By Andrew Roe
It was happening in daylight, though for the first time with her he’d been hoping for dark, thinking it would be better to veil his body and its decline for as long as possible. They’d been listening to music downstairs—getting their ears dirty, she said, laughing at summoning the expression—half naked by the time they climbed the stairs to transition to his bedroom, Oscar Peterson’s piano continuing to fill the house on a Thursday afternoon, a pause in the ongoing rush and whirl and you couldn’t help but halfway wonder what the rest of the world was doing at this exact moment, occupied with jobs and work and errands and appointments and bullshit and who knows what else, and here he was, feeling freed of all that, temporarily at least, feeling lucky despite the many reasons he was not lucky.
He took his pill and then they waited. She kissed his chest, his stomach, mouth, neck, ear lobe, all the visible parts, like tending to a patient more than a lover, eventually easing on top of him. It was fairly quick, a quaking release, followed by murmured apology, offer of reciprocity, and she said she didn’t need anything for herself, it was okay, she was fine, she just was happy to be with him, to hold him, to have another body pressed so close against hers, to hear the music still drifting up from downstairs. She liked jazz too. This information considered as part of their compatibility score.
The picture from her online profile was certainly from a few years ago, but she looked much the same, it wasn’t a shock or surprise when they met in person after exchanging messages for weeks and then finally meeting for a first date, and now this, their second date, a validation just to be sure. Both married before. Both divorced. Both with grandchildren who called them Pop Pop and Nana (“I never thought I’d be a Nana,” she’d told him earlier. “But the kids decided and so that was that.”). He liked her smile, both in her picture and in the flesh. They, the smiles, matched. They were the same person. The desires of the young remained the desires of the old. You still had a body. There was still longing and tumult in your heart.
Later, out of the blue, she said, “It’s like you’re wounded, like you got a wound that never properly healed and now you must contend.”
Damn. She was spot on. How did she know? So many wounds, though. So many burdens that make up a life. Where to begin?
They both fell asleep, entwined like that, and did not wake up until it was dark at last.
Andrew Roe is the author of the novel The Miracle Girl, a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, and Where You Live, a short story collection. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and The Sun. He lives in Martinez, California.
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