DEATH IS AN OLD LADY                  

     The old lady surprised him in his backyard.  He was stark naked, lying on a blanket, working on a suntan.

     "Maybe I'll get some clothes on," he said.

     "Harry, you do that if you want to.  Then why don't you come over to my little house, and we can have a lemonade and discuss the little matter I came to see you about."   

     "Okay," said Harry.  "Good."  He felt blackmailed.  "I was getting a suntan," he said.

     "Yes," the old lady agreed heartily.  "You were!"

     "Yes, well --"

     "You'll be over soon?" she asked.

     As he took a shower, he wondered what the old lady wanted.  She had seen his private parts.  She could have taken a brief glance and silently backed away in embarrassment.  But she didn't.  What did she want to see him about?

     It was probably completely innocent.  Or the opposite.  All his life he had made two big mistakes with women: thinking they wanted to go to bed with him when really all they were doing was being friendly. And thinking they were only being friendly when really they were ready to go to bed with him.

     The eighty or so women he had entered in his life were never conquests.  They were a long blur of undramatic, friendly, crotch-forgotten, easy-going, gentle dream encounters.  At 50, he felt vaguely sad that he had little memory of the uniqueness of the individual sexual encounters, and felt mildly disturbed that none of the women had succumbed to him because of his enormous, desert-sheik, macho masculinity.

     Rather, they had with little inhibition, small modesty, hardly any hesitation, laid down, spread their legs as though they had been taught to do so as children, along with their ballet lessons.

     As though he posed no threat to them, was psychologically innocent to them, was not a sex-maddened satyr with ram legs and horned head, terrifying them to swooning, forbidden, monstrous ecstasy -- for which they hated themselves later for the defilement.

     As though it was no sin with him, as though he could be the darling of a nunnery, the Sisters twitting each other teasingly for who would be next to lie with that nice man, isn't he cute?

     Where was the kick?  Anyone could go to bed with women by being nice.  It meant nothing.  Not one of the 80 plus women won by pure macho, dilated nostrils, Apache dancing.

     Such a nice boy, they said, as they lay quivering.  God will forgive me this one.

     And now the old lady wanted something.  The garbage cans moved.  Her ashes hauled?

     It was possible.  Why not?  She was more flirtatious than women half her age.  She was sexy.  Ridiculous, but true.  She dyed her hair jet-black, talked loud and lively, was probably a helluva good dancer, and she teased.  Any woman who made like a man was sexy to her, was sexy.  The first old lady ever he knew who was sexy. 

     Outside the house now, he stopped, turned, stopped.  If he went on around the block, he would come up on her blind side.  He started walking fast.  Not too fast, he thought.  Last time he'd done that he'd ended up with shin splint pain.  Of course that had been nearly a mile of fast walking.  Revenge on self for running out of gas.

     The old lady was a watcher.  It was certain she spent much time peering, hidden, from her windows to see what was happening.  Nothing else for her to do.  Odds one in seven she had seen him jack off in a handkerchief that one time.  And 50/50 she had been watching the night he was sitting in bed, writing a letter, shades up, and his wife came in suddenly, everything happened suddenly, lights on, shade up, crazy frenzied animals, clothes ripping, bellies smacking, moans, groans, thrashing, bellows, sucking, scratches, shrieks, week’s pent up explosion.

     "Your wife," the old lady said once, calling on the phone from next door, "such a darling.  Are you having, dare I ask? -- sexual problems?  No?  Good.  Good.  Me?  Oh, I kick up my heels at the dance, on the dance floor once a week.  And such a sweet little boy you have.  This is your second marriage?  You have older children?  20 years old!  Why you're almost in my generation!  My son is only 35.  35 last May.  Send the little one over for cookies.  I love children.  They love me!  I think!  Everybody loves me.  You should see the young men at the dances. ‘Cora, she dances us all into the ground!’ they say, and I do!  I do!  I love it!  My doctor says no, but what do I care?  Living is for the living, right?  I'm not going to sit around here and just sit.  And I'm not going to the hospital.  People die in hospitals.  Not this gal.  I'll die on the dance floor.  If I die.  I may live forever.  Ha!  You know?"

