Gary Jr. and Gigi had gone through the plastic garment bag after dessert. They left her with a Western-style shirt, the style with pearl-topped snaps down the front and at the cuffs.
She held the shirt in her lap as the beeswax tapers burned to nubs and her wine glass emptied. She let her tears fall. Tears of joy for Gary Jr. and Suki and the baby they would welcome into the world in the spring. Tears of sadness that her son and daughter-in-law and grandchild would be living so far away.
The rest of her tears were a commingled mess. She missed Liam’s touch. She missed the way his strong, elegant hands communicated with her body. She was angry that only now, at age fifty, was she rediscovering her body’s ability to experience desire—fiery, surprising, elemental, desire.
She was in awe at the parallel discovery she could incite the same level of desire in another.
Once she was good and wrung out, she moved to her computer and waited for it to boot up. She read Daniel’s detailed email about his trip to Berlin and his successes with a discerning and difficult clientele. His tone wasn’t cool, but it didn’t have the same enveloping embrace as her conversations with Liam.
Time to stop comparing the two men. One was a pleasant, short-term affair. The other was a more serious situation. Potentially. Anna reread Daniel’s email with their history in mind, looking for any subtext indicating he, too, was excited and nervous about their reunion.
He was opaque at twenty-two, and he was opaque thirty years later. Or maybe she was expecting too much. Maybe she would have a different set of expectations about the upcoming reunion if Elaine hadn’t pushed her into the workshop and if Liam hadn’t further primed her pump.
She smoothed her hand down one empty shirtsleeve and fingered the pearl snaps. Sex with Gary was…comfortable. Comfortable, familiar, vanilla. Not every day—what married couple with kids could possibly manage that feat?—but at least they had kept at it. And once Gary Jr. and Gigi were out of the house, their intimate life consisted of the kind of sex long-coupled people had when their youth was a memory but their bodies were still vital.
Wait, she couldn’t generalize like that.
Maybe her friends and their partners were doing the kinds of things she and Liam were doing, but it was she who was late to the table. That would be a conversation starter. Or ender. Tell me, Jen, how many times a week do you and Paul have sex? And what kind of sex do you have? Do you go down on each other? Do you have a favorite flavor of lube? Do you watch their face as they orgasm? Lights on or off?
Anna cut short that line of musing and finished folding Gary’s old shirt. It was time to suggest to Daniel they were due for an on-camera chat. But first she had to go laptop shopping.
The electronics store she visited three days later was warehouse huge and intensely bright. Anna was overwhelmed. The combined buzz of voices coming from customers and salespeople floated above her head into a cloud of mechanized insects. A headache threatened to descend, combine forces with her nerves, and drive her out of the store.
Sweat pooled beneath her underwire bra. Every glossy white, oversized table appeared to showcase one kind of device or computer configuration. She pressed a hand to her ribs to mop up the moisture, located the table with the laptops, and headed toward the display.
One pristine, recently vacated stool beckoned. She settled her coat and bag on the table’s shiny surface and waited.
Thirty-five minutes later, still waiting, she tapped the shoulder of the salesperson finishing with the customer next to her.
“Can you help me?” she asked. “I want to buy a laptop and I have no idea where to start.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t know I needed one.”
Annoyance flickered across the young woman’s face. She gave a practiced eye lift, looking heavenward for support. She consulted the device in her hands and glanced at Anna. “I’m supposed to go on break, but I can help you.”
Anna didn’t ignore the urge to hug her. “Thank you.”
“Let’s get started. Tell me what you’re looking for.”
More than an hour later, Anna walked out of the store with a white bag, inside of which was a white box, a white laptop, a white mouse, and an upgraded cell phone. She now had social media accounts and passwords and three ways to back up her files.
And she was beyond exhausted. She splurged on a taxi and called Elaine. “Do I need a blog?”
“It never hurts, and it’ll probably help drum up interest in our floating bordello business.”
Anna laughed from the backseat of the car. “But I’m not a writer.”
“Your new phone comes with an amazing camera. Take lots of pictures, put them through filters, and write snappy captions. Oh, and don’t forget the hashtags.”
“You’re going to have to explain to me what hash has to do with an effective social media presence. Got to go. I’m at the shop.”
“Hashtags, Anna. Hash. Tags. Get Gigi to explain them to you.”
Anna paid the cabbie and gathered her bags. A storefront touting fruit smoothies and energy bars claimed her attention. She bought three drinks to share with Gigi and Neena and an assortment of bars flecked with seeds and fruit in shades of brown then punched the buzzer to the designer’s atelier. She’d make it through her final fitting and have a nap on the ferry home.
“Annalissa. Are you there?”
Daniel’s voice came out of her new laptop, but Anna couldn’t see his face. She had practiced at the store and again after her fitting, but it seemed she had forgotten overnight everything she learned about how to get herself set up for an online video chat.
“I’m here, Danny. But I can’t figure out what I should be clicking on.”
A deep, masculine laugh issued from her
