One coffee one afternoon

She has been trying to get me to do coffee with her for months. And for months, I've had one excuse after another to not meet up with her. Until one afternoon this week when I really was free for a couple of hours and thought what the heck, I was going to get myself a cuppa anyway, so why not with her?

I was all settled at a Starbucks with my favourite latte when she came flying through the door, late and flustered as usual. She plonked herself across from me and, to my horror, immediately announced that she will NOT be having anything to drink because she just came from lunch and she already had too much to eat and drink.

Nothing? Not even an iced tea? In a near-empty Starbucks in the middle of the afternoon?

Nothing. And she proceeded to drone on and on about her famous husband, all the work coming their way, her itinerant tenant, her previous son...

My mind split into two. One half half-listened to her endless yammering, the other half recalled all the miserly ways this woman inflicts herself on "friends".

She goes to people's home for dinner, and eats only the "good stuff". Then asks to take home all left-overs in quantities enough to feed her and her family for the next one week. She goes out to dinner with people and then announces at the end of the evening she does not have cash or credit card on her. She asks 20 people to her home and feeds them 2 fried fish (what happened to the seven loaves?)

I have tried to overlook all her faults - and they are too many to even begin to list - and tried instead to look for redeeming qualities.

But that afternoon, it all crystalised in my mind that I am pursuing a lost cause.

So, just like that, I know that is the last time I see this woman of my own volition.