The Wyoming Chronicles Continue.
[See YESTERDAY'S POST]

One morning Lola woke up and said her friend aka numerologist aka attorney called and told her to look out for danger at her front door. So interesting enough during breakfast a bizarre man was walking down the street, picking up garbage cans and throwing them. He walked by our house but since there was no garbage cans in view he kept walking. Lola saw this as the "danger at her front door". Within minutes she had gulped her last bit of eggs, swallowed some OJ and announced she was riding down to Denver [she had no intentions to be ambushed by that garbage-throwing racist neo-Nazi. Her words, not mine]. In other words, she left me there to battle the danger of my own. And if I had checked my assistant handbook I would have noted that on page 44C it reads clearly: During neo-Nazi racists garbage attacks, assistants must be willing to be hung, whipped or left to flush the toilet. [Homegirl left in such a hurry she forgot to flush her shit. Literally.]

So there I was. All alone in Laramie, Wyoming while Lola was living it up in the City of Denver. Which was fine. Time away from Lola was beyond a much-needed luxury. In that week alone, she had accused me of drinking her buttermilk, misplacing the galleys from her editor, and of screwing up an important interview with Essence [they called 30 minutes earlier than scheduled and Lola-girl was in one of her "I'm not going to answer you Keith when you call my name because I told you 9am thru 10am was Lola-time" moods].

Luckily, a few hours after Lola left for Denver, a student I met on campus called and I was able to blow off some steam. The student was African-American, female, and a Cheyenne, Wyoming native. She also called while I was cooking some buttermilk catfish [Lola was off the bean in many a way, but she could hook up this fried catfish that was battered in buttermilk and that would resurrect your grandmomma's favorite uncle Earl].

So... as the oil was heating up on the burner and I was complaining to the Cheyenne-native how "Lola woke me up at 7am to take out the trash... " smoke started to spill into the living room from the kitchen. I told my girl to hold on for a sec. I ran into the kitchen, the pan of oil was SMOKING bad. And numbskull Keith the Assistant throws water into the oil and YES, that was crazy, and YES, a fire jumped out of that pan, up and across the ceiling, and by the time [cause I was running], by the time I got to the kitchen door to escape and swung the door open, that cold air hit that fire and out it went. Just like that. Talk about scared. Talk about your 25 years on earth flashing in front of you, talk about the mystery of saving grace. Man! I was one scared and fluttered brother.

After I looked around and made sure I wasn't dead, I could hear the faint scream of somebody on the phone, screaming my name over and over. The Cheyenne-native was at her wit's end. She said all she could hear was the sudden roar of fire and one big scream. I assured her that she heard right: there was a fire and that was me screaming.

The fire didn't seem to burn anything. But it did leave a smoky-smell and a kitchen ceiling singed in black. I got to scrubbing. I opened every window and door in the house. And I got to scrubbing. I burned incense and sprayed Lysol. And I got to scrubbing. And after three hours of scrubbing, freezing from the cold blowing thru the windows, more scrubbing and boiling a pot of water spiked with cinnamon [cinnamon will cut thru any order], I sat down and waited for Lola to come home.
There was still a thin diluted presence of black on the walls and the house still reeked of burned oil and smoke, but there was nothing more I could do, but wait for Lola to come home and evoke my assistant license.

She finally arrived. With bags of goodies [for herself]. And, of course, she wasn't speaking. Well, until she walked into the kitchen and asked it I had been cooking. I said Yes, but that I burned her famous catfish. She grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge, walked to her room, closed the door and locked it.

I thought later that maybe her numerologist slash friend slash attorney was right. Danger did arrive at her front door. It was called a oil fire in the kitchen. And her self-indulgent ass was too self-indulged to notice.

Lucky me.

Until next time,

Keith