The elevator doors open and Grandma steps in, joining an old man with a walker who was already in the elevator. He blinks at us. It’s a walker with the tennis balls on the bottom, although this is a really nice place. If someone can afford to live here, they can afford the fancy walkers with the sliding feet.
Grandma aggressively pushes the first-floor button, even though it’s already lit. “At my age, the next time I have sex might be the last. Who wants to waste it on an old fart like this one?” She jabs her cane in the direction of the old man.
If the old man takes offense to this—if he even hears her—she doesn’t give him a chance to object. “No, if I’m going out with a bang, I’m going out with someone at least twenty years my junior. A nice young stallion. Like the one you should have.”
I roll my eyes, not even bothering to hide it from Grandma. She should check her math—twenty years her junior is sixty-three, and I’m pretty sure if I brought a sixty-three-year-old man to meet Grandma she’d be pissed about the age gap and then complain that I’m “hogging the eligible men.”
“I hear,” she says, leaning toward me, “that there are strippers in Here that make house calls.”
My mind flashes to Morgan and all the abs and obliques and tattoos that I saw two weeks ago, and I squeeze my eyes shut extra hard. Grandma’s trying to distract me. I do not for one minute believe that in a small town like Here there are male strippers that cater to a geriatric audience.
“You can’t just randomly flit about to different places.”
“Why not? You’re flitting about too.”
“I’m not flitting. There’s no flitting.”
Grandma looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “It would be different if you were settled down.”
I ignore that comment. I’m aware that if I was in any kind of committed relationship, Grandma would stay settled. She would complain constantly, but she wouldn’t be making me pack up her shit every few months.
It’s one of the only regrets I have about my last breakup.
“You’re not moving,” I tell Grandma. “You have four more months. You need to make friends.”
“Why should I make friends?” Grandma huffs. “You haven’t made any either.”
The elevator dings and Grandma’s off like a shot and around the corner. I politely hold the door open for the old man, though I refuse to make eye contact with him. He really didn’t need to overhear my grandma’s death-sex wish.
He shuffles out. “My name is Arthur Hayes.” He speaks glacially and has a slight tremble in his hand when he raises it up to point after my grandmother. “You can tell her to find me at apartment number one-four?—”
“Yeah, okay, thanks, Gramps.”
I drop my arm and chase after my grandmother. The old man is mostly out the door, he’ll be fine.
When I come around the corner she’s waiting for me halfway down to the cafe. “Hurry up, the clock is ticking.”
“Lunch isn’t over until two,” I shoot back, catching up to her.
“I wasn’t talking about lunch, I was talking about my life.”
“Four more months, Grandma. Make some friends.”
“You make friends.” She says it like a threat, which, well . . . it is. This is Grandma’s fourth retirement community. The first one only lasted a month, but when she moved from the second one, I caught on to her game. She’s going to princess-and-the-pea her way through all the retirement communities in the tristate area, wasting her money and both our time until I agree to quit my job and stay home with her.
As it is, I’m on the road too much to live with her properly, but she can’t live by herself. Who knows what mayhem she could get up to on her own. Once I came to visit her and found a miniature pony living in the house with her. In the house!
“I do have friends,” I insist.
She scoffs. “Liar.”
We get to the cafe and my grandmother greets the hostess by reminding her she doesn’t like to sit next to the windows because they’re too drafty.
The hostess just smiles. This must be one of the ones Grandma hasn’t broken yet.
We’re led to a table by the wall and settle in with the menu, not that I need one. The food is pretty good here, and I’ve got a favorite meal picked out. But Grandma studies the menu as if she’s never seen it before, when I happened to know for a fact that they slip one under her door every morning. There are several regular dishes and a few daily specials.
I look around the room while Grandma gives commentary on the menu. “Liver and onions! How old do they think we are?” and “Quinoa? I’m not a hippie.” There’s a group of women my grandma’s age sitting in the corner.
