Last year, a woman who looked a bit like Diana Ross came in to the office and ordered me to research villas in Bali, renting an entire castle in Ireland, and luxury accommodations for a group in northern India. She gave me her credit card, refused to give a phone number or address, and said she'd be in touch. I did the research. Months went by, and a hard to read handwritten letter arrived in the mail instructing me to issue two airline tickets to Ireland. No signature, no names, no dates, no city. I had no way to contact Miss Ross, as I began calling her, so nothing happened aside from me regaling the office with the story. After a year I threw away the credit card slip and filed the brochures.

Friday, I got a call fifteen minutes before closing. "Lucy, I'm sure you remember me," a female voice said imperiously.

I didn't, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to. I asked her name. She informed me that she had cafe au lait skin and a lot of money. I was kind of insulted. "I tend to remember names, not skin color or bank accounts," I said stiffly. She dismissed that, and said her old name wasn't any good any more, and I was to call her Roshanda Zihjuatanejo from now on. Fabulous. "All right, Ms. Zihjuatanejo, what can I do for you?" I said with a sense of doom.

"I'm running for President, and I must have a full financial disclosure from you for the FBI and the CIA," she said briskly. "I need the records showing all the travel that you handled for me, specifically to Ireland, and I want to go ahead and rent Linda Evans' villa in Bali."

Oh, shit. Miss Ross is back.

"Gosh, we didn't discuss renting anything from, er, Linda Evans," I said, desperately trying to think back to the research we discussed while my internal alarm system was blaring FRUITCAKE ALERT! FRUITCAKE ALERT! "And I didn't issue any tickets for you because you didn't give me the names of the passengers. So, er, there isn't actually any financial transaction to disclose."

She wasn't interested in my excuses. She started talking about what was involved in running for President (I didn't dare ask what party), specifically the background checks she was expecting, and what kind of business did I run when I wouldn't issue tickets for the paying public, and of course it was Linda Evans' villa, she remembered quite clearly, oh, no, well, maybe it was some other famous person's villa, but she definitely wanted me to just take care of everything. She was tired of my negative vibes. She needed to take a rest from the insanity of American life, and she expected me to set up the foreign travel toot sweet. And she had no address or phone number where I could reach her. She wanted the information right now.

Coward that I am, I didn't just tell her we weren't interested in doing business with her. She sounded like the kind of person who would do something completely freaky if you confronted her with her bizarre behavior. "Okay, I can give you some URLs and you can look at these villas in your spare time," I offered feebly.

"I don't do the Internet," she responded with icy hauteur. "It poisons the mind."

Faaaaabulous. "Well, then, I'm afraid you'll have to give me an address where I can send brochures," I said. "I can't give it to you over the phone." Not at 5:15pm on a Friday, I can't, even if she were sane. She reluctantly gave me a Palo Alto address, but warned me quite menacingly that she wouldn't be there long. She issued several other demands, none of which I paid the slightest attention to. Finally, she hung up.

It gave me the creeps. I've had a lot of wacky clients in my time, but this is the only one who has ever scared me. She's on the wrong side of eccentric, and I'm not thrilled that she's remembered who we are. With any luck it'll be another year before she gets back to us.

And if I see Roshanda Zihjuatanejo on my ballot in November, I'm definitely not voting for her.

Past Life The Index Next Incarnation