Drama with Mar

The sound of my cell phone jarred me from my sleep at a little after 2:00 this morning. I looked at the number---definitely and out-of-state area code. I let it ring through. A moment later, my phone beeped indicating that someone had left a message.

A woman with a foreign accent was babbling something about a "Margreet" and asking if she could stay with me because she was crying and a horrible thing had happened with her roommate and "priest-man" was there and she needed to get away and I erased the message before I got to the end. Some people should learn how to dial.

Five minutes later, my phone rang again. Same number. This time I picked it up.

"Hello, is this David?"

"Who is this?"

"Mariko's mother. She asked me to call you. Policeman is there. She's crying. She had to get away from L and her roommate and they are plotting and policeman is there and she asked me to call you and see if she can stay at your place."

It's worth remarking here that if Mary Tyler Moore could have said the word "no" during the first five minutes, there would have been no basis for the TV show. However, I did promise Mar that if she was in a jam or got into trouble she could call me. I stand by that promise.

"Yes, she can come over. I'll call her."

"Please, have her call me when she gets there."

I called Mar. She was in tears. I told her she could come over and spend the night.

Mar arrived at 3:00. She was still crying.

"My roommate got violent. He's the one who has the crush on me. He grabbed me and dragged me and hit me."

Some men, clearly, do not handle rejection well.

"I called the police and they did nothing. The cop was in the Navy and my roommate was in the Navy and they got all buddy-buddy and made it sound like it was MY fault and the cop told me they'd take me in if I didn't stop crying."

Yes, that does sound like our Chicago Police Department at work.

I told Mar that she could grab the sheets and blankets and towels from the closet and make herself at home. I went back to sleep.

Four hours later, I left for the gym. When I returned, Mar was sleeping on the chair in a fetal position. I had brought her a bagel and proceeded to make coffee. The story then emerged.

Her new roommate, referred to hereafter as Dahmer, confessed to having a crush on her as soon as she moved in. Dahmer was going through a difficult time in his life---he had just gotten out of the Navy, his wife had filed for divorce and he was facing a possible bankruptcy. Additionally, he had recently been charged with DWI after driving his car over the sidewalk and ramming it into a fence. Mar was the passenger.

She put off his advances couteously and went as far as to meet his therapist with him. Last night, however, she invited her ex-boyfriend, L, over. Dahmer became jealous, started slamming doors and accused her of messing around with L when he was out of the room. She told him he was crazy. He started to get physically threatening with her at this point.

I asked her what L was doing all this time.

"Nothing. He kept saying we should leave, and I made him leave the room."

"Wait a minute, he left you alone with Dahmer?"

"I made him leave. He's not a fighter."

"And he LEFT?"

"He waited outside."

L is clearly not a man. If some guy gets rough with one of my female friends and I'm in the room, I don't care how big he is. We're going at it. You don't get physically violent with women. I relayed this to Mar, and she replied,

"No! I made him leave. He'd get something broken. I wanted to handle it."

Apparently, he punched her and dragged her and she hit him back. Mar is not the violent type, and I'm certain she didn't initiate it. She called the police and when the police arrived Dahmer told them the he had acted out of self-defense. Then there was the Navy connection. One of the cops looked into her purse and pulled out a container of pills.

"Ma'am, are you bi-polar or schizophrenic?"

Dahmer told the police that she was trespassing and, SURPRISE! she was not actually on the lease. L, apparently, was no help at all with the cops, which made me understand why she didn't want to stay at his place. Mar cheated with me periodically while she was dating L, and I was understanding why.

Anyway, the police asked her if she wanted to go to the homeless shelter. They threatened to take her to jail if she didn't calm down. I imagine that it was at this point she called her mother and asked her mother to call me.

Mar tells me that I'm the only sane person in her life. God help her.

When I met Mar, she was studying for medical school. That plan appears to be on the back-burner. She's currently looking to get into real estate and is looking at properties in the city. To my knowledge she does not have a full-time, regular job-type-job outside of her volunteer work at the hospital or for various candidates. I'm wondering now how I could have dated her on-and-off for the six months that we were together. When Mar is around, drama is never far behind.