Summer Intern

Miss Havisham's drink sloshes as her voice becomes louder, and orange juice streams down her wrist. She's drinking a screwdriver- one part orange juice (fresh squeezed) and unknown parts Grey Goose. She should really use her cigarette-holding hand to point and gesture, but she uses her drink-holding hand to punctuate her speech. Her name's not really Miss Havisham, but when she gets into one of these tipsy rants, that's what I call her. Just in my mind. I'm far drunker than Ms. Freeman, as always, and I'm scared that one of these days I will blurt out "Miss Havisham" by accident. Ms. Freeman has a seventh-grade education, but she's smarter than hell, and who knows? She may have read Great Expectations. I've learned to not underestimate Ms. Freeman.

I don't even hear what she's saying because my vision is fixated on the one-inch ash on her cigarette. Even though I know, from experience, that she will instinctively flick the ash into the ashtray at the exact moment that the ash length reaches critical mass, I can't stop staring at it. Just once I would like to see that ash defy her. But it doesn't dare.

When she's pulling her Miss Havisham act she's not wearing a tattered wedding dress, and she's not completely bat-shit crazy. She's drunk on expensive alcohol, and she's wearing a vintage Pucci caftan. The pattern of the dress makes my head hurt and the room spin even when I'm sober. She's very proud that she had the foresight to save all of these relics from the sixties, which are now worth big money. I tried to show her how much they sell for on ebay, but she looked at me in such a way as to suggest incredible vulgarity on my part. She doesn't need me to affirm her prescience. She already knows.