A Friend of the Earth Read Free Page B

young–old, the fastest–growing segment of the U.S. population, of which I am a reluctant yet grateful part, considering the alternative.)
    A woman in red at the end of the bar catches my eye – that is, I catch hers – and my blood surges like a teenager’s until I realize she can’t be more than fifty. I look again as she turns away and lets out a laugh in response to something the retired dentist at her elbow is saying, and I see she’s all wrong: Andrea, and I don’t care what age she might be – sixty, eighty–five, a hundred and ten – has twice her presence. Ten times. Yes. Sure. She’s not Andrea. Not even close. But does that make it any less depressing to admit that I’m really standing here on aching knees in a dress–up shirt and with a sopping–wet beret that looks like a chili–cheeseomelet laid over my naked scalp, waiting for a phantom? A blood–sucking phantom at that?
    Ride your pony, ride your pony
. What is it Yeats said about old age? It wasn’t ride your pony. An aged man is but a paltry thing, that’s what he said. A tattered coat upon a stick. In spades.
    But what is this I feel on the back of my neck? Dampness. Water. Ubiquitous water. I’m looking up, the ceiling tiles giving off a gentle ooze, and then down at the plastic bucket between my feet – I’m practically standing in it – when I feel a pressure on my arm. It’s her hand, Andrea’s hand, the feel of it round my biceps as binding as history, and what can I do but look up into her new face, the face that’s been molded like wet clay on top of the one glazed and fired and set on a shelf in my head. ‘Hello, Ty,’ she says, the bucket gently sloshing, the solid air rent by the blast of the speakers, the crowd gabbling, her unflinching eyes locked on mine. I can’t think of what to say, Shiggy moving toward us on the other side of the bar, mountainous in a Hawaiian shirt, the bartender’s eternal question on his lips, and then she’s smiling like the sun coming up over the hills. ‘Nice hat,’ she says.
    I snatch it off and twist it awkwardly behind me.
    â€˜But, Ty’ – a laugh – ‘you’re bald!’
    â€˜Something for the lady?’ Shiggy shouts over the noise, and before I’ve said a word to her I’m addressing him, a know–nothing I could talk to any day of the week. ‘
Sake
on the rocks,’ I tell him, ‘unless she’s paying for her own – and I’ll take a refill too.’ The transaction gives me a minute to collect myself. It’s Andrea. It’s really her, standing here beside me in the flesh. Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain. ‘We all get older,’ I shout, swinging round with the drinks,’ – if we’re lucky.’
    â€˜And me?’ She takes a step back, center stage, lifting her arms in display. For a minute I think she’s going to do a pirouette. But I don’t want to sound too cynical here, because time goes on and she’s looking good, very good, eight or nine on a scale of ten, all things considered. Her mouth settles into a basket of grooves and lines when the smile fades, and her eyes are paler and duller than I remembered – and ever so slightly exophthalmic – but who’s to quibble? She was a beauty then and she’s a beauty still.
    â€˜You look terrific,’ I tell her, ‘and I’m not just saying that – it’s the truth. You look – I don’t know – edible. Are you edible?’
    The smile returns, but just for a second, flashing across her face as ifblown by the winds that are even now rattling the windows – and rattling them audibly, despite the racket of the place and my suspect hearing (destroyed sixty years ago by Jimi Hendrix and The Who). She’s wearing a print dress, low–cut of