“An invalid,” she said, “and I’m on an errand of mercy.”
“I was wondering about that.” She didn’t usually come over these days unless I called, and sometimes not even then.
“Why don’t you get dressed?” she asked. “If you can. And we’ll talk about it.”
“Whenever you say, ‘We’ll talk about it,’ I begin to perspire.”
She got up. “Well, perspire your way into the living room, and we’ll have a chat.”
I got more toothpaste on my chin than in my mouth, and I cut myself shaving, but other than that my ablutions were uneventful. The orange shirt I chose first clashed with my Mercurochrome, so I traded it for a loose robin’s-egg blue number with long sleeves to cover the damage and a pair of white drawstring pants Eleanor had brought me from the solo trip to Bali her first book advance bought her. It was eleven o’clock, and the air was hot enough to melt bacon fat.
Eleanor was sponging the back of the couch with a paper towel and muttering under her breath when I came into the living room. When she heard me she held up the paper towel accusingly. It was wadded and rust-brown with dried blood. “You need a full-time nurse,” she said. “Or a mobile hospital following you around.”
“Sorry,” I said. “If I’d known you were coming I would have bled outdoors.”
“You did.” She folded the towel over to present a clean surface and swabbed at the couch again. “You’re hell on furniture.”
I sat where the couch was damp. It felt cool. “Is this our chat?”
She avoided my eyes. “Where’s your coffee?”
“Why, Eleanor,” I said. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were stalling.”
“I made it, you can drink it.” She went into the bedroom and came out with the mug in her hand and stood over me until I’d forced some down and made appreciative noises. “I want you to know,” she said severely, “that I had nothing to do with anything your mother said.”
“I never thought you did. Not your style.”
“She called me a couple of days ago. Said she wanted some girl talk, said your father had been grumpy all week and she was bored.”
“He’s not much on girl talk even when he’s cheerful.” The second gulp of coffee tasted better.
“She has a right to worry about you, you know.”
“My God, what she went through,” I said, “giving me birth. Did you know I was born at three in the morning?”
“Of course I did. I’ve known that for years.”
I moved my arm experimentally. My shoulder hurt like hell. “I don’t know what time you were born.”
She looked down at the front of her T-shirt as though the dalmatians were a surprise. “There’s a lot you don’t know.” Her eyes came up to mine. “But you do know I’d never set anything up with your mother.”
“She wants us to get married,” I said, working the other arm. That shoulder hurt, too. “She says we’d have adorable children.”
“We would. Another genetic possibility goes unfulfilled.” She tugged at the bottom of the shirt, which was perfectly unwrinkled.
“We chose names once, remember?”
Eleanor picked up the wad of paper towels, which she’d dropped onto the table, and poked it experimentally with her forefinger. Water dripped from it. “We did a lot of things,” she said shortly. “Some of them were silly.”
“Some of them,” I said, “were pretty wonderful.” I reached up with the arm that hurt least and took her hand, paper towels and all. Her hand felt as if it had been in mine forever.
“I’m having a little problem,” I said.
She ran her nails over the skin on the inside of my wrist. “That’s evident.”
“You said it, that thing about there having been a time when I could get run over or whatever, and not lose the crease in my pants.”
She was watching me, looking past the tone and under the words. “Yes?”
“Well,” I said. “I’m scared.”
She put her fingers around my wrist and rotated my arm, bringing the long cut into view. “That’s probably a sign of good sense.”
“It’s not just that. I mean, it is just that, but why? Why now?”
“Simeon, you’ve spent so much time looking at other people’s lives that you’ve forgotten about your own. Not that you ever wanted to know anything about yourself. Ask yourself why, out of all the jobs in the world, you chose this one. I mean, talk about outward-directed. You bounce from one set of lives to another, putting together what’s broken if you can, trying to change things. And you think you don’t change. You’re impervious to it, when everyone else can tell from a hundred yards away that you’re not the same person you were five years ago, or even three. Somewhere along the way, the big penny dropped. You’ve figured out you’re going to die.”
“I always knew I was going to die.”
“Knowing it in your big fat head is one thing. You know it now in the center of your chest. And you know what that means? It means that life isn’t infinitely elastic, the way it was in your twenties. You can’t go back for retakes. You can’t fix it. You’re making choices you’re going to have to live with. And some of them, if you’ll pardon the candor, have been pretty stupid.”
“You and me,” I said.
“That’s one.”
I took her hand from my wrist and held it between both of mine. It felt cool, smooth, familiar, right. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk about you and me.”
The door to the roof opened and Wayde walked in, stark naked.
“For example,” Eleanor said, withdrawing her hand.
“Yo, Simeon,” Wayde said on her way to the kitchen. “Your girlfriend is way cool.”
“I’m cool,” Eleanor said, watching Wayde’s rear end analytically. There were no visible flaws. “She and I have had a chat.”
“Can I have some of this Evian?” Wayde called from the kitchen. “I feel like a french fry.”
“Sure,” Eleanor said, looking at me. “He’ll never drink it. The alcohol content isn’t high enough.”
“Want some, Eleanor?”
“Thank you, dear.” She batted her lashes at me. “Doesn’t that sound maternal?”
“Do you still want kids?” I asked.
“Here we are.” Wayde twinkled into the room with two glasses of water and handed one to Eleanor. She had honey-colored hair above and below, an exemplary set of the usual biological accessories, and a navel that looked like Michelangelo had carved it on a good day. Eleanor eyed her appreciatively, as though she’d had a hand in the design.
“If I looked like you, I wouldn’t wear clothes either,” she said. “Would you, Simeon?”
“If I looked like her, you wouldn’t be here.”
“You guys are great,” Wayde said cheerfully. “I wish more old people were like you.”
“That’s so sweet of you,” Eleanor said between her teeth.
“It’s just the way I feel,” Wayde said with a radiant smile. “Thanks for the wawa.” She went back on the roof.
“Wawa,” Eleanor said thoughtfully.
“Oh, I forgot-” Wayde said, standing in the doorway, and there was a knock at the front door.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “I’m dressed.”
“Very tastefully, too,” Eleanor murmured.
“Cool,” Wayde agreed. Not way cool, though.
“For an old guy,” I said, opening the door. Orlando stood there, offensively slender and disgustingly young and handsome in a lime-green tank top and a pair of baggies.
“On the way to the beach,” he said. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“The aging process,” I said. “Come on in. Have some of Eleanor’s memorable coffee.”
“Is Eleanor here? Great.”
Eleanor gave him her fondest, whitest smile. “Hi, Orlando. Don’t you look Californian.”
“Oh, my God.” That was Wayde. She stood in the doorway, staring at Orlando as though Apollo had risen
