Admittedly, it had taken far too long for Vera to realize just why her houseboat had been filled with a veritable ocean of multi-colored balloons. Plastic and mylar burst forth and pooled around her ankles as soon as she’d managed to slide the front door open. Though her first instinct was to stare dumbly into the neon abyss, her next move was to wade into the chaos for any indication of what had transpired. Even her at her most drunk, Vera couldn’t imagine she would whip out her AmEx just to buy what must have been a couple hundred dollars worth of balloons. Which left the question of who had the time to bother? More than that, how had they gotten into her home?
It was something worth pondering with a martini in her hand.
By the time she’d kicked aside enough balloons to fix pull down a glass and fix her drink, she’d decided the best course of action would be to wade back through the small space and take up residence on the deck. The problem would still exist once she’d reached the bottom of her glass, and she could just as easily take care of the issue after munching on the three saturated olives that would serve as her lunch. Better that than the days-old take out in her fridge.
Somewhere between her first and second olive, she found the opportunity to lazily bat balloons in the direction of passersby. It was harmless -- - annoying, sure, but harmless - -- and slowly chipped away at the issue of balloons in her home. It didn’t take long before she hit someone squarely in the back of the head, though Vera didn’t miss a beat in draping herself over the rail of her boat and leaning into an shrug that might’ve come off as unaffected if she hadn’t given into a self-indulgent grin, “You look like you could use a balloon. That one’s free. It’s fifty cents a pop after that -- - a dollar if you want one with words on it.”
