"Hi, I'm here to use your bedroom," said Meri as she stood in the doorway to my house.
I was well aware of the plan. Despite that, she seemed hangdog about showing up on my stoop and having to ring the bell to be let in by me in order to engage in a tryst. It was all the more awkward because the tryst was not with me, but with the two young brothers from across the street. Her curt sentence -- to the point, devoid of pleasantries -- told me all I needed to know. She was not proud of her choice. She was driven to do this by some internal compulsion. She wanted as little interaction with me as possible. She was hoping that I wouldn't even acknowledge that I know her.
I know who she is. I know what she was there for. I know her secret.
I decided to play to her weakness. It wasn't kind of me and I'm not proud of it either.
"Oh, hi Meri!" I said, loudly and genially. She almost shuttered at the sound of her name and I detected a darting sideways glance to see if anyone was around to hear me say it.
She stepped in hastily, almost landing on my toes.
"Hi," she said, reluctantly.
Her red hair brought out the blush of her cheek. She was embarrassed. She was wearing tight jeans and a black V-neck t-shirt. Her oversized, dark sunglasses -- the kind movie stars wear in order to remain inconspicuous -- looked downright comical on her and, if anything, would draw more attention to her, not less. She was dressed very casually, even understated, except for her fancy, black leather, strappy high heels.
"Why don't you come in?" I said, getting out of her way as she was already inside. "Can I offer you anything? A seltzer? Coffee? Glass of wine?"
"No, no thank you," she said. She was also nervous.
"Something to eat?"
She wasn't there for tea and crumpets. She was there to get fucked and fucked good by two boys less than half her age. She was eager. She was guilty. She was sneaking around behind her husband's back. I knew this because, at the very same time that I was letting her into my house for her mid-day delights, Lo was arriving at her house, seducing her husband.
Her timorous greeting was surprising, given how bold and confident she appeared the last time I saw her at the backyard luncheon that Lo and I hosted for her to meet the brothers. That day she came in with all the confidence and certitude of a seasoned hunter in search of prey. Her self-assured airs were, perhaps, her most attractive feature. But now, in the glare of the noonday sun, deprived of young men for whom she turned on the charm, she appeared to me completely transformed. She was a middle-aged suburban mother of three. A woman of my own generation. She and I could have been in high school together. Back then she would have been the belle of the ball, the prom queen, Ms. Popularity. But now I could see she was desperate to preserve her youth, in spirit and in appearance. She feared the ravages of the next twenty-five years. She hated with a fierce passion the thief who would slowly, methodically, persistently steal from her her most treasured possession -- her looks. That accursed Thief Time! -- whom Botox cannot keep out, Silicone and Saline cannot evade, and lifts only delays but fails to destroy. In that moment, I felt great pity for her. I could understand her completely and compassionately. Weren't we both in the same predicament?
Yes, it may be true, as I've often heard women remark with bitterness, that men grow more attractive with age. Whenever they observe that fact, they never fail to add that it is supremely unfair to women. Yet, Time steals from us all that which we most covet. For me, it is my mental acumen and creative powers. Each time I fail to recall just the right word in a sentence -- whether while speaking or writing -- I suffer as greatly as Meri when she discovers another age spot or laugh line.
She had aged, and pretty well too for a mother of three boys, but she felt as if Time had stolen more than her prized looks. It had stolen from her twenty-five years of opportunity. For twenty-five years she had remained faithful to her husband. For twenty-five years she had settled for mediocre sex (at best) and the life of suburban ennui. She felt as if she had been sleepwalking through life and now, her kids grown and nearly out of the house, COVID bearing down on us all, the threat of sickness and death imminent, she had finally awoken from her long slumber.
Though she began her affair with Lola prior to the outbreak of the global pandemic, it probably was the events of 2020 that steeled her resolve. The news reporters announced that COVID was a threat to "the elderly," and then it was people over sixty-five. But then they reduced it to fifty-five. And finally, people over fifty shouldn't fly. In Meri's mind that was a threat to other people. Old people. Until it set in with a vengeance, "Oh, wait. I'm in that category. I'm over fifty! I'm one of the ones at 'elevated risk.'"
That little thought, that snippet of data, that thread of realization circulated her psyche like a bit of programming virus through a computer, infecting all of the cognitive functions slowly, unnoticed, until eventually, one day, she had made up her mind that if she was mortal and the winter of her life was in sight, then she was going to live out her autumn to the fullest.
The immediate result of that was her here, in my house, staring at me, her contemporary and, perhaps also, in her mind, her rival. I didn't view her that way. But she may have viewed me as such. She also may have been irritated by the fact that though I was her own age, my partner was the young and lovely Lola -- her lover -- while her husband was also in his fifties. If, as I often say, Lola keeps me young, maybe she felt that her husband keeps her old. At the very least, he was a constant reminder of her fading youth.
"I think you know where the bedroom is," I said to her, seeing as how she was cool to my hospitality. "Feel free to use the master bath."
She looked at me and struggled to form a small smile. But her eyes expressed a question that she couldn't bring her mouth to articulate.
"Oh, I'll make myself scarce so you can let the boys in." I emphasized the word "boys" just slightly.
She seemed both appreciative and perturbed.
I opened the closet to take out my jacket since there was an autumnal chill in the air that morning.
Before I left, she plucked up the courage to say, "HH, I know what you're thinking."
"That makes one of us," I replied. "What am I thinking?"
"You think I'm a terrible person. You think that I'm an adulterer and a whore for wanting those two brothers. And who knows what else," she said with a tortured expression on her face.
"I'm not thinking any of those things," I replied. I really wasn't. All of that was her projection of her own thoughts on me.
"I'm sure you are. You're just too polite to say so. Who wouldn't?"
"I don't. I'm not here to judge you or anyone."
"Well, I want you to know that. . ." She didn't know what she wanted me to know. Her sentence trailed off like a road covered by the sands of a desert.
"Meri, all I know is you're doing Lo a favor and she's doing you one in return."
Lo pulled up in the cul-de-sac and parked in front of Meri's house. Meri had told her husband Scott that she needed a day to herself. Without the option of going to the hairdresser, the spa, or the nail salon due to COVID, she needed to have some way of engaging in "self-care" and "me-time." She told her husband she craved some time away, but didn't say how she was going to spend that time.
Little did he know or even suspect that it was really "fuck-me-time" with two brothers the same age as her sons that she craved so much and how she chose to care for herself.
