She considered his question, surprised he’d asked it. He was the one who’d reached out to her, after all. He’d tepidly googled her, found her email on LinkedIn, told her he was moving to this place near where he knew she used to live. Where she still lived. He’d never been to her house, didn’t know her address. She’d looked him up too some time back, had figured out where he was located, had written his address out on a white envelope. She kept forgetting she needed to change it. “I thought you wanted me here,” she finally said, turning her glass between her palms, watching the light bounce off it.
“Well, sure I do. But I’m old. And this place is depressing.”
“It wasn’t so depressing last time I was here,” she said softly. They’d made love then, the first time since they’d become reacquainted. Harold had needed to take a pill, which had somehow surprised her, though she knew it shouldn’t. His body was different, of course, his pubic hair sparse and white, his skin loose around his joints, his stomach and thighs heavier than she remembered them being. She’d been on top for most of it, but he’d flipped her over with more strength than she’d expected toward the end, and the weight of him had felt almost suffocating, heavy with nostalgia. She’d been weepy after, but he kissed her tears away and made her gasp with his fingers until she was moaning. He’d whispered in her ear, calling her beautiful, sexy, delighting in the feeling of her wet and warmth. When she’d orgasmed hard around his fingers, he’d shuddered alongside her, urging her on, breathing raggedly with her.
A shiver passed through her now, and she reached for him. “Harold,” she said softly. “Don’t we have the right to enjoy each other? Haven’t we earned that?”
He barked a laugh and looked away from her, though he leaned his cheek against her hand. “I don’t know about earn,” he said. “But yes, we have the right.” He nodded at the bedside table where the Viagra sat in the drawer. “Maybe we should get started before it gets too late.”
It was only eight, but visiting hours ended at nine thirty here, and she didn’t want to overstay her welcome. She got him the pill, a glass of water, and sat beside him, stroking his long fingers.
* * *
• • •
IT WASN’T THE same this time. Neither of them came. There was a feeling of futility and frustration in their actions, an attempt to recapture the magic they’d only just rekindled last week. Once he got tired, he pulled out and tried to make sure she, at least, was satisfied.
“It’s okay,” she said finally, as she reached a precipice she couldn’t get beyond for the third time. “I can’t. It happens.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, and Iris almost laughed. It was such a juvenile question, one she’d answered so many times. It was always her responsibility, somehow, to make every encounter with a man end up all right. She’d made her peace with it a long time ago, though a vestigial twinge of resentment lingered.
“I’m sure. Tell me something nice,” she said, wanting to revel in the intimacy between their damp unsatisfied bodies before she had to get dressed and go. She laid her head on the plumped pillow, with his outstretched arm under her neck, so that he could hold on to her without her weight hurting him.
“Like a story?”
“Sure.”
So he told her about his eldest son’s dramatic divorce from a health guru in Sacramento, how they’d split their community of yoga-class attendees and juice-bar regulars and how he’d gotten the rotten end of the friend deal, because, and Harold smiled as he relayed this reasoning, his son couldn’t put his foot behind his ear like the ex could. Harold made the story funny, though Iris imagined the whole thing had been quite painful, but that was Harold—he was a spectator of human behavior, his years working as a psychologist always with him. Iris felt herself drifting off into semi-sleep, and only when the soft chime announcing visiting hours coming to an end sounded from the hallway did she rouse herself.
“I can’t come next week, I’ll be packing for a trip, but can I come the week after?” she asked as she pulled her bra and panties on. Harold was on his side, watching her with his always damp-seeming blue eyes.
“Only if you promise me something,” he said. Iris looked up, trepidatious. “You need to tell me more about you. Your family. Your kids. I think your daughter was, what, two? When we first met? And you said you have a son. I want to know about them.”
“That wasn’t ever part of the deal before,” she said, turning her back on him as she finished getting dressed.
“We’re in a very different place than we were before, Iris,” he said, tone serious. “I don’t know how long I have to live, and I know, I know, I’m in great health for a man my age, but that doesn’t matter. Living here is a reminder that people can go at any time, sick or not. It just happens. Old age is a real thing, Iris, and you’re lucky that you’re not afflicted with it yet.”
“What?” she said, holding a hand to her ear, mocking herself. “I’m a little deaf, what did you say?”
“Har har. You heard me very well.” He lay back. “I don’t want to know just this one part of you. If you want to spend this time with me, you have to be willing to share more. Let me get to know more of you, not just this ephemeral sexy pixie-dust-throwing apparition.” He was laughing by the end of this descriptor, and so was Iris.
“I missed you, you know,” she whispered into his mouth when she kissed him. Something inside her felt loose, as if the hinges of the cage containing her other life when she was with Harold were rusting, but it didn’t frighten her. She thought it would be nice, actually, telling him about Ariel, about Maggie, about what they taught her. He would understand, she knew now, about the terror that was parenting, and the elation, and he would smile indulgently. She was, she realized, looking forward to it.
“I missed you too,” he said.
“Two weeks, okay?”
“See you then, darling.”
* * *
• • •
AND THEN. THEN the drive home, one hand on the wheel and the other fiddling with her necklace, a little elated, a little melancholy, that space of in-between that she felt was becoming more and more a part of her life as she aged. She both wished for things to be as they once were, and accepted quicker than ever before how they were now. And then the dog, or maybe it was a coyote, she wasn’t sure, running across the street. Her senses just a tiny bit duller from the large glass of wine. Her hands gripping the steering wheel hard, her eyes wide open, swerving, swerving, until she crashed, the car crumpling in front of her, her head whipping back, seat belt tightening around her torso and the crack of breaking a rib as her body rocketed forward, and the airbag popping into her face and breaking her nose, and as she tasted blood, as the broken rib punctured a lung and she began to drown, she heard the cars still driving by in the opposite direction, and in the soothing tide of life going on as normal, she died.