Coyote
David Waters
The rain fell straight down, past the neon streetlamps, past Jane Snyder's dark umbrella, past her billowy black dress, illuminated by headlights of Ubers and limos and other sleek black vehicles circling ARRIVALS at SFO like a shiver of sharks. Large suitcases squatted on each side of her, like protective barriers.
"There she is, Frank," Laura said above the staccato of rain pounding the roof of their beat-up Volvo. Frank slipped through a space vacated by a Lincoln Navigator and pulled up in front of Jane. His shoulders relaxed, for he found night driving stressful. His reflexes weren't as swift as they used to be, and early cataracts obscured his night vision.
Laura popped out and embraced Jane, her college roommate from 50 years ago. They hadn't seen each other for a decade, and Frank had only met Jane once, at his and Laura's wedding 25 years ago. Frank wrestled Jane's monster suitcases toward the car and struggled to lift the lighter one. He was over 70 now, and not a weightlifter.
Large brown hands reached in and placed one, then the other suitcase in the trunk. The hands belonged to a massive woman who smiled and said something Frank couldn't quite catch, what with the roar of planes and the squawks of car horns and the rain and her accent and yes, his hearing wasn't quite what it used to be. Frank felt the impulse to give her ten dollars. He fished around in his wallet in the dark, and by the time he looked up she had disappeared into the night. Everything happens so fast nowadays, he thought.
"It's called the Pineapple Express," Frank explained to Jane as they drove back to the city, "because it comes from Hawaii. It just sprays the coast like a gigantic firehose." There he was again, sounding like Wikipedia. Is that the first thing I can think to say to her after all these years, Frank thought. He drove through the rain while Jane and Laura chattered to catch up. He wanted to ask Jane about Joel, how she had managed all those years after his massive stroke, but he didn't know how to phrase his question. Laura had advised Jane to DNR/DNI Joel because he wouldn't want to live like that. Laura was a pull-the-plug type of person. That's just who she was. COVID got to Joel a decade after his stroke, and this time Jane vetoed intubation.
A block from home Frank braked abruptly. Jane strangled a cry of surprise. A coyote stood six feet from their front bumper, his jaws clamped on a rat, its thin, pink tail dangling in the rain, illuminated by the headlights.
"Just a coyote, Jane, don't worry, there are lots of them in the city now," Frank began, "They perform a valuable service by eating vermin. A researcher at the university has been analyzing their scat and found almost no evidence of cat DNA." Frank felt obliged to add, "She can't tell if they eat the occasional puppy though because dog and coyote DNA are too similar." Mr. Wikipedia, at your service, he thought. The coyote's den was in a thicket across the street from their home, and they recognized him by his shredded left ear, grayed chest fur, and limp. He glared and ambled off, unafraid, defiant even. I don't have a dog, Frank exulted, I have a coyote.
The next evening they sat in their own den, where the hardwood floor had been removed due to water damage, leaving the pocked cement surface underneath. Water had leaked from under the glass doors where the outside deck was decaying. The large plants had been temporarily moved into the den, an ancient jade tree, a pencil cactus, its branches akimbo, and a spiky old yucca. With rain still falling, Frank and Laura thought this would be a cheerful place for drinks, like an arboretum, but Frank fixated on the small puddle accumulating inside the glass doors. He would look away, then look back seconds later to see if it had enlarged. He hoped he wouldn't have to leave his drink to get a mop to swab it up. Don't sweat the small stuff, he thought, but he always did.
"Betty's 12-year-old grandson ran away from home," Jane was saying, "took the train to Philadelphia, then a taxi to her place. Don't know how he managed that at his age. He brought a hair dryer with him. That's when Betty knew he was gay."
Frank had spent his career watching patients, and now he watched Jane. Her yellowish skin was transparent and was pulled taut over her cheekbones. Her facial muscles sagged, her eyes were not quite focused, her fingers fluttered, and she radiated a forced brightness, like a flame flaring up in a breeze before being extinguished. These subtle signs lodged in his subconscious, but what he thought was she's dying. He didn't know from what, but knew her abdomen was swollen under that black billowy dress. Frank asked how she felt, and when she admitted to heartburn, he fetched her a Pepcid. She said she hadn't eaten for a couple of days and wasn't hungry, but insisted she wanted to go to the restaurant Laura had selected, a nouveau-French place with a Michelin star and a new tasting menu, Le Vieux Chevalier.
