Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Ella grabs Maurice by the wrist. "Come in the bedroom! I want to show you something!"

Maurice lurches forward, muttering, "Can we talk about this?" (Because his wife, Cathy, is sitting right there on the couch, and there's been sexual tension between Ella and Maurice before.)

But it's nothing like that. "I took Cathy out to lunch with my stepmom," Ella explains. "They spent the whole time speaking French."

"That's nice," Maurice says. He's genuinely pleased to learn this.

"And I felt left out the whole time," Ella adds.

Maurice points out, "But now you have people to speak English to."

Ella looks annoyed. "Cathy's the only girl friend I have left! And she's at my house every day! But we can still hardly talk to each other. What can I do?"

"She's working hard to learn English. You could wait till she's done!" Maurice smirks.

"Maurzy, I'm SERIOUS," says Ella.

Maurice asks, "What kind of answers are you looking for?"

Maurice has sitcom neighbor rights at Ella and Jon's apartment. Actually, he used to work there and still has the key, and I guess Ella expects him to continue to let himself in, because she can't be bothered to answer the door. Ella has the personal boundaries I can only dream of. I keep trying to foist trivial responsibilities off myself and onto other people - like they could be bringing their own laundry hampers downstairs without me having to ask multiple times - but it never accomplishes much.