There are always some in the lobby, slumped silently in wheelchairs. They perk up when the outside door opens, like flowers bending toward light. But in my entire month in rehab I've never seen one get an actual visit. I can relate. Instead of pretending I don't see them, I pretend I'm someone somebody's wanting to see.
That's how I met Merle and Gladys, married so long they can forget how they know each other. But they always recall something about a son. I'll hold hands, and tell "mom" and "dad" about my amazing circumstances. They'll nod.
Today is special. "My girlfriend wants to say hi," I say, holding out my phone.
"What's her name?" Gladys whispers.
She would ask that. In the week we've been talking and stuff I haven't got that far. "I call her Honey," I say.
"Hello Hon!" Gladys says, with the throaty cheer of the ex-hashhouse waitress she is.
……… ……… ………
Back up in my room I'm on the edge of the bed. My honey reminds me she's not my girlfriend.
"Thanks for humoring them," I say.
"Just who do you think we are?" she asks.
Good question. She's a retired school teacher in Wheeling, West Virginia, blue drop in a red ocean, who hits on guys she finds on Facebook. I'm a stuffy, sixtyish white guy, adrift in the brave blue world of Alameda, California; so lonely I responded to "hello handsome" with "what are you wearing?"
"You tell me" I say.
"We're nothing at all," she says, "after tomorrow." Long pause. "Found someone."
"Someone real?", I venture.
She allows that's so. He's a lab tech at a detox center, and their chemistry reading is off the charts: unlike me, he would never plead for civility when she denounces "President Dickhead."
Unlike Trump, I would never contest my ouster. The real man can have her.
……… ……… ………
Next day, Gladys wears a contented smile when I leave for my constitutional, as if she has a sweet, secret practice too. "Tell her from me she's a lucky girl!" she calls after me.
"You were lucky to have me," I tell my phone.
"Heard," my invisible friend says. "You have an obedient streak."
"Within limits."
"Perfect," she says, "remember my limit. Today it's over."
Instead of our usual beach walk, she wants the library for our last date. Where I worked before I fell down the stairs and landed in rehab. My clownish colleagues shunned me for being hopelessly antiquated, and she knows I dread returning after I'm discharged.
It's across Oak from the police department. I linger at the memorial for cops killed on the job, narrating for her. "The busts of Davey and Gresham are mounted on thin pedestals. 'IN VALOR THERE IS HOPE' is engraved in the pavement."
"Stop stalling!" my insistent friend says. "Show some valor yourself and cross the street."
I obey.
……… ……… ………
Wouldn't you know it, the first librarian I meet is Angie. I don't approve of the Goth tattoos covering her neck, wrists, and doubtless much else; semi-tolerable several decades ago. She is famous around town for learning to read in prison, and like everyone I'm a sucker for tales of redemption. But there are limits; she doesn't need to turn pages while walking to the restroom. Plus she tells everyone her tacky motto, "So Many Books, So Little Time," and she sprinkles cliches over conversations like confetti.
"Angie!" I say, so she won't walk into me.
She lowers Parable of the Talents, mouth round with astonishment. "Roger! How you been? When you back?"
"Next week."
"Can't wait! Well, one day at a time."
……… ……… ………
Outside again, I tell it to my phone. "Evidently they don't loathe me quite as much as anticipated."
"I heard, Roger," my fleeting friend says. "You'll do fine. Goodbye."
……… ……… ………
I stop by rehab then return to the library after my second day back on the job. It's a relief to see Angie standing there, although she did agree to meet us. I park, and we push a couple of wheelchairs to Tucker's, the cavernous ice cream parlor that's an Alameda institution. Our group settles around a window table. I fetch treats. Bliss.
There's something orgiastic about a Banana Split, the creamy sweetness that won't stop coming, the name itself encoding the essence of the canonical sex act. Merle sighs, then speaks with the gentle diffidence of the ex-motel clerk that he is. "You know, that we know, that you're not him, correct?"
"Keep pretending," Gladys says.
"Most of life just showin' up," Angie says.
"Materializing counts as showing up," I say. Angie cocks an eyebrow and smiles cautiously, like she hopes I referenced Star Trek. I shrug expansively to ward off questions, and for one, tiny, sliver of a second, my arm lightly – lightly – brushes hers.
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