Midway through dinner Laura and Jane were analyzing their sorority sister Emily's divorce, why she married that lush in the first place, and did he hit her? Jane moved food around on her plate, but didn't eat. Frank scanned the room and was surprised to see a man at the next table fall face-down into his dessert, La Fantaisie au Chocolat. He concluded that this was unlikely to be a medical emergency because the man was breathing and not turning blue, so the most likely diagnosis was too much alcohol. Frank took a bite of his fifth course, a Hokkaido scallop with roasted kombu, hazelnut, and cara cara. He rationalized his reticence to jump into apparent medical emergencies as wisdom accumulated over the years, but really, he didn't jump into much of anything anymore.
Four paramedics dressed like military cadets arrived, pushing their way through the restaurant to the scream of their siren just outside, exuding an air of officiousness and indispensability. They transferred their patient-with-a-chocolate-encrusted face to their padded medical chair, ripped open his shirt, sending the buttons popping in different directions, attached electrodes to his hairy chest so that his heart rhythm beeped in ghostly green across the screen. They started an IV in the crook of his arm and hung a liter sac of saline on a pole. Waiters cowered in awe. The patient burped loudly and opened his unfocused eyes. The paramedics brought in more equipment, like a landing party on a beachhead during an invasion. Frank finished his scallop and noted that he was still hungry. The commander was on his phone, checking for follow-up orders.
"Excuse me, sir, excuse me!" an authoritative gray-haired woman from a nearby table was speaking to the squad leader, who looked up as she continued, "His IV is out of the vein, and you left it wide open, so you've infused a liter of saline into his forearm." When he scowled she added, "I'm an ICU nurse." She had tried not to sound condescending and accusatory, but Frank thought she failed miserably. Indeed, the patient did look like a unilateral Popeye the Sailor Man, with one bulging forearm, lacking only an anchor tattoo. Popeye studied his fat arm, then the skinny one, indifferent to the mismatch. The kerfuffle was waking him up.
Frank was still hungry, but Jane wasn't. She excused herself and was directed to the washroom by an idle waiter. As soon as Jane was out of earshot, Laura turned her attention from Popeye to Frank, "She looks green, and so old. I'm worried about her." Frank agreed, but kept his eyes on the heart monitor out of habit. After a few minutes he tugged on the arm of the chief paramedic, "You might want to get Popeye to a hospital sooner rather than later, he's having torsade des pointes." The paramedic looked at him blankly.
"It's a French phrase, it means a turning of the points." Frank had reverted to his most professorial mode, "it's an atypical form of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, usually with prolonged QT interval."
"What are you, for Chrissake, a cardiologist?"
"Yes, but the point is, he's at high risk for ventricular fibrillation, and his torsade might be due to low magnesium or potassium levels. He needs lab tests, and you can't get them at Le Vieux Chevalier."
The commander looked askance at Francis, opened his mouth to speak, snapped it shut, and began to organize a strategic retreat. Within five minutes they were gone, and a sigh of relief swept the dining room. Service resumed. The ICU nurse across the way gave Frank a thumbs up. The head waiter sent three flutes of champagne to their table. Frank felt that he had accomplished something, like he used to do all the time.
Jane returned from the washroom, and a thought pushed at Frank's consciousness, that the paramedics should have taken Jane, not Popeye. They meandered through the final six courses right up to the grand finale, the aforementioned Fantaisie au Chocolat. Frank was stuffed by then, and La Fantaisie reminded them of Popeye, and that wasn't appetizing.
"Joel would have enjoyed that," said Laura, pushing back her chair. Frank realized she was thinking of the Joel from long ago, not the aphasic, hemiplegic burden Jane had tended to for many years. Frank wondered how Popeye was doing. Did he make it to the hospital, and what did his lab results show?
They clumped on the sidewalk, awaiting their Uber. The rain had stopped, and a full moon shone resplendent among the clouds. Frank thought of Joel, of Popeye, of the coyote with the rat in its mouth. Coyotes were so lucky! They lived a dozen years and then were shot or poisoned or killed crossing a freeway. How great was that? No lingering. He worried that Jane had something bad. She probably already knew what it was. Did she think of her visit as part of a farewell tour? He wondered how much longer he and Laura could cruise through life untouched. Soon he would be deafer and blinder and slower and weaker, and no one would heed his Wikipedia utterances. Would Laura pull the plug on him with her usual singlemindedness? Would he care by then? Or would she go first, leaving him utterly alone, an untethered astronaut floating through space.
