Two seconds after I was safely inside our town house, our elderly neighbor Mrs. Patterson waddled through the door using her own key. She smelled like cat piss. I’d never counted how many cats she has, but they seem to be everywhere. I saw an episode of Animal Precinct where some guy had over a hundred. Cat collectors. That’s what they call people like her.

“You’re late!” she squawked again. She repeats things.

Her voice is all scratchy, and even though she sounds bitchy and angry, she isn’t. She’s just deaf—her throat is always sore because she has to shout to hear herself speak. And some really nasty things can happen with her and phlegm, but I hide my horror.

“Yeah, my ride never showed.” I neglected to mention I had other offers.

“You want spaghetti?”

“Not hungry yet.”

She’s always eager to get dinner started as soon as she walks through the door. It’s a constant battle to push it off until six thirty. Every five minutes she throws out another dish idea until I bite. Macaroni? Fried chicken? Some nice chicken noodle soup? She usually starts that around six—adding adjectives like nice and warm and refreshing and hearty and good old-fashioned.

It was hard to smoke pot, drink Colt 45s, and watch porn with Mrs. Patterson asking me if I wanted good old-fashioned smothered steak and taters. Not that I really wanted to do any of those things, but it would be nice to shut myself in my bedroom and go online, and no, not to chat up child molesters, thank you very much. I was itching to get online and work on the latest game I was programming. But I didn’t want to be rude and shut out Mrs. Patterson, seeing as how she shuffled her walker all the way across the driveway just to be with me.

I’m sure in the Lifetime Supply of Tampax movie of my life they would change her character and make her more of a quirky but lovable old lady who manages to impart wise life lessons every time I end up in a pathetic predicament. But in real life she is nuttier than squirrel poop. Only Quentin Tarantino could do her justice, and he’d probably give her about a hundred more cats and a really dope ride, like a ’67 convertible ’Vette with a vanity plate that read PUSYLDY.

“Serena! Board’s up!”

Yep, instead of creating a computer game with an onyx fortress that needs defending against evil human hybrids, I’m playing Trivial Pursuit with a ninety-five-year-old lady who is probably wearing a Serenity pad as we speak.

If only my friends could see me now. I bet they wouldn’t be so jealous.