Tragedy

Not long after I met my new neighbour, Nadine Klotz, the lightbulb of recognition went off. You know, like when you meet a lawyer named Justice or a right winger named Player. You'll get what I mean, Gentle Reader, after I've told you her toenail story.

I heard about it the other night, as we were hanging out at Nadine's place, watching American Idol. Me, with her two cats, Abbot and Costello, on my lap; her, with her leg resting on a pile of pillows, foot suspended in the air and a half mile of bandage wrapped around her insole. She told me what had happened that morning.

"It all began when I slid down the stairs," she began, "which is why my back is killing me and I'm not getting up from this sofa. You'll have to get your own beer, and mine."

"No problem," I replied.

"And do you happen to have any Aleve on you?"

"I never leave home without it."

"But you live next door," Nadine pointed out.

"Oh, right. Do you want me to go get you some?"

"Maybe in a bit. I've already had six today. But get me another beer, will you please?" I did, and she resumed her story.

"I'm just not used to getting up at 6:00 in the morning." Nadine had been off work for almost a year, and just started a new job in Menlo Park this week. "I mean, it's still dark, and I hate turning on the light and so I came downstairs in the dark and I was wearing my mukluks — you know, the kind with the soft bottoms &mdash and I slipped and skidded down the last few stairs on my ass."

"Ouch," I sympathized through sips of Becks. I've known Nadine for a month now, long enough to know she exaggerates her stories for dramatic effect. Not that there's anything the matter with that, you understand.

"Is that how you hurt your foot?" I asked.

"No, that happened in my closet, when I went back upstairs," she continued. "You should see, I have a hole in the bottom of my foot, it must be half an inch deep at least." She made as if to unwind the bandage to show me. "I'm going to need stitches!"

"You mean you didn't go to the hospital?" I'd never thought of stitches as being an optional remedy. Either the blood won't stop flowing and you need to be sewn together to hold it in, or a flap of skin is dangling immodestly from a thread, demanding to be zigzagged back in place; and, if not, then you don't need stitches.

"No, I'll go tomorrow. I had to go to work!"

I couldn't imagine her going to work like this, but she insisted she had. Of course, that would have been before the beer and at least a few of the Aleves.

"What happened in your closet?" I asked.

"Well, you know I have that big walk-in closet upstairs? I walked into it, kicked off the mukluks, and stepped on a coat hangar and it went straight up into my foot. It actually occurred to me that you might have heard me scream, and then I felt guilty for waking you up."

Nadine is the kind of person who lays more guilt on herself than a rabid pack of mothers could ever do.

"Good lord!" I exclaimed.

"Don't worry, it didn't even bleed, it just fucking hurt like hell, so I pulled the damn thing out and wrapped a bandage around it and drove to work. You know how sometimes puncture wounds go so deep they just seal up right away? I figured that's what happened."

I couldn't tell whether she was crazy, or just exaggerating. Maybe it had just been a pinprick.

"Then I got to work and took my shoe off, and all this blood poured out."

"Oh my god! What did you do? Didn't you go to the hospital?"

"No, I told you, I'll go get stitches tomorrow. Really, it's OK, I'm used to it. My feet are so bad. See my toenail there? See how lopsided it is? That's from karate."

Nadine had mentioned taking a karate class a few years ago, but hadn't spoken of toenails until now.

"I was doing a karate kick and my toenail just flew off. I went through three toenails that year."

"Three?"

"They grow back. The second one was when I was in Italy, staying at my friend's place, and I pulled out a drawer and it came out all the way and fell straight down onto — you'll never guess."

"The same toe?"

"About two weeks after the nail had finally grown back."

We watched American Idol in silence for a few minutes. At the next commercial break, Nadine got up to go to the bathroom. When she came back she was holding one of those sticky-tape clothes brushes, the kind where you peel off the used layers as they get hairy. She stood at the end of the sofa, obsessively brushing the cat hair off her sweatshirt.

Her cats are both shorthairs.

She sighed in frustration. "I wish there was some sort of machine, you know? Something that would magically suck all the hair off."

"Um... something like a vacuum cleaner, you mean?"

Two years ago today, Postmoden Sass had a spat with her karaoke buddy, Sparky. In the next story, Sass and Ace discuss the weather, eBay, and The Big Giant Head. Later, Nadine calls Sass with a new tragedy.