"It's all closing in on us," he muttered to Laura, who looked at him quizzically as their Uber pulled up.
~ ~ ~
On a humid July afternoon five months later, Frank and Laura attended Jane's memorial service in New York. She had passed away quietly in hospice, her insides brimming with metastases. Afterwards, they walked down Fifth Avenue alongside Central Park, hand in hand in their funeral attire, returning to their hotel, immersed in thought.
"Jane's life would have been much better if she had let go of Joel when he had his stroke," Laura mused, "Joel's too." Frank didn't reply. He was thinking he had read of a coyote riding the subway in New York, and planned to google it.
The doorman at the Pierre swung the ornate doors open for them. The grand old hotel retained its five stars, but was past its prime, which seemed befitting. Ten minutes later they had shed their sweaty clothes and were standing beneath the rainfall shower. The burden of Jane's memorial service had been lifted; they were now free to be no more than tourists in the big city. They anointed each other with the luxurious Etro bodywash and shampoo, giggling like urchins. The cold spray hardened Laura's nipples and shrunk Frank's ancient penis to a nub. They hadn't showered together for years, and it reminded them of carefree vacations by the sea. When they were cool and clean, they dried each other with plush white towels and donned thick terrycloth robes. They flopped onto the king-size bed. Frank pulled Laura close by the lapels of her robe. A siren down on Fifth Avenue felt far away. They were silent for a few moments as the mood drifted from carefree to somber.
"Laura, I feel guilty using Jane's death as an excuse to celebrate like this."
"She wouldn't mind. She would cheer us on," Laura continued, "and who knows what might happen to us, and how many more chances we'll have." She hummed a few bars of a Janis Joplin tune, then sang, "Honey, get it while you can," before kissing Frank to terminate her musical outburst.
"I remember years ago when I visited New York on business. Joel and Jane lived downtown then, and they would insist I stay with them," Laura reminisced, "We would eat at the Mayrose Diner, we couldn't afford more, but it had big windows overlooking Broadway. Joel talked all the time, and we called him El Pomposo, but he was pompous in an amusing way. He would pontificate about how Reagan was ruining America."
"He was right about that." They were silent for a minute, watching each other.
"What's the matter, Frank?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I wish I were a coyote."
"You don't want to be like Joel."
Frank didn't reply. "You're not as quick-witted or charming as you used to be, your body is slowing down and sometimes betrays you," Laura spoke sympathetically, "you're not front and center anymore. I understand. It's happening to me too."
"And it's only going to get worse," Frank added.
"Listen to you, Mr. Coyote," Laura laughed, "ensconced in your 5-star hotel with Central Park way down there, your beautiful wife up here cheering you on. And it's not going to get worse tonight. We're going to La Grenouille where you'll probably order whitefish quenelles again, and a Grand Marnier souffle for dessert."
Frank smiled, "Better than a coyote meal."
"When we were young we struggled. Life was hard, filled with uncertainty," Laura pivoted, "Now it's a walk in Central Park. We've made it. You want to go back 40 years? It might not turn out as well the second time around. Maybe we were brilliant. Maybe we were lucky."
"I don't want to go back, I just want to stop things before they get worse."
He studied Laura's face, sideways from a foot away. Her damp graying hair had gone all curly from the shower. Her eyes looked through him, into the distance. Perhaps she would utter an epiphany.
"They also serve who only stand and wait. John Milton, last line of On His Blindness. Freshman English Literature, Wellesley, 1965," Laura whispered, as if revealing a secret. "You don't have to do anything, Frank, just be here, be available." With that she popped up and began to dress for dinner.
Three hours later they were sitting at La Grenouille awaiting dessert. Frank found it hard not to feel contented. The tiny lamps on each table suffused the room in a soothing glow, and extravagant flower arrangements towered over the diners.
"Nobody's going to nosedive into their dessert tonight," Laura laughed, "This is New York City."
"You never know, Popeyes are everywhere."
Leave it alone, don't go there, Frank thought, but he went anyway, "Laura, did you notice that Popeye had a hairy chest?" Laura looked puzzled. "Those paramedics were sloppy. They infused a liter of saline into his arm in five minutes."
