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Susan's admirer called again tonight, and here’s a partial list of what she wanted me to tell Susan about:

• They’ve tested her for cancer and she’s really scared. Quantico is also somehow involved.
• Her next door neighbors cut down all the trees at Christ Church, and then they cut down all the trees by Father Gotti’s.
• Someone told her she should go to the gallows just because she wore green pants.
• Somebody named Burns or Browns was running around with a samurai sword in her back yard.
• The weather is bad (this is actually true to some degree since we’ve had some snow showers, causing a lot of accidents and such). Bad weather scares her.
• She has alerted her lawyer to all of this.

This woman (we’ll call her Carly Jones) calls once or twice a month. She’s called her for years, and she used to be friends with Susan’s mom. She’s totally serious and I can only imagine what might actually be wrong with her, and I often wonder if she’s truly functioning from day to day. If so, how does she do it? Where does she live? Does she have a job? Is she like this all the time or is it some lapse in medication that spurs up these occasional phone calls?

I listen to her dutifully and answer all her questions (He’s running around with a samurai sword! Now isn’t that crazy?). I deliver her messages to Susan as best I can. Sometimes I even take notes, but she’s hard to keep up with. And every once in a while, even though I try to be compassionate to her, and even though I wish she was doing better and not so troubled, I catch myself wondering if she knows where we live and just how fixated on Susan she really is.