     "The hell with it," Harry said out loud.  He quickened his pace.  Might as well get on with it.  The old lady would think he wasn't coming.  "Wasn't coming."  The whole damn English language had sexual connotations.

     He had gone completely around the block, and was now arriving at what he believed was the old lady's blind side.  In theory, she would be peering out the drapes waiting for him to come from the north side.

     As he came from the south to the front of the house, he thought he saw a movement in the drapes, but wasn't certain.  He hurried onto the porch, knocked on the door rather than ringing the doorbell.

     "Harry!" the old lady said, opening the door immediately.  "Come in!  Come in!  I'd almost given you up!"

     "I'm sorry.  I had to do something."

     "Sit down, sit down," she said, motioning to a large recliner chair.

     She stood for a moment, a slight smile on her face, studying him after he sat down.  "Well," she said, "how about some coffee?  Tea?  Or maybe some wine.  The doctor has me take a little wine.  How about some wine?  A little wine?"

     "Sure.  Okay."

     As she went to the kitchen, he saw that she was still dressed as she was when she had surprised him in the backyard.  Black.  With white beads.  Dark nylons.

     She returned immediately with two glasses of red wine and a decanter of wine on a tray.

     "A toast," she said, raising her glass.  "To good neighbors."

     "Good neighbors," Harry said.  The old lady drank half of her glass.

     "Ah," she said, licking her lips.  "Thank the good Lord for doctors."

     "How are you doing with that?  Your heart?" Harry asked.  "Are you all right now?"

     "The doctor said I will live forever -- if I don't die first," the old lady said.  "And I am not to worry, take it easy, have a good time -- how can I have a good time if I take it easy?"  The old lady shrugged, smiled, emptied her wine.  "Let me fill your glass," she said.

     On the second glass, she said, "I've been meaning to have you over -- you, and your darling little wife -- for months.  I've been worried about you.  About your wife.  She doesn’t seem to go out much.  But the lights are on all night..."

     "She drinks a lot," Harry said.  "She's an alcoholic."

     "Too bad.  Too bad," the old lady said, shaking her head.  "And such a pretty girl, too.  She's younger than you, I believe?"

     "Thirty-five.”

     “Thirty-five?  That's the age of my son.  And you?  You're what?  Forty-two?  Forty-five?”

     “Fifty.”

     “Fifty?  You don't look it!"

     "I'll drink to that."

     "How old do you -- how young do you think I am?"

     "I don't know," Harry said honestly.  "I can't tell.  Sixty?"

     "Ah!  Dear boy!  Closer to seventy, God forbid.  But thank you!  Thank you!  You're a gentleman.  Let me fill your glass."

     On the third glass, the old lady fanned herself with her hands.  "Oh, I love wine.  Don't you?  Isn't it good?  Or maybe you don't.  Because of your wife.  I see the bottles.  In the garbage can.  But that's white wine.  We’re drinking red wine.  My ancestors made it."

     "Made it?"

     "Sicily.  In Sicily.  They lived in Sicily."

     "Oh.  That's where you get your dark eyes.  And black hair."

     "No, you darling boy.  The black hair, I get out of a bottle."  She reached over to fill his glass with the last of the wine in the decanter.  "Your marital relations?  Not good?"

     "What?"

     "Your wife -- she doesn't sleep with you?"

     "No.  She sleeps downstairs."

     "Poor boy.  Poor boy."  She reached over and put her hand on his.  Her fingers trembled.  There was a brown age splotch on her hand.  "Poor boy."

     "I know how it is," she said after a moment, withdrawing her hand.  "Charles -- Charles has been gone four years.  Four years last March.  Charles was --" she shrugged.  "Charles was a man.  A real man.  To the end.  To the very end.  I miss him.  I really miss him.  I miss him a lot."  She stared grimly into space.  "But," she said suddenly, jerking back, "life is for the living.  We must go on.  And joyfully, we must be joyous every day.  Call me, 'Cora’, will you?  Call me, 'Cora’. I love to hear a man's voice calling me, 'Cora’." 

     "Okay, Cora."

     "There.  You're smiling.  You whistle.  I hear you whistling a lot.  But I don't see you smiling.  It's good to see you smile.  I like that."

     She picked up the tray abruptly, hurried into the kitchen.  Harry heard her pouring more wine into the decanter.  She was back breathlessly in a moment, the decanter full on the tray.