"So?" Laura had no idea where Frank was heading.
"Sometimes with a sweaty, hairy chest, the ECG electrode doesn't make good contact and there is electrical interference," Laura still looked puzzled, "Electrical interference can look like torsade des pointes."
"So are you saying Popeye wasn't in danger, that he didn't need to go to the hospital right away?" Laura went further, "Were you just trying to get rid of them because you were still hungry?"
"No, no, no," Frank protested, "I think it was torsade, but now I am not 100% certain. Maybe I overanalyze things too much. Anyway, he needed to be in an emergency room, not a restaurant."
The Grand Marnier souffle arrived with two spoons. They savored it silently, their thoughts drifting from Popeye to Jane and Joel. After dinner they walked back toward the Pierre. The wind had picked up, blowing dust along Fifth Avenue. Thunder rumbled far away.
"Never hear thunder in San Francisco," Frank grumped like he was deprived of an important meteorological benefit. He didn't care anymore if it rained. At the corner of Central Park, a ragged group of musicians played music from the past century, and three couples were dancing with aplomb, smiling and laughing.
"C'mon Frank, let's dance," Laura was already kicking her shoes off. Frank hadn't thought of himself as someone who danced in Central Park in July. Or any time. Lightning stabbed at the skyline somewhere uptown. Dance like a coyote, Frank saw it now, carefree, just do it, act, don't think.
They began to dance, self-consciously at first, then as smoother, refined versions of their younger selves. For that is who they were.
"Do you remember..." Laura began.
"Yes."
He recalled it vividly, like a hallucination, a scene from their past, he and Laura had driven into a town in Italy at sunset on a Saturday night. In the bandstand of the town square, a small orchestra was playing Glenn Miller music. Everyone in town was there, dancing joyously, from children to octogenarians. They parked their rented Fiat and danced too. Moonlight Serenade, then In the Mood. He remembered the smell of crushed rosemary on the night breeze.
He felt like he was in two places at once, Tuscany and Manhattan. He pulled Laura close and felt her July-hot body against his own. He planned to dance forever.
David Waters
The rain fell straight down, past the neon streetlamps, past Jane Snyder's dark umbrella, past her billowy black dress, illuminated by headlights of Ubers and limos and other sleek black vehicles circling ARRIVALS at SFO like a shiver of sharks. Large suitcases squatted on each side of her, like protective barriers.
"There she is, Frank," Laura said above the staccato of rain pounding the roof of their beat-up Volvo. Frank slipped through a space vacated by a Lincoln Navigator and pulled up in front of Jane. His shoulders relaxed, for he found night driving stressful. His reflexes weren't as swift as they used to be, and early cataracts obscured his night vision.
Laura popped out and embraced Jane, her college roommate from 50 years ago. They hadn't seen each other for a decade, and Frank had only met Jane once, at his and Laura's wedding 25 years ago. Frank wrestled Jane's monster suitcases toward the car and struggled to lift the lighter one. He was over 70 now, and not a weightlifter.
Large brown hands reached in and placed one, then the other suitcase in the trunk. The hands belonged to a massive woman who smiled and said something Frank couldn't quite catch, what with the roar of planes and the squawks of car horns and the rain and her accent and yes, his hearing wasn't quite what it used to be. Frank felt the impulse to give her ten dollars. He fished around in his wallet in the dark, and by the time he looked up she had disappeared into the night. Everything happens so fast nowadays, he thought.
"It's called the Pineapple Express," Frank explained to Jane as they drove back to the city, "because it comes from Hawaii. It just sprays the coast like a gigantic firehose." There he was again, sounding like Wikipedia. Is that the first thing I can think to say to her after all these years, Frank thought. He drove through the rain while Jane and Laura chattered to catch up. He wanted to ask Jane about Joel, how she had managed all those years after his massive stroke, but he didn't know how to phrase his question. Laura had advised Jane to DNR/DNI Joel because he wouldn't want to live like that. Laura was a pull-the-plug type of person. That's just who she was. COVID got to Joel a decade after his stroke, and this time Jane vetoed intubation.
A block from home Frank braked abruptly. Jane strangled a cry of surprise. A coyote stood six feet from their front bumper, his jaws clamped on a rat, its thin, pink tail dangling in the rain, illuminated by the headlights.
