In which our heroine is glad she doesn't have to deal with these people every day

Nuff said.

I haven't heard from Croissant in months; since December to be exact. I never hear from her unless she wants something. Croissant will change hair color, weight, and jobs in the blink of an eye. In December, she told me that she was engaged and then wanted to drop by for a visit, two minutes from my house, on the cell phone. Unfortunately I was in the middle of exams.

The gist of all of this is that Croissant is not the most reliable person in the world. She has abysmal taste in men, and if she treated me is how she treats all of her friends, then it's a wonder she has any friends at all. Croissant consistently chooses the men in her life over her friends, at least it seems that way to me. Croissant is manic-depressive, but sometimes she really gets on my nerves.

I called her up the next day, like she asked me to. She said she couldn't afford to go out to dinner, and did not want to be treated. Fine. She also asked me to bring some snack food, and that another one of her friends was coming over. "I'm so hungry, and I need something fattening. I don't know what to get for a vegetarian. " On my way out of the door, my mother decides she needs to tell me about the latest and greatest in suitors and show me a suitable's biodata and scanned picture-- but she just can't find it. I cannot tell my mother to buzz off, so I'm sitting there for a half hour with a strained smile. "Oh, you can keep Croissant waiting, dear." Finally I get ready to leave with pretzels, dip and leftover fruit, when Croissant calls. "I haven't been able to drink in a while. I really need to get drunk tonight." So I figure, hey, might as well spring for a bottle of wine, right? Croissant, her fiancee, her other friend who I'll call A, and me. So I grab some chips, dip, and a nice red. I figure we may as well have some nice food right? I finally manage to make it over to her appartment.

Once there I find out that Croissant's fiancee is not joining us tonight. "He has to to work at the bar tonight." Then I find out that A is Buddhist, which in her case, means not only is vegetarian, but she also does not drink alcohol. Keep in mind that I only met A once, several years ago. That leaves me and Croissant to drink wine. I also find out that she has not asked the other person to bring some food either, and I am providing all the food for the evening. Croissant tries to open the bottle of wine, and just manages to push the cork in the bottle. We sit around, turn on some music, look at some bridal magazines. I drink maybe half a glass of wine. Croissant drinks maybe 3 glasses, and then takes the bottle and chugs it. Croissant gets silly on the wine, flashes us, "We're all girls here, right?" She then dumps the wine out into the flour pot and sticks it on the top cabinet, because "He doesn't like it when I drink. He gets all angry and moody when he drinks."

She asks me and A to be her bridesmaids. She then says she will ask a high school classmate of mine to be the maid of honor. This classmate is in med school in another city. She hasn't asked her yet, because she doesn't know her number, and hasn't talked to her in two years.

She shows us the ring he got her, and says that they haven't told her parents yet because her fiancee doesn't want them to know until after the holidays. I'm not clear on whether Croissant pays rent or whether her parents do. I then learn that Croissant's PI friend thinks that her fiancee may be doing drugs because he comes home with smoky red eyes and is angry all the time.

Then she decides she wants to go visit her fiancee at the bar. I figure we may as well get some extra bridal magazines, and Croissant can sober up. We all pile into my car, since Croissant is too inebriated to drive, and A is legally blind. A & I get some coffee at Borders which is five minutes from Croissant's appartment. Croissant won't drink coffee, because "it makes me sick".

We then head to the Oregon. The Oregon is packed on this particular night, with no place to park, but dangerously close to some trucks and SUVs. "Oh stop worrying about parking properly, silly", Croissant says. I glare at her, and say that my car was just repaired because some asshole in a white SUV backing into it didn't leave a note, and it cost me $500. She giggles.

We head into the loud, packed, smokey bar. It's apparently karoake night, and the waitresses in their Ms. Claus porn gear are busy. Croissant is hungry and wants an appetizer. A offers to pay and asks if the bar takes credit, as she has no cash. Croissant never answers. We see her boyfriend, who is a leathery looking if slight guy for 30 years old. We get soft drinks and some appetizer because she wanted it. My contacts bug me so I end up heading out briefly to get some fresh air. A, however, is having a worse time. Not only is A legally blind, she's allergic to smoke.

So we end up deciding to leave. Croissant heads outside. I stand in front of the cash register, and wave at the woman operating it for twenty minutes, and get no response. I have cash, but I don't have exact change for the bar, and there is no way I'm leaving $20 for a $5. A has a card, but the bar won't charge it right away; it's so they can start a tab. A's lungs keep bothering her, and she needs me to help her out of the bar, so I end up leaving. I figure if I attempt to give them their money for 20 minutes right in front of them, and they won't take it, it's not my obligation to pay anymore.

In my car we head out and Croissant complains that she's hungry and wants some MickeyDs. She says, "Are you mad at me?" I say, "Yes."

We end up at her appartment and she ends up detailing the sad woes of her boyfriend. He got caught with a crackpipe some drifter left in the backseat of his car, she says. That's why he can't pay any rent, 7/8 of his income goes toward paying off his costs. She then goes into this harrowing saga of ending up in the hospital in pain --- because of a horrible UTI. "The doctors say that guys can get UTIs too, and I tell bleep to watch for the signs, but he's not very good at it." While in the hospital, she also found out that her birth control isn't working, because she ovulates twice a month. "In my biological family, the ability to have twins skips generations. I have at least a 40% chance of having twins." "Does he wear a condom?" "No, Bleep doesn't like the way they feel."

A volunteers, "I don't think anything is happening. The smoke in that bar would make anybody's eyes turn red."

Croissant says, "Not if they're heavy smokers."

I then leave, throughly disgusted.

A week later I'm sitting peacefully in Borders, when Croissant taps me on the shoulders. "Hi Croissant." "My fiancee is here, and the bill didn't get paid, and he's angry at you. You'd better make sure he doesn't see you."

Faced with visions, of an irrational, angry man possibly on crack, I slink out of the bookstore, furious. I am now deathly afraid of letting Croissant into my car.