Henry Milner leaned forward and grabbed the metal pole as the city bus approached his stop. He pulled himself to his feet from his seat behind the driver. The face of a weary middle-aged man stared back at him from Miguel's rearview mirror. He took another look as the air brakes squealed the bus to a halt. A few gray hairs, but most of the brown was still there. The jowls were pale and they sagged a bit, but that wasn't really age; that was just fatigue.
It was the eyes that made him look older than his fifty-two years. They were gray eyes, dull and listless, surrounded by the wrinkles of a working man, a man finishing yet another all-night shift driving a bus just like this one, a man whose grown son never called and whose daughter only surfaced on holidays, a man who had lost his wife of twenty-six years to cancer one year and two days ago.
Henry patted Miguel on the shoulder. "Have a good one," he said, pretending to care.
Still hunched over the steering wheel, Miguel pretended right back. "You too, my friend. See you tomorrow."
The doors accordioned out of his way and Henry blinked against the Ft. Lauderdale sunshine. He pushed through the crowd of old ladies and young kids at the Oakland Park Boulevard stop who were stupidly trying to board the bus before all the passengers had exited. The chipped green paint on the bench and cracked pebbled concrete of the sidewalk were a perfect match for his mood.
The summer air was loaded with heat and moisture. By the time he walked the three blocks to his white-painted bungalow house, he felt like he had spent hours in a sauna. He passed his old Ford sedan in the driveway. He didn't drive it often these days; just to the supermarket once a week and sometimes to visit his older sister Marcy, married to an accountant up in Boca Raton. He had celebrated the Fourth of July with them and their kids just last week, barely managing to escape from the woman they tried to set him up with at their backyard barbecue. Nothing wrong with her particularly, but Henry just wasn't in the mood.
He stripped off his uniform dark pant and white shirt and washed the day's sweat off him with a cold shower. He dressed in some jeans and a blue cotton work shirt and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, then turned on the TV. He wasn't too fussy about what was on. Anything was better than the unfeeling silence of his empty house.
He sat in a worn armchair and sipped the beer. He didn't have much of a beer belly yet, but if he kept this up he would be down at Wal-Mart buying a new size of pants before long. His wife's green eyes stared at him from the pictures on the mantle. No flower had ever bloomed prettier than Darlene on their wedding day. She had been his companion through life, through the fishing trips, Disneyworld vacations, his parents' funerals, their children's graduations. Now those pictures on the mantle, neatly arranged and dusted once a week, were all that was left.
Henry closed his eyes and let his grip relax on the half-empty beer bottle. He was just dozing off when the doorbell rang.
Wiping a trickle of slobber off his mouth with the back of his hand, he got up from the chair and set the beer bottle down on an end table. He peered through the front door peephole and saw his niece Diane standing there, Marcy's daughter, chewing gum and fidgeting with impatience. He pulled the door open.
"Diane? What are you doing here?"
"Hi, Uncle Henry. Mind if we come in?" Diane brushed past him into the living room, followed by another young lady, a slim auburn-haired thing with big brown eyes and mild acne scars on one cheek. She wore yellow sundress with skinny straps over pale shoulders and a hemline that ended just above her knees. It took Henry a minute to recognize her.
"Mindy, right? From the barbecue?"
She looked down at the floor, her shy smile half-hidden under her long straight tresses. "Yes, sir."
"Come in, sit down," Henry said. "I wish I'd known you were coming. Anybody want a beer?"
"But we're only eighteen," Mindy said. Her voice was as shy as her smile.
"So? That's legal, ain't it?" It had been a long time since Henry had thought about such things.
"For some things," Mindy said softly, taking a seat on the couch and crossing her legs at the ankles. She folded her hands in her lap, where her index fingers twitched nervously. "But not for beer. In Florida, you have to be twenty-one."
"I'll get the beers," Diane said. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out three. "You should have one, Mindy."
"I guess as long as it's just in the house..." She took a bottle from Diane's outstretched hand and sipped uncertainly.
Diane handed a beer to Henry and took a seat next to her friend on the couch. She tipped the bottle to her lips and regarded her uncle through half-closed eyes. She was a bit stockier than her friend Mindy, not enough to call obese, but more than most men these days liked to see in a woman. She had the Milner nose, the same one Henry and his father had, with nostrils that spread out just a little too broadly for her face.
"Uncle Henry," Diane started.
"What can I do for you, Diane?" Henry grabbed the remote and lowered the volume on the TV so he could hear his niece speak. Mindy was blushing and staring at the floor again.
"It's about a guy," Diane said.
"You mean you got a new boyfriend? What happened to that one you were going out with? Rob, right?"
Diane shook her head. "I'm talking about Mindy. There's a guy Mindy likes."
"Oh."
Mindy clasped her hands around her knees without looking up. The backs of her fingers were white.
"Mindy doesn't think she has a chance with this guy. He's a college student at FAU. Florida Atlantic University. She knows him because he's the cousin of one of our friends from school."
Henry wondered why Mindy couldn't say any of this herself, but thought it would be rude to ask. The girl seemed painfully shy. Even at the barbecue last week she had mostly kept to herself, which was why it had taken him a moment to recognize her at the door.
"The guy told our friend Julie -- his cousin -- that he only goes out with experienced girls. Girls who know what they're doing. You know... in bed."
Henry grunted. "Are we talking about sex now? Shouldn't Mindy -- sorry dear, I don't mean to talk about you like you're not here -- but shouldn't you be having this conversation with your parents?" Henry had had the sex talk with his son, and it wasn't so bad. Turned out the boy already knew a lot more than Henry had given him credit for.
"I don't need a lecture on the birds and the bees," Mindy stammered. She took a deep breath. "I need to do it."
Henry's face went red. He took another sip of his beer to cover his embarrassment.
"She needs someone to help her through her first time," Diane said, looking straight at him. "You were married for almost thirty years, Uncle Henry. You have experience. You can treat her right. She wants you to be her first."
"What?" Henry suddenly found himself on his feet, looking down at the two girls. He didn't even remember getting up. "You want me to --"
"She said you were really nice to her at the Fourth of July party."
Henry remembered greeting her when she came in, but that was about it.
Mindy started to cry. She wrung her hands together and then put them over her face.
"No, wait, don't do that --" Henry looked to his niece for help.
Diane crossed her arms. Henry noticed a rose tattoo on her forearm for the first time. The thorns were dripping blood. "Are you just going to let her cry? She needs you."
Henry spread his hands in despair.
"You don't want to do it with me," Mindy moaned. "You think I'm ugly."
"No, it's not that." Henry sat down on the couch next to her. He was close enough to smell her perfume, some sort of flowery fragrance. "It's just that I barely know you. And you're so young."
"I'm not a baby!"
To me you practically are, Henry thought. "Look at me. Stop crying and look at me!"
Mindy turned her head in his direction.