"Just a coyote, Jane, don't worry, there are lots of them in the city now," Frank began, "They perform a valuable service by eating vermin. A researcher at the university has been analyzing their scat and found almost no evidence of cat DNA." Frank felt obliged to add, "She can't tell if they eat the occasional puppy though because dog and coyote DNA are too similar." Mr. Wikipedia, at your service, he thought. The coyote's den was in a thicket across the street from their home, and they recognized him by his shredded left ear, grayed chest fur, and limp. He glared and ambled off, unafraid, defiant even. I don't have a dog, Frank exulted, I have a coyote.
The next evening they sat in their own den, where the hardwood floor had been removed due to water damage, leaving the pocked cement surface underneath. Water had leaked from under the glass doors where the outside deck was decaying. The large plants had been temporarily moved into the den, an ancient jade tree, a pencil cactus, its branches akimbo, and a spiky old yucca. With rain still falling, Frank and Laura thought this would be a cheerful place for drinks, like an arboretum, but Frank fixated on the small puddle accumulating inside the glass doors. He would look away, then look back seconds later to see if it had enlarged. He hoped he wouldn't have to leave his drink to get a mop to swab it up. Don't sweat the small stuff, he thought, but he always did.
"Betty's 12-year-old grandson ran away from home," Jane was saying, "took the train to Philadelphia, then a taxi to her place. Don't know how he managed that at his age. He brought a hair dryer with him. That's when Betty knew he was gay."
Frank had spent his career watching patients, and now he watched Jane. Her yellowish skin was transparent and was pulled taut over her cheekbones. Her facial muscles sagged, her eyes were not quite focused, her fingers fluttered, and she radiated a forced brightness, like a flame flaring up in a breeze before being extinguished. These subtle signs lodged in his subconscious, but what he thought was she's dying. He didn't know from what, but knew her abdomen was swollen under that black billowy dress. Frank asked how she felt, and when she admitted to heartburn, he fetched her a Pepcid. She said she hadn't eaten for a couple of days and wasn't hungry, but insisted she wanted to go to the restaurant Laura had selected, a nouveau-French place with a Michelin star and a new tasting menu, Le Vieux Chevalier.
Midway through dinner Laura and Jane were analyzing their sorority sister Emily's divorce, why she married that lush in the first place, and did he hit her? Jane moved food around on her plate, but didn't eat. Frank scanned the room and was surprised to see a man at the next table fall face-down into his dessert, La Fantaisie au Chocolat. He concluded that this was unlikely to be a medical emergency because the man was breathing and not turning blue, so the most likely diagnosis was too much alcohol. Frank took a bite of his fifth course, a Hokkaido scallop with roasted kombu, hazelnut, and cara cara. He rationalized his reticence to jump into apparent medical emergencies as wisdom accumulated over the years, but really, he didn't jump into much of anything anymore.
Four paramedics dressed like military cadets arrived, pushing their way through the restaurant to the scream of their siren just outside, exuding an air of officiousness and indispensability. They transferred their patient-with-a-chocolate-encrusted face to their padded medical chair, ripped open his shirt, sending the buttons popping in different directions, attached electrodes to his hairy chest so that his heart rhythm beeped in ghostly green across the screen. They started an IV in the crook of his arm and hung a liter sac of saline on a pole. Waiters cowered in awe. The patient burped loudly and opened his unfocused eyes. The paramedics brought in more equipment, like a landing party on a beachhead during an invasion. Frank finished his scallop and noted that he was still hungry. The commander was on his phone, checking for follow-up orders.
"Excuse me, sir, excuse me!" an authoritative gray-haired woman from a nearby table was speaking to the squad leader, who looked up as she continued, "His IV is out of the vein, and you left it wide open, so you've infused a liter of saline into his forearm." When he scowled she added, "I'm an ICU nurse." She had tried not to sound condescending and accusatory, but Frank thought she failed miserably. Indeed, the patient did look like a unilateral Popeye the Sailor Man, with one bulging forearm, lacking only an anchor tattoo. Popeye studied his fat arm, then the skinny one, indifferent to the mismatch. The kerfuffle was waking him up.