     "Harry," she said, not sitting down, "would you excuse me for a moment?"

     "Sure."

     "To tell you the truth, my girdle is killing me!"

     He laughed shortly.

     "I came home from Mass, I came over to see you -- you naughty boy!  Oh, did I see you!  And I haven't had time to take my girdle off."  She pinched her sides and hitched the garment beneath down a bit.  "I'll just be a moment.  Don't go away!"

     "Cora, I'm not moving an inch."

     "Good!  Good!  Isn't it nice to be good neighbors?"

     He grinned.  The old lady hurried out of the living room.  Harry poured his glass full, smiled, leaned back gratefully against the bulging plastic of the recliner.

     Suddenly he looked at his watch.  11:23. He got up, went to the side window, peered through the curtain.  He could see his little boy sitting on the carpet in front of the TV set.  He was surprised how much he could see of his living room through the open windows.  His wife wasn't at the sewing table.  She had probably gone back downstairs to sleep off the morning’s drinking.

     Speaking of drinking, this little episode, friendly neighborhood drinking, was going to screw up the day's planned activities: wash the car, work on the shrubs.  To hell with it.  A little relaxation was in order.  The old lady had seen his private parts.  The least he could do was be friendly.

     As for any evil designs she had on his body, that was pure fantasy.  He had a 100% perfect track record for guessing wrong about which ladies wanted to and which didn't.  Friendliness and lust.  It was impossible, always, forever, to tell which was on their mind.  He always guessed wrong.

     Or used to.  Had guessed right -- surprisingly -- the last two times.  Perhaps a blessing of age.  At last -- after 35 years of direct misses -- he had guessed right twice in a row.  The secretary and the pregnant lady two houses down.  Had never tried the houses in the other direction.  The teenager with big boobs and buck teeth -- probably.  But her father and he shared the same first name.  The mysterious, sexy lady next door to the north -- maybe, but too dangerous.  Strange things going on there.  Her ex-husband, remarried, lived in the rear of the duplex.  The sexy one played the piano, classical, every night, walked fast, smiled seductively, but was probably just being neighborly.

     The pregnant lady, two doors south, had been an accident.

     But the secretary --

     He picked up the glass, drank it straight down.  Wow.  This was going to be a strange day.  Drunk by noon.  In the old lady's house.  In Cora's house.  Jet-black haired Cora.  Cora, the snake.  Where had he heard that?  Maybe at the carnival.  At the State fair, 20 years ago.  "Cora, the snake lady.  She eats, she drinks, she slithers on her belly.  She lives, see her, see the snake lady.  The eighth wonder of the world!  Don't miss it, see her now.  The snake lady.  Cora, the snake lady!"

     He had gone in, of course, to the amusement of his wife and the other couple.  Innocent then.

     Innocent now, really.  Screwed 80 plus women before marriage, none during the first marriage except his wife -- and not much there either -- only five or six ladies between marriages, none except his wife in the second marriage -- and there had been wonderful screwing there for the first seven years -- and none, no other ladies, after her mental breakdown and stinking alcoholism, except for two: one an accident -- the pregnant lady two houses down; and the secretary --

      He sat now, the decanter half empty, the old lady not returned, his head wine-dizzied, feeling innocent, innocent as the lost virgin who strangely feels not at all different except for a little pain, a little pleasure, and a little knowledge.  Thinking of the pregnant lady two houses south.  Innocent there, too.  Because it happened too fast, an accident.  But a first.  The first pregnant woman other than pregnant wives, his own.  Nothing to write home about.  An accident.

     The old lady had been there for some time.  He knew as soon as he saw her there, watching his naked thoughts just as she had earlier watched his body naked.  He didn't like it and didn't focus her at once clearly.

     She was standing, leaning against the wall next to the living room exit.  She wore a see-through, pink floor-length nightgown with white ruffles on the neck, buttoned to the top, and at the wrists.  The material was semi-transparent.  But at first it looked like a very light-weight flannel.

     The pink did not go well with the old lady.  She had looked better in black.  Her black hair and olive skin would have looked good in yellow.  If she had been 30 or 40 years younger.

     She was nervous.  She had been watching him.  He was drunk.  He blinked, started to say something, instead poured his wine glass half full. 

