Scenes from Working Title - When Mrs. Johnson Disappeared

“Have you made arrangements for the dog?” Roberto asks.

Roberto Dennis gives his wife, Delucca a kiss on her cheek.  He brings up their trip and says how he is looking forward to the break.  She remembers the resort she picked serves gourmet food and she mentions the truffle oil in the pasta dishes she read about in one of the reviews.  Her face is inches from his.  

“I’m working on it,” she says.

Delucca scoots back and stares at her book hard.  It is upside down.  She wishes Sarah would give her advice the way she used to, usually when Delucca was having an episode.  These breaks with reality plagued her most of her life.  And what she doesn’t know is how many of these conversations with Sarah could be real.  She’s always had the feeling Sarah is a ghost.  

Roberto hasn’t “seen” or “heard” Sarah, though Delucca would like to believe he has, and her conversations with his first wife weren’t the products of her mind when she didn’t want to do anything, like leave the house to go shopping for something as simple as a tie, or in the case of their vacation, find a pet sitter for their new puppy.  At least this what her therapist says.  In her last session, the therapist asked her how things were going with a real dog, instead of an imaginary one.  “He isn’t helping the way my best friend thought,” Delucca said.

Delucca doesn’t know where her best friend, Marianne, is;  and this has blossomed into another worry.  They never talked anymore.  And these problems could not be resolved by text.  Marianne didn’t seem to have time for even text these days, as she is currently out of the country with her husband, George, in the middle of a revolution, somewhere…