Frank was still hungry, but Jane wasn't. She excused herself and was directed to the washroom by an idle waiter. As soon as Jane was out of earshot, Laura turned her attention from Popeye to Frank, "She looks green, and so old. I'm worried about her." Frank agreed, but kept his eyes on the heart monitor out of habit. After a few minutes he tugged on the arm of the chief paramedic, "You might want to get Popeye to a hospital sooner rather than later, he's having torsade des pointes." The paramedic looked at him blankly.
"It's a French phrase, it means a turning of the points." Frank had reverted to his most professorial mode, "it's an atypical form of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, usually with prolonged QT interval."
"What are you, for Chrissake, a cardiologist?"
"Yes, but the point is, he's at high risk for ventricular fibrillation, and his torsade might be due to low magnesium or potassium levels. He needs lab tests, and you can't get them at Le Vieux Chevalier."
The commander looked askance at Francis, opened his mouth to speak, snapped it shut, and began to organize a strategic retreat. Within five minutes they were gone, and a sigh of relief swept the dining room. Service resumed. The ICU nurse across the way gave Frank a thumbs up. The head waiter sent three flutes of champagne to their table. Frank felt that he had accomplished something, like he used to do all the time.
Jane returned from the washroom, and a thought pushed at Frank's consciousness, that the paramedics should have taken Jane, not Popeye. They meandered through the final six courses right up to the grand finale, the aforementioned Fantaisie au Chocolat. Frank was stuffed by then, and La Fantaisie reminded them of Popeye, and that wasn't appetizing.
"Joel would have enjoyed that," said Laura, pushing back her chair. Frank realized she was thinking of the Joel from long ago, not the aphasic, hemiplegic burden Jane had tended to for many years. Frank wondered how Popeye was doing. Did he make it to the hospital, and what did his lab results show?
They clumped on the sidewalk, awaiting their Uber. The rain had stopped, and a full moon shone resplendent among the clouds. Frank thought of Joel, of Popeye, of the coyote with the rat in its mouth. Coyotes were so lucky! They lived a dozen years and then were shot or poisoned or killed crossing a freeway. How great was that? No lingering. He worried that Jane had something bad. She probably already knew what it was. Did she think of her visit as part of a farewell tour? He wondered how much longer he and Laura could cruise through life untouched. Soon he would be deafer and blinder and slower and weaker, and no one would heed his Wikipedia utterances. Would Laura pull the plug on him with her usual singlemindedness? Would he care by then? Or would she go first, leaving him utterly alone, an untethered astronaut floating through space.
"It's all closing in on us," he muttered to Laura, who looked at him quizzically as their Uber pulled up.
~ ~ ~
On a humid July afternoon five months later, Frank and Laura attended Jane's memorial service in New York. She had passed away quietly in hospice, her insides brimming with metastases. Afterwards, they walked down Fifth Avenue alongside Central Park, hand in hand in their funeral attire, returning to their hotel, immersed in thought.
"Jane's life would have been much better if she had let go of Joel when he had his stroke," Laura mused, "Joel's too." Frank didn't reply. He was thinking he had read of a coyote riding the subway in New York, and planned to google it.
The doorman at the Pierre swung the ornate doors open for them. The grand old hotel retained its five stars, but was past its prime, which seemed befitting. Ten minutes later they had shed their sweaty clothes and were standing beneath the rainfall shower. The burden of Jane's memorial service had been lifted; they were now free to be no more than tourists in the big city. They anointed each other with the luxurious Etro bodywash and shampoo, giggling like urchins. The cold spray hardened Laura's nipples and shrunk Frank's ancient penis to a nub. They hadn't showered together for years, and it reminded them of carefree vacations by the sea. When they were cool and clean, they dried each other with plush white towels and donned thick terrycloth robes. They flopped onto the king-size bed. Frank pulled Laura close by the lapels of her robe. A siren down on Fifth Avenue felt far away. They were silent for a few moments as the mood drifted from carefree to somber.
"Laura, I feel guilty using Jane's death as an excuse to celebrate like this."
"She wouldn't mind. She would cheer us on," Laura continued, "and who knows what might happen to us, and how many more chances we'll have." She hummed a few bars of a Janis Joplin tune, then sang, "Honey, get it while you can," before kissing Frank to terminate her musical outburst.