"Well -- here I am," the old lady said. 

He started to get up, fell back against the stuffed black chair, then put his glass down and with perfect movement rose from the chair.  He studied the terrain briefly, then moved with rapid grace toward the old lady.  She opened her mouth, but said nothing, didn't move.  He took her shoulder in his left hand, she started to say, "dancing," he moved her clumsily into the hallway, into a doorway -- "Not here, dear," she said, pushing him gently back into the hall.  They led each other by turns to the next bedroom, into the room, fell together onto the pink quilted bed, he leaned far over to lift her gown, slid to the floor, lifted her gown with both hands, folding it higher, higher, past tiny black leg hair stubs, past (suntanned, he wondered dizzily) thighs, to grizzled salt and pepper pubic hairs, upon which he thrust his entire face indiscriminately, met instantaneously by the loudest air break he had heard since the boyhood contests in grammar school.

The explosion was followed by absolute silence.  Vacuum.

He lay perfectly still, hard hair-like branches on his mouth.  Her pubic area began to tremble, then to jiggle, then to shake as if she were signaling -- "Go ahead!"

     Instead, he heard stifled sounds of moaning and groaning.  Looking up with one open eye, he saw that she was giggling, smothering her giggles with both hands.  One of the hands had a too-tight gold wedding band on a pudgy finger.

     "Jesus Christ," he said.  He raised his head from the kneeling position.  "Jesus Christ."

     The old lady threw her hands out and laughed hysterically.

     "For Christ's sake."  He began thinking about laughing.  At least there was no smell.  Advantage of being drunk.  Christ, might as well enjoy it.  He laughed tentatively.  The old lady was laughing too hard.  She might have a heart attack.  Hey, ol’ lady, he wanted to cry out, control yourself, god damn it.  You just broke air in my face.

     He couldn't think of a thing to do, so he roughly shoved the pink nightgown on up her body, exposing a belly button (old ladies aren't supposed to have belly buttons, he thought righteously), unblemished swarthy skin, firm stout body.  (He remembered suddenly a young whore he had thought was in love with him in Rome -- eventually discovered her pimp was writing love letters for her to half the squadron), and clamped his mouth onto the leathery nipple on her semi-flattened right breast.

     Her giggles continued, diminished, until his right hand’s forefinger entered her intimacy.  She stopped, stiffened.

     "No," she said.

     "What?" he asked, nipple in mouth.

     Her left hand pulled his hand away.

     "What?" he said, releasing the nipple.

     "The dogs," she said.

     "What?"

     "The dogs are barking."

     "The dogs?"

     The dogs were barking fiercely.  He hadn't heard them.

     "The dogs -- wait.  I have to see."  The old lady slid, rolled from beneath him, her buttocks exposed briefly before the gown fell down.

     "Be back," she mumbled, leaving the room.

     He found himself -- dogs going wild out on her back porch -- with one shoe off, the time 12:38 -- cartoons over, Tarzan would be on now, drunk as hell, rubbery titty taste in mouth, unable to make an old lady.

