Elaine asked her if she’d stayed the whole night.
“Most of it. I didn’t fall asleep, nobody slept, and there was a point where it felt like it was time to leave, and nobody tried to talk me out of it. I got dressed and Gordon handed me an envelope and offered to take me downstairs and put me in a cab, but he’d have had to get dressed and I knew the doorman could get me a cab.
“I went home and went to bed, and I must have fallen asleep within minutes. And when I woke up I felt this strange combination of happy and sad, and it took me a while to realize that the sad part was because I knew I would never see them again.”
“But you did,” Elaine said.
“How did you know? What happened was they sent flowers, not that day but the day after. Just their names on the card, Gordon and Barbara. No message.”
“The flowers were the message,” Elaine said.
“Yes, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. ‘We had a wonderful time and we never want to see you again.’ I wanted to pick up the phone and thank them for the flowers, but I didn’t know what was appropriate, or what they might want. There’d been a thousand dollars in the envelope. A thousand dollars plus a good dinner, plus flowers.”
I said, “Well, you paid for your own cab.”
“Plus I tipped the doorman, and the kid who brought the flowers, if we’re keeping score. Anyway, I didn’t make that phone call. And a couple of days later, when I’d stopped wondering if I’d hear from them and accepted that I wouldn’t, the phone rang and it was Gordon.
“I told him the flowers were lovely, and how sweet it was to send them. And he said something about the importance of finding a really good florist, which was certainly a subject I’d never thought about, and then he asked if I’d be able to see them Saturday evening.
“I didn’t need to think. I said I’d love it, but there was one condition. I didn’t want to take any money for it. He said not to be silly, and I said I wasn’t being silly, and I made it clear that I was serious. And we arranged a time for me to come over.
“And I got there a few minutes early, so I made myself look in a store window for a while and then go to their building. He answered the door wearing a sport jacket but no tie, and she was in lounging pajamas, which was a very good look for her. Kisses right away, and then a little petting on the living room couch, and then we got up and headed for the bedroom. And just before we crossed the threshold I said, “I have one request, but if it’s too weird just say so and we’ll forget I ever said it. But would it be all right if I called you Mommy and Daddy?”
They were fine with it, she told us. It added something, not that anything needed to be added, and not that she could define what the extra element was. She saw them three more times at intervals of about a month, and after the last time she left knowing they wouldn’t be calling her again.
She looked off into the middle distance, at a memory or a notion. Then she looked at each of us in turn, and said, “It’s true, in case you’re wondering. Everything I said is exactly what happened.”
I started to say something, but she held up a hand and stopped me.
“Exactly what happened and how it happened,” she said. “But here’s what you should know. I’d have told you that story even if I’d had to make up every word of it.”
Nobody dropped a pin. I would have heard it.
“I’ve never seen your bedroom,” she said. “Is your bed big enough for three?” She smiled. “Oh, come on,” she said. “You know you want to do it.”
When I opened my eyes, it was because the morning sun was streaming through the window. It generally does that, except on overcast days, but I rarely notice because I always sleep on the far side of the bed. So it was disorienting, and it took me a moment to realize that our normal sleep routine had been altered, and how and why.
I turned, and saw Elaine on the other side of the bed, sleeping on her side, facing away from me. I was relieved and disappointed, in approximately equal parts, that it was just the two of us. I closed my eyes, turned away from the daylight, and would have gone back to sleep if my bladder had let me. I got up and went to the bathroom, and when I got back in bed Elaine was awake.
I said, “Did that happen?”
“Either that or we both had the same vivid dream. You know how it’s always a mixed blessing to live out a fantasy in real life? I mean you’re glad you did, and it’s exciting, but it’s never quite as good as it was when all you were doing was imagining it.”
“Not necessarily.”
“That’s where I was going,” she said. “Just a few days ago we imagined the whole thing, and we had a good time—”
“More than a good time.”
“—and what we just did was better. I don’t want to talk it to death, but it’s got to be right up there on my list of peak experiences.”
“Probably not all that far from the top.”
“Not far, no. Did you see it coming? Because I didn’t.”
“Once she started telling the story about the older couple—”
“The much older couple.”
“Oh, ever so much older.
“Gordon and Barbara. Gordie and Barb?”
“Gordo and Babs,” I suggested. “By the time they were in the restaurant, I had a feeling where she was going.”
“Oh, sure. By then.”
“But even then,” I said, “I wasn’t close to certain.”
“Because we’d fantasized about it.”
“So I figured we were like one of those predatory pedophiles who’s convinced the child is flirting with him.”
“That’s a flattering analogy.” She rolled her eyes. “And I’m not about to feel guilty, even if we are twice her age. That child had a serial orgasm that lasted almost as long as the war in Vietnam.”
I said, “While we’re on the subject, where is she?”
“Probably home, and I hope that means the uptown sublet and not 27th Street. She climbed over me to get out of bed, and I kind of woke up, and I’m pretty sure I heard the shower running.”
“ ‘I’m gonna wash that couple right out of my hair.’ She probably went home. Unless she’s napping on the couch.”
“Or sitting in the recliner with her feet up, reading the Bhagavad Gita. I don’t see her clothes.”
“Can’t you read the Gita with clothes on?”
“Yoga pants, maybe. We’re being silly.” She got out of bed, and a few minutes later I heard the shower. She returned wrapped in a towel and holding a sheet of paper.
“On the coffee table,” she said. “ ‘That was wonderful. I love you both. Call me sometime.’ ”
“Do we have to send flowers?”
“You’d have to call Gordon, because he knows it’s important to get a really good florist. No, I don’t think we should send flowers.” She looked at the sheet of paper. “Not ‘Call me,’ ” she said. “ ‘Call me sometime.’ Which is to say we can but we’re not obliged.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to make coffee and fix breakfast,” she said. “Oh, about Ellen? It doesn’t hurt a bit that I really like her.”
“So do I.”
“And I’m not exactly her sponsor, and anyway this isn’t AA, so I don’t see any reason why I can’t fuck her.”
“As a matter of fact, you may be helping her stay away from prostitution.”
“One day at a time,” she said. “So what I think we should do is exactly what she said. Call her sometime.”
“I like your thinking. And if she wants to call us Mommy and Daddy?”