"You mean now? I'm pretty busy."
This was not the kind of response I expected from a thick-or-thin team member, of which Ms. Wonder was decidedly the number 1 member, and I told her so.
"Lucy," I said.
"Don't call me Lucy."
"I'm not talking about you, I'm talking to you and if you think she would prefer it, I'll say Lupe then."
"Don't call me Lupe either," she said with a grin that told me she didn't pay attention to my opening remarks.
I was beginning to feel abandoned in my time of need and I didn't like it. Here I was, calling for the old rally-round-the-flag spirit and all I was getting was that patented look of hers.
"Ms. Wonder, I said, "here I am over my head in the soup, in need of sane and sober council, with no one else to turn to..."
"Ok, ok, I'm listening," she said.
Still not the attitude to give aid and comfort but sometimes we must settle for what's at hand, and this seemed to be one of those times. So I got down to it.
"You're aware that I've been struggling with the writing."
"Oh no," she said, not the writing thing again. Can't you just start writing any old thing to get beyond the block? I'm sure I've heard that somewhere."
"Ah, you mean to follow the Shakespeare method? Let me answer that question by saying, just take a look at what it got him."
"Well, yes," she said. "Just take a look."
"My point exactly," I said.
"No it isn't," she said but I decided to ignore that too. We'd been over this subject repeatedly and I wasn't going to allow her to divert me. I forged ahead (it is 'forged' isn't it?).
"Wonder," I said, "when one is up to the neck in quicksand, struggling seems indicated but, as we've seen in all those jungle movies, struggling never ends well. No, what one needs is a new tactic."
"You have one?"
"Yes," I said, "I'm going to finish those reminiscences of mine."
"That's not a new tactic," she said. "I thought you were working on that now."
"Yes, but this time, I'm going to write them in the form of blog posts. You see? I enjoy blogging. Especially when I'm writing about myself. Napoleon used to..."
"Wait," she said. "If I'm going to listen to this when I should be upstairs doing what I'm paid to do, then I don't want to hear about Napoleon."
"But, Wonder, it paints and adorns..."
"And nothing about Catherine the Great and nothing about Cocker Spaniels. Somehow you always find a way to include one or more of those three things and I've had enough of them."
"But, Poopsie, consider for just one moment that your carefully laid plans seem to have worked perfectly and you're patting yourself on the back for excellent work. Then consider that you suddenly discover that all your hard work has been scuttled by a surprise act of catastrophic proportions. Naturally, you can't continue with the normal routine. You call the camel drivers and..."
"You're talking about Napoleon in Cairo," she said.
"Well," I said, "he had to have taken it big. Don't you think?"
"I'm going back to work," she said.