     No bang, just whimper.  He sat up on the edge of the bed, looked for the lost shoe, took off the other shoe absent-mindedly, saw her dead husband, Charles, name was Charles, on the dresser -- mustache, mean-looking bastard, saw a picture of her when she was a little girl -- about eight years old, he guessed -- with her father and mother and two older brothers.  He remembered the summer when he was a kid and titeled his eight-year-old cousin’s we-we hole and how much she seemed to enjoy it, which didn't seem strange at the time, and he thought how strange this present predicament was when all his life he got along so well with young people and old people, and he remembered the pregnant lady next door who was neither old nor young but of the mean tough self-righteous in-between group, and how from the first time she came to the door to introduce herself because she lived two doors away, and eventually would try to get them to come to church with her, she looked like she wanted him to come to bed with her, but he had been wrong 100% on that issue for 35 years.  Frizzy hair, squinty eyes, thick glasses, so-so to non-existent figure, belly not yet swelling, and her kids played with his kid, and she sensed he wasn't getting any, and she had had two kids in three years and another one started, and he was absolutely sure that for some reason she saw him as Paul Newman, Robert Redford or whoever her romantic fantasy was to fight daily the numbing realization that she was finished at 26 with two kids, one on the way, a strange half-assed city farmer for a husband, raising bees and turnips in the back and front yard, teaching school for a tiny salary with no ambition to do better and a Catholic to boot, so the kids ended up going to two churches.  So he hadn't pushed it, being wrong so often before, mistaking nice human friendliness for lust, only this babe really meant it -- maybe he seemed romantic compared to the farmer -- or maybe he was the only one available.  Anyway his wife was in the county hospital drying out and the farmer took all the kids for an outing in the park to see a real little farm with pigs and chickens and rabbits, so frizzy head with the squinty seductive eyes came over to talk about his going to church, saving the whole family, and she came in and kept talking, closed the door and kept talking, locked the damn door and kept talking and started stripping at last, soundless but exactly as though she was still talking, pleading with him to do something, save his everlasting soul, save his wife, little one, the whole family, accept Christ, receive the Holy Ghost, accept, accept, accept the gift, and her bony little figure was standing there bone naked in the living room only two feet inside the door, her eyes as tormented and desperate as ever, behind the thick glasses.  He wanted the glasses off more than the clothes, but she lay down on the carpet next to the coffee table in front of the TV set, and by this time her belly was already swollen, he figured four months or more into it, and she kept her glasses on and spread her legs and cradled her little lemon breasts one to a hand and never said a word but her nervous tormented sexy eyes rolled a dozen movies before him so that he knew far more about her than anyone else, especially himself.

     So he did it to her fast, contrary to all the books and rules because he understood at the moment what was necessary, an idea more than a tingle, a mind explosion, not a physical bang.

     And she was up and gone, the whole thing from her appearance at the door until her hasty departure, no more than twelve minutes.

     And accident.  A psychic blip.  A stage in evolution.

     Pregnant woman -- innocence slightly threatened.  Semen on the carpet from a 90 second lay.  Used.  Abused.  Not even a thank you.  Not even absolution.

     So what the hell?  Sinning always has diminishing returns.  The first sin is always innocent.  The first murder.  First shoplifting.  First non-wifey screwing.

     Tired, drunk, two shoes off, death closer than birth, life 70 percent completed, Tarzan on for another hour, including commercials, drunken wife, self-sufficient with three one-gallon jugs of wine at the head of her bed, he took off his khaki pants.  The dogs had stopped.  Where was Cora?  Had she deserted him in his hour of need?  He took off his striped shirt, his V-neck t-shirt, his black socks, his V-notched shorts.  He stood up, steadied himself, looked at the dresser mirror.  Suntan progressing. Five pounds of fat left in the tits, under chin, and belly. But pretty good.  The body could pass for 40.  Or 45.  But bodies were notorious deluders.  Look to the face.  Hard-times face.  Young ladies calling this obscene boyish face "sir" for 15 years now.  20 years to live.

     So it would be a first.  Never did it to anyone over 40 before.  The lieutenant colonel's wife -- she was maybe 37.  The French sales lady on the Riviera -- 33.  Seemed 60 at the time.

     A first.  Maybe the last.  Would be a priest, chained to a drunk, giving nothing, getting nothing for the rest of his life.  20 years.  Christ, he'd been married off and on for 20 years.

     Cora, where are you?  Now that I need you?

     He took off his shorts, lay down spread-eagled on the cool, quilted bed cover.  The embroidered rose tickled his buttocks.  He stretched out his arms as though on the cross.

     He heard the old lady coming.  He looked down at his private parts.  They lay on the cool cover, innocent, vulnerable, as when the old lady had first come upon him, naked, in the morning.

     She came silently into the room, paused by the door.  Naked, she looked stronger.  She wasn't smiling.  She looked at him, peered at him as though through slit curtains, heavy drapes, as she had done for months.  She waited, unsmiling, naked, serious.

     "Cora!" he said.  "I'm ready!"

     The old lady descended silently upon him.

           Despair

      Despair

      can be soft

      edgeless as a ball of
                       
      cotton.

      Poisoned.

      Whispering vague

      memories of a thousand

      failures.

      Gentle failings.

      Meekness in a time for
      strength.

      Fatigue in a time for             
      fire.
     
      Despair can be
      dry eyes
      dry eyes
      listening.

      Listening to
      Weeping.