On the 5th Day of Christmas

I received word that one of our bingo regulars passed away.

Faith, who was the former girlfriend of Dream Lover, had been taken away by ambulance last week.

A few days later, after being returned home after that medical emergency, a neighbor checked in on her yesterday, found her deceased in bed.

And so it begins, the time of year when the death toll around here seems to increase.

In a previous episode of Tales of the Complex (thanks Bob for that title), I’d written that it appeared Dream Lover was embarking on yet another relationship after the aforesaid Faith.

He and Her Haughtiness, renamed Boebert because she was talking during bingo, sat together at bingo, stayed seated long after play was over, seemed deep in conversation, which ended with Boebert running around looking for a pen so they could exchange telephone numbers.

Dream Lover's by then ex-girlfriend Faith was in the room seeing this.

Though they'd broken up and were supposedly just friends by then, it still had to hurt.

From what I’ve observed since, that budding new relationship was over quick fast in a hurry because, two weeks later, when Boebert showed up for bingo, Dream Lover was already seated.

Inasmuch as that’s not his usual modus operandi to arrive early, be seated, I surmised he was probably waiting for her.

He looked up, smiled when she walked through the door.

She chilled — had a cold look on her face, and though walking directly by him, she deliberately looked past/through him, and sat elsewhere.

He looked confused, and I’d occasionally catch him looking over at her, trying to make eye contact.

I’m sure she could see and feel him doing so, but kept her head down, refused to look up at him, and fled the room the minute bingo was over — I assume to escape his walking over to her.

It was brrrr all the way. The cold shoulder, which led me to two possible conclusions ……. he'd either said or done something she found offensive OR one of the residents in the know had informed Boebert of Dream Lover’s history with women here on the complex.

A history of having battered the woman who was living with him when he first moved in — which battering sent that woman fleeing to a shelter, never to return, and then getting into a relationship with Faith, that came to an end for unknown reasons — all obvious Red Flags.

At any rate, it looks like Boebert nipped it in the bud.

And so ends this episode as we wait to see who Dream Lover is going to go after next.

Maybe he’ll get desperate and rethink having rejected our Karen character, who used to send him love letters and whom he reported to the office for harassment.