I think Willie is pranking me.
Indy and I have a standing date. Every Tuesday morning, I roll into the apartment he and Willie share. I set up the dining room table for Indy. I log into the telehealth appointment.
Because every Tuesday, Indy and I do speech therapy.
It’s early when I show up for the 8:30 appointment. Sometimes, Willie and Indy haven’t had breakfast yet. Sometimes, they haven’t even had coffee.
Sometimes, it’s worse than that.
Extraneous noise during a telehealth appointment certainly interferes with the quality of that appointment. When the patient is as hard of hearing as Indy, extraneous noise is an even bigger problem.
When the telehealth appointment is all about speech, extraneous noise makes for a very dire situation.
Enter Willie, purveyor of fine extraneous noises, as well as occasional poor lighting and nudity.
At precisely 8:30, every Tuesday morning, I click on that “Connect” button. And Willie creates some kind of ambient noise.
Sometimes, she’s issuing commands to Alexa, whom she now believes is a Russian spy because she thinks Russia wants to know what the average American retiree does each day.
Occasionally, she decides that I – in my unrelenting reign of terror – was being downright evil in turning off MSNBC. She turns it back on, cranking the volume up to levels that make me realize the etiology of Indy’s deafness.
A few times, she’s declined to answer the phone. She won’t even pick up when the caller’s message drags on and on.
And on.
But my two favorite noises employed by Willie are the sink and the dishwasher.
Several times, Willie has decided that the dishes must be done at exactly the moment Indy’s speech therapist chirps her cheery “Good morning!” She’ll start at the sink, rinsing the dishes with a water strength I’m sure is envied by Niagara Falls.
It’s bewildering water from a spigot can be that loud. It’s also bewildering to see Willie do dishes. She’s not big on housework.
Next comes the dishwasher. It groans and sloshes, projecting its cacophony through the apartment. Indy struggles to hear the therapist, who in turn can’t hear the hums Indy executes to strengthen his voice muscles.
Willie is a diabolical genius.
And an overachiever, as she’s not content to merely inflict us with the clamor and racket of the Hoover Dam, struggling to erupt from her kitchen.
Willie likes to alter my carefully staged lighting. Vanity demands precise lighting – not to mention cosmetics and wardrobe. But just as the clock rolls over to 8:30, Willie shuts down all the lights, a Bizarro bartender at last call.
Many mornings, Indy and I have been plunged into blackness. Indy laughs as I scrabble to turn on lights, shut down the dishwasher, answer the phone. Willie likes to float behind me, musing as to why the light is back on when she “just turned that thing off!”
But good pranksters can’t – won’t – stop with the tried-and-true. Willie pulled her best stunt yet last week.
When I arrived – eight o’clock sharp because I always have to do everything right – Indy was dressed, but Willie was still in her nightgown. Willie lingered through the beginning of Indy’s appointment – off-camera, but close enough to be sure her pranks were hitting their mark.
Once Indy and I completed our requisite flutter of light adjusting and sound-reducing, Willie retreated to the bedroom.
She emerged in short order, her nightgown now exchanged for jeans and a bra.
Wait. What?
Willie was still off-camera, but the obvious concerned me. There is not an abundance of real estate in that apartment. It would not take a lot of movement for Willie to become a very specific sort of go-go dancer.
I waved my arms. When Willie didn’t acknowledge me, I hissed under my breath, ridiculously hoping I could both keep Willie off-camera and refrain from making the dreaded extraneous noise.
She finally looked up at me, just as she had moved enough to almost – almost – be in camera range.
I pantomimed frantically. I pointed at my own chest, then at my computer, then at Willie. I made my eyes wide, desperately trying to communicate the obvious yet urgent nature of the move Willie was about to make.
I think we’ve all been that movie theater audience, the one who yells and begs for the protagonist to just run outside or kiss the girl already or realize his dad loved him all along. We’ve all felt the frustration when the protagonist doesn’t hear us, when he runs up the stairs instead, when she doesn’t kiss the girl, when the dad dies unheard.
I was gesturing to Willie with all the force of an audience – and Willie was ignoring me with all the force of an actor adhering to a hackneyed plot.
Willie made a “what can I do?” look. Then she scuttled across the apartment, presumably to her laundry closet for a sartorial rescue.
And in full view of the camera.
I locked my gaze to the tiny window on the computer that reflected me and Indy. I positioned my head to block the camera’s view of Willie. Each time I saw a glimpse of bare shoulder, I shifted my body to shield Willie, like I was Willie’s personal Pixelmator Pro.
Willie reached the laundry closet, shutting the door, modesty all of a sudden in her repertoire. I sat, aghast at Willie’s – what? Disregard? Audacity? Effrontery?
I contemplated the depths Willie was willing to go to with her pranks. I considered that Indy still has a month of speech appointments left.
A month where Willie – who is clearly willing to go for broke – can execute more devilish pranks. A month where I am ill-prepared. A month where I will be outwitted.
Will she spill tea on my computer? Sweat to the oldies in the background? Rent a string quartet? Get a pelvic exam in her living room?
The temptation, of course, is to thwart her. But when you mess with Willie, you get the horns. And I’ve been told recently that I’m having boundary issues when it comes to Willie and Indy. I should just let them play out their lives, interfering only when things are critical.
I can’t be the audience that yells at the screen. I need to be that one guy – usually Don – who casually chomps popcorn while the killer lingers at the top of the steps, the girls commit to their love, deaths play out across the screen.
Or, you know. I can just bring a shirt.