Christine was the first to call it a night and, judging by the look on her face, she had really had enough. Ten minutes later, Kirsten and Julia emptied the excuse stock and they, too, left the pub. I was left alone, my best excuses having been used, my beer drunk, and my patience stretched to the limits. But the plot thickens. Right when I thought I could see traces of fatigue in Mary’s face, she cunningly persuaded me to schedule a shopping date for the following afternoon.
When I got back to the apartment, I broke the happy news to my roomies. I won’t deny I knew what was coming. None of them had been present at the moment of arranging the meeting so, technically, I was the only one who had actually promised to go. I used my victim card and accused them all of leaving me alone with her, of stealing my excuses and many other very unfriendly actions. In the end, I had to bribe them by promising to do the dishes for two weeks in a row, and to drive the next time we went out for drinks.
When we got to the mall, Mary was standing near the central fountain: a strategic position from which she would see us come in and we couldn’t say we had not been able to find her. She had also been careful enough to wear an orange and yellow dress which was impossible not to notice. At times, she seemed a lot smarter than we all thought she was. She greeted us with hearty exclamations, and I swear at least twelve people turned to see what the matter was. After we made sure that the security man had unfortunately no intentions of declaring her a public nuisance, she led the way into the most luxurious shops, and came out with bags of the most unfashionable, most expensive and most ridiculous outfits. She even persuaded Kirsten to get a purple bikini with yellow and green polka dots, which Kirsten later said would make a perfect Christmas gift for her aunt Margaret, who apparently was not over the Sixties yet.
Shopping had been exhausting, and we were all ready for a nice, cool beer. Maybe it was the beer, or maybe we were so tired we simply dropped our guard. The thing is, two beers and a half later we found ourselves making plans for Saturday night in front of Mary; and we even invited Mary to the club! This time, none of us was to blame individually, for we had all sinned together as sisters.
It was eight o’clock when we heard the bell. Christine was having trouble with her skirt zipper, Kirsten was straightening her hair, and Julia was in the middle of her manicure session, so I had the pleasure of answering the door. The she was, looking radiant in a brand new dress she had certainly not bought in our presence. This was not Mary, the shy, friendless, exasperating little woman we all knew and hated: she was a freaking fox!
She showed herself in and sat down next to Julia, who somehow stuck her nail file into her eye at the sight of Mary. Kirsten was the next to be jinxed. She was so surprised that she burned her ear and screamed for a whole minute. When Christine came out of the bathroom, swaying her hips proudly because her new skirt had a very nice fit, her jaw dropped, and the zipper burst open. We all glanced silently at each other, and then at Mary. It was going to be a very long night.
So there we were: Christine, Kirsten, Julia and I, sitting at a small side table, drinking hot whisky, watching Mary. That night, Mary danced with all of our guys. She danced with the cute ones, the not-so-cute ones, the amazingly cute ones; and it was one of the latter that she left the club with at the end of the evening. We decided we had had enough and went home on foot, for I had broken my promise of not drinking in order to drive. And we all made a friendship vow to never, ever again, make the dumb mistake of befriending a lonely stranger at a wedding.
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