Louise sat by the window and stared at her own reflection in the rain. It was the kind of rain you only got in Seattle, not so much a shower as a constant gray downpour that made outdoor activities about as appealing as a root canal. It was the kind of rain that seemed like it conspired with Sunday afternoons to make lethargy seem like the only available option-she had books, she had Netflix, she had video games and a car that could take her anywhere she wanted to go, but whenever she looked out the window at her own winter-pale face and long, messy brown hair reflected in the half-light created by miles of cloud cover and endless damp, all she wanted to do was sit. Even dozing off sounded too much like work.
Louise tried to remind herself of the pile of dirty clothes in the hamper. She tried to tell herself that she'd gotten a whole stack of books for Christmas and she hadn't even started one. She gently suggested to herself that there was leftover pizza in the fridge that needed to be eaten up, or at the very least a pint of Ben and Jerry's that could stand to be a spoonful or two lighter. It was no good. Nothing held up in the face of the rain. It was the kind of stolid, determined rain that made boredom feel like the only reasonable emotion. No poet had ever been inspired by a rainfall like this, unless it was to go lie down in bed and pull the covers over their head.
So Louise sat by the window and stared at the rain. Until she heard the door open.
She could have sworn she'd locked it and pulled the chain. Then again, she could have sworn that nobody would go anywhere in weather like this. Apparently she was wrong on both counts. She jumped out of her chair and ran to the foyer to see who had barged in.
When she rounded the corner, she was greeted by the most extraordinary sight. There was a woman standing in the doorway, a redheaded Caucasian woman dressed in a pink-and-white gown that looked like the love child of a mad, tempestuous fling between a wedding cake and a lace doily. It was spotless, despite the rain, some of which might be explained by her massive umbrella...except for the bit about the massive umbrella being far, far too wide to fit through Louise's door.
She looked at Louise with the brightest, most vivid green eyes Louise had ever seen, and folded her umbrella with a snap. Then the next impossible thing happened-the umbrella folded in further on itself, retracting down into its own handle again and again and again until it was no more than the size of a toothpick. The woman dropped it into her handbag and smiled brightly at Louise.
"Why, hello there, Louise!" she said, taking out a mirror and briefly examining her elaborate ringlets of coppery hair to make sure not a one was out of place. "Yes, hello, I do say! It's so nice to be here on this gray, gray, gray day! You can call me Georgette Belladonna Lefoux...or you can say Gigi, because most people do!"
Louise stared at the woman for a long moment. She closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again. "Is this a dream?" she asked at last. She knew it lacked originality, but she already felt like there was far too much originality in the room at the moment and she didn't feel like adding more to it.
"It's as real as you feel!" Gigi said, stepping out of a pair of boots and into a pair of dainty pink heels that Louise sure as hell knew she hadn't left there. "Or much realer than that-I'm a very real girl, here on your welcome mat! I came here to visit with some great things to say, things to brighten you up on this gray, gray, gray day!"
Louise just kept staring. She didn't know how to respond to any of it-the ludicrous outfit, the absurd name, the constant rhyming couplets, or the sprinkling of exclamation points at the end of every sentence like an overenthusiastic baker putting powdered sugar on everything. She finally settled for saying, "Are you sure you have the right house?"
Gigi laughed a twinkly giggle and said, "The right house? Yes it is, 'cause your name is Louise, friend of Juliette Lord (who's
my
friend, if you please). I was talking to her, she was talking to me, and she whispered sad things in the ear of Gigi."
Louise sighed. Juliette hadn't ever mentioned Gigi to her, but then again if Louise had a friend like that she'd probably want to keep it a secret, too. "Sure, come in," she said, with ill-concealed bad grace. "I mean, further in than you already have." She walked off in the direction of the living room, expecting that Gigi wouldn't wait for an invitation to follow.
Sure enough, Gigi came along moments after Louise. She sprinted through the room in a whirlwind of activity that was almost startlingly fast, drawing every shade in turn and then switching on the lights. "Such an old grumpy-guts!" Gigi exclaimed, as she reached into her handbag and pulled out a small can of what looked like spray paint. "But perhaps that's the rain! On a gray day like this, you can go quite insane! Color's just what you need to smart up this gray day, color cheerful and bright and quite happy and gay!"
With that, she pulled the lid off the can and began painting the light bulbs. "Hey, what are you-" Louise began, but it wasn't even worth finishing her sentence-within seconds, Gigi had crossed the room in another tornado of boundless energy and sprayed every single bulb with a garish bubblegum pink. The whole room was flooded with warm, pink light that Louise would die before admitting she liked much better than the gloomy strained sunlight coming in from outside.
"So much better indeed!" Gigi squealed brightly, flopping down onto the couch opposite Louise. "And now, speaking of gay, there's a thing you should know on this bright pink gay day! Your friend Juliette's queer-she's both your friend and mine, and there's things she told me when she had too much wine. She would never admit to her straight friend Louise that her straight friend's hot bod was a hot, sexy tease."
Louise felt herself blushing sharply, the heat of it staining her cheeks a brilliant crimson with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, what?" She wasn't sure which part of Gigi's tactless confession to be upset at first-the fact that she clearly broke Juliette's confidence by coming here to play at being some sort of deranged matchmaker, the fact that Juliette didn't trust Louise enough to confide in her about Juliette's sexual orientation, or the fact that apparently Juliette had been fantasizing about Louise behind her back. Not just the occasional thought, but actual fantasies that she drunkenly confessed to her friends.
And this Gigi woman had just dropped the whole tangled mess right in front of her like a cat presenting its owners with a dead mouse, and expected her to be...happy? Interested? Not freaked out? Louise was suddenly too angry for words.