"I remember years ago when I visited New York on business. Joel and Jane lived downtown then, and they would insist I stay with them," Laura reminisced, "We would eat at the Mayrose Diner, we couldn't afford more, but it had big windows overlooking Broadway. Joel talked all the time, and we called him El Pomposo, but he was pompous in an amusing way. He would pontificate about how Reagan was ruining America."
"He was right about that." They were silent for a minute, watching each other.
"What's the matter, Frank?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I wish I were a coyote."
"You don't want to be like Joel."
Frank didn't reply. "You're not as quick-witted or charming as you used to be, your body is slowing down and sometimes betrays you," Laura spoke sympathetically, "you're not front and center anymore. I understand. It's happening to me too."
"And it's only going to get worse," Frank added.
"Listen to you, Mr. Coyote," Laura laughed, "ensconced in your 5-star hotel with Central Park way down there, your beautiful wife up here cheering you on. And it's not going to get worse tonight. We're going to La Grenouille where you'll probably order whitefish quenelles again, and a Grand Marnier souffle for dessert."
Frank smiled, "Better than a coyote meal."
"When we were young we struggled. Life was hard, filled with uncertainty," Laura pivoted, "Now it's a walk in Central Park. We've made it. You want to go back 40 years? It might not turn out as well the second time around. Maybe we were brilliant. Maybe we were lucky."
"I don't want to go back, I just want to stop things before they get worse."
He studied Laura's face, sideways from a foot away. Her damp graying hair had gone all curly from the shower. Her eyes looked through him, into the distance. Perhaps she would utter an epiphany.
"They also serve who only stand and wait. John Milton, last line of On His Blindness. Freshman English Literature, Wellesley, 1965," Laura whispered, as if revealing a secret. "You don't have to do anything, Frank, just be here, be available." With that she popped up and began to dress for dinner.
Three hours later they were sitting at La Grenouille awaiting dessert. Frank found it hard not to feel contented. The tiny lamps on each table suffused the room in a soothing glow, and extravagant flower arrangements towered over the diners.
"Nobody's going to nosedive into their dessert tonight," Laura laughed, "This is New York City."
"You never know, Popeyes are everywhere."
Leave it alone, don't go there, Frank thought, but he went anyway, "Laura, did you notice that Popeye had a hairy chest?" Laura looked puzzled. "Those paramedics were sloppy. They infused a liter of saline into his arm in five minutes."
"So?" Laura had no idea where Frank was heading.
"Sometimes with a sweaty, hairy chest, the ECG electrode doesn't make good contact and there is electrical interference," Laura still looked puzzled, "Electrical interference can look like torsade des pointes."
"So are you saying Popeye wasn't in danger, that he didn't need to go to the hospital right away?" Laura went further, "Were you just trying to get rid of them because you were still hungry?"
"No, no, no," Frank protested, "I think it was torsade, but now I am not 100% certain. Maybe I overanalyze things too much. Anyway, he needed to be in an emergency room, not a restaurant."
The Grand Marnier souffle arrived with two spoons. They savored it silently, their thoughts drifting from Popeye to Jane and Joel. After dinner they walked back toward the Pierre. The wind had picked up, blowing dust along Fifth Avenue. Thunder rumbled far away.
"Never hear thunder in San Francisco," Frank grumped like he was deprived of an important meteorological benefit. He didn't care anymore if it rained. At the corner of Central Park, a ragged group of musicians played music from the past century, and three couples were dancing with aplomb, smiling and laughing.
"C'mon Frank, let's dance," Laura was already kicking her shoes off. Frank hadn't thought of himself as someone who danced in Central Park in July. Or any time. Lightning stabbed at the skyline somewhere uptown. Dance like a coyote, Frank saw it now, carefree, just do it, act, don't think.
They began to dance, self-consciously at first, then as smoother, refined versions of their younger selves. For that is who they were.
"Do you remember..." Laura began.
"Yes."
He recalled it vividly, like a hallucination, a scene from their past, he and Laura had driven into a town in Italy at sunset on a Saturday night. In the bandstand of the town square, a small orchestra was playing Glenn Miller music. Everyone in town was there, dancing joyously, from children to octogenarians. They parked their rented Fiat and danced too. Moonlight Serenade, then In the Mood. He remembered the smell of crushed rosemary on the night breeze.
He felt like he was in two places at once, Tuscany and Manhattan. He pulled Laura close and felt her July-hot body against his own. He planned to dance forever.
