Julie and Romeo Get Lucky Read Free

it now. Romeo could be hefting twice his own body weight up my staircase, the kind of heroics reserved for tiny ants capable of carrying away an entire ruffled potato chip from a picnic blanket.
    I did not have a single sexual thought in my head anymore. The ardor and lust that had swept me into his arms had vanished, and in their place was only the thought, Please God, let us live. Let us make it to the top of the stairs.
    Thud, thud went his sock feet. Thud, thud went my heart. The thirteenth step. Unlucky thirteen. We were both silent as he pulled heroically toward the top. Romeo was gasping now, and I was taking in no air at all for fear that it might make me heavier. He went to kiss me but could only lay his damp cheek against my forehead. My rear end was slipping away from him, pulling down toward his knees, locked in a mortal bout with gravity.
    â€œYou’re amazing,” I said very quietly when he reached the top. “Now put me down.”
    â€œAlmost there,” he gasped, and again he gave me a little toss up to reposition the load, but this time I didn’t toss at all. I was fixed in place, a leaden albatross nailed to his chest. I tried to pull myself higher as he trudged toward the bedroom, the very last one on the trail of tears down the hall.
    We were so close. My bedroom was right there, just a few more feet. He made it through the door and into the soft autumnal light of a western exposure at sunset. I had to let him go all the way, then. If I jumped out of his arms this close to the bed it would have broken his heart, and so I stayed, my left hand clamped around my right wrist in a vise grip behind his neck. He took me to the edge and then, though I know he meant it to be a gentle settling, dropped me on the mattress.
    I looked at him, still afraid to move. Was he gray? Was that grayness I was seeing? It was hard to tell. He straightened up a little, tentatively stretched down his arms to a position of straightness, and smiled.
    â€œAre you okay?” I asked softly.
    He nodded.
    â€œThat was very sweet. No one has ever done that before.”
    Not for me, not for anyone, not anywhere, except in the movies, which are made to fill our heads with silly romantic notions that would be impossible to live up to. They never tell you they use stand-ins: muscle men to carry; anorexic waifs to be carried; wheeling dollies wedged beneath their backsides to hoist them forward.
    He leaned over and kissed me, and this time it was even sweeter. His kiss said: I would have a heart attack on a staircase for you. My kiss replied: I would gladly die with you in a tumbling crush of broken bones.
    Love is passion and commitment, tenderness and endurance, but love is also memory. It is important to make a beautiful gesture from time to time, not only for the moment, but as something to hold on to in the future—so that when we were old, really old, I’d be able to hold his hand between our twin beds in the nursing home and think, When you were merely sixty-three you carried me up a staircase.
    Romeo helped me with the hook on my bra because I have some arthritis in my thumbs that makes such things tricky for me. But then we were finally there, naked and together. Romeo crawled in beside me and I crawled on top of him and he screamed.

Chapter Two
    T IME IS ELASTIC . E INSTEIN CAN GIVE YOU THE DETAILS . I had always understood that in the moment of my death, there would be time to reflect on the minutiae of human existence and my own contribution to it in a way that would be both leisurely and profound. The two seconds before the car crash stretches into hours. The rare surviving jumper from the Golden Gate Bridge always tells the story of all the time he had to work out his problems on the way down to the water. Apparently they always come to the conclusion that life really was a good thing after all.
    What I hadn’t known about this phenomenon is that it isn’t limited to your own death. The