“That’s what I love about it. How ordinary it is. This is how people eat! And why not?”
After dinner we watched 60 Minutes on the new flat-screen TV.
“This is the only real show left,” he said, putting his arm around the back of the couch, grazing my shoulders. I tried to relax and get into the program. It was about how counterinsurgency tactics could be used against gangs. When the commercials came Phillip muted it. We watched a woman wash her hair in silence.
“Look at us,” he said. “We’re like an old married couple.” He patted my shoulder. “I was thinking about that on the drive over here, about all our lifetimes together.” He glanced at me sideways. “You still think that?”
“I guess I do,” I said. But I was thinking about Clee. I’d been her enemy, then her mother, then her girlfriend. That was three lifetimes right there. He unmuted the TV. We watched police officers going door-to-door to embed themselves in the community. At the next commercial break he went into detail about his lungs; they were hardening. It was called pulmonary fibrosis. “When your health goes, this kind of stuff really matters.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“This.” He waved his hand across me and the living room. “Security. Friends you can trust who are in it for the long haul.” I didn’t say anything and he looked at me nervously. “I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?”
I looked at my thighs; it was impossible to think with him right next to me, waiting.
“Of course I’m here for you,” I said. It was a relief; being angry at him was hard work. He took my hand, clasping it quickly in three different ways, like a gang member. We had just watched two men on TV do this.
“I knew you would be. I don’t want to point fingers or name names, but let’s just say young people don’t have the same values as people of our generation.”
My mouth opened to remind him I was only forty-three but then I remembered I was forty-four now. Nearly forty-five. Too old to be making a point out of it.
After 60 Minutes he went to his car and got his electric toothbrush. “It’s the one I keep in my car.” He didn’t have night blindness per se, but he was less and less comfortable driving at night.
“It’s not an imposition?” he asked from the porch, taking off his shoes.
“No, no, not at all.”
We brushed our teeth side by side. He spit, then I spit, then he spit. He plugged the charger into the socket above the counter; it had brownish gunk calcified in all its grooves and ridges.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll get you one.” I took a long time to dry my hands while he peed loudly, sitting down.
Was it okay if he slept in his boxer shorts? Of course. I put my nightgown on in the closet, wondering which one of us should sleep on the couch. When I came out he was in my bed. He patted the place next to him. For a moment I felt butterflies, then I remembered about our being an old married couple. We were past all that, and his lungs were hardening. I got us each a glass of water from the kitchen and set them on the bedside tables.
“Should we get sex out of the way?” he said.
“What?”
“A man and a woman… sleeping together. I don’t want it to be an issue.”
My heart hammered. This wasn’t at all the way I had once pictured it, but maybe there was something very beautiful about it. Or honest. Or, in any case, we were going to have sex.
“Okay,” I said.
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“I am!”
“Terrific. Hold on.”
He jogged to the living room and came back with his cell phone and a tiny tube of pink lotion; he propped the phone up against my vitamin bottles. I was having trouble regulating my breath and my jaw was shaking with nervous energy. Phillip stared at my floral nightgown and scratched his beard a few times. Then he slapped his hands together.
“So. The deal is if you want to watch me, you can, but you don’t have to — it doesn’t do anything for me. I just need for you to be on your back and ready when I say now.” He handed me one of my pillows. “If you could put that under your hips that’d be great.” He filled his cheeks with air and released it. “Okay?”
“Okay!” I said brightly. I felt terrible for him except he didn’t seem embarrassed. He tapped the phone. Shrieks and grunts jumped out before he quickly muted the sound and hunched over himself. The bed shook, all was quiet. This is what Kirsten meant when she said he had to look at his phone for a long time. How long was long? I quietly rolled up my nightgown over my hips. I got the pillow ready under me in case he said now. I thought about caressing his back. It had many tiny pits in it, a sprinkling of gray hair and freckles and red dots. I laid my palm between his shoulder blades; it shook with his body. I took it off. After a few minutes he picked up the phone, did some scrolling and tapping, and got set up again. I looked at the baby monitor; Jack was sweetly splayed with his arms over his head. Would it be easy or hard to sleep after this? Maybe I would have to secretly take some of my homeopathic sleeping pills. I shut my eyes to test how near sleep was.
“Now.”
My eyes jumped open; I quickly spread my legs and adjusted the pillow as he swung around and on top of me, his penis red and shiny with rose-scented lotion. He jabbed it a couple times before he found the hole. He thrust very quickly, in and out, then slowed down. A little painful, but the burning warmed away. He inhaled and exhaled in long measured breaths.
“Good to go,” he said, after a minute. He leaned down and pressed his thick lips into mine. It was a little difficult with the beard. He stopped and pushed the bristly hairs away from his mouth. Our teeth knocked.
“I’m thinking of that folk song about the old hen and old rooster,” he whispered, thrusting. “How’s that go?”
“I don’t know.” I wiped my mouth.
“ ‘Cluck, cluck, cock-a-doodle-doo and they tapped their beaks together…’ Something like that. Do you want to be on top?”
His eyes were on my breasts. Maybe it was better if they hung rather than puddled. But I shook my head no. I wouldn’t be able to think about my thing in that position.
I pulled my legs together and shut my eyes. It should have been easy but it took fierce concentration to imagine that he was on top of me. I had to erase him completely and reconstitute him, focusing on his imaginary weight as opposed to his actual heft. As always he was very encouraging; again and again he told me to think about my thing. I was nearing peak exhaustion when the real Phillip interrupted.
“Open your eyes.”
To appease him I peeked for a split second and saw his mouth puckered in a tight ring; he was forcing air in and out of it. I quickly shut my eyes again.
Everything was scattered now so I gave up on my thing and tried to imagine the penis in me was my own version of Phillip’s member and that I was doing the thrusting, into Clee. Once I got a hold on it, the scene felt very real. Like a memory.
“Where did you meet her?” I panted.
“Who?” He paused his exertions for a moment and then continued. “In a doctor’s office. A waiting room.”
“Dr. Broyard.”
“Right. Jens.”
She’s reading a magazine and he sits down. He tells her a bit of trivia about the doctor’s wife, how she’s a famous painter. He doesn’t recognize her until he asks for her name.
“Clee.”
He smiles, putting it all together, looking her up and down. What are the odds of them running into each other like this? High. In this waiting room they are higher than average. That’s why I sent her here. He says he thinks he knows her parents.
“You’re staying with Cheryl Glickman? From their office?”