"…a biker."
"A biker. With biker friends. Who have been arriving on motorcycles, in shifts, since dawn, and who all appear" — she paused to let her words sink in — "and I want you to hear me when I say this — to have fallen directly out of the pages of Sexiest Man Alive magazine."
"Is that actually a thing?"
"Sophia. I do not know. But if it isn't, it should be. There is an oversupply of beautiful men in your driveway and at eighty-four I am absolutely, unreservedly here for it."
"Across the road?—"
"Whatever. I am here for it. And your new owner over there is — and I will say this once and then we will move on — very, very easy on the eyes."
"Willow!"
"I think you should go over there and introduce yourself."
"No."
"Sophia. He's been at it since eight a.m. Offering him a glass of water would not be the worst thing you have ever done in your life."
"No way."
"It is the warmest October on record."
She took a slow sip of her coffee and looked at me over the rim of it, and there it was — the look. She had been deploying the look on me for eight years. She held it. I held out. She raised one eyebrow a single, patient millimeter, a woman who had all day and most of the next one.
"Fine," she said, setting the cup down. "Then I will tell you about Noah because our new neighbor has reminded me of my wild Noah days."
"Oh God, please no." I was laughing already.
"Noah" — she settled deeper into the chair, getting comfortable, a storyteller arranging her props — "was a Hells Angel out of Sacramento in 1972, and may he rest in peace, he ran his bike into a tree in '78, and he was, without one word of exaggeration, the most beautiful man I have ever had the privilege of taking my clothes off in front of."
"Willow —"
"Six-foot-three. Hands the size of dinner plates. And the most beautiful member I have ever seen in my life." She gave me a wink she had clearly been saving. "If you know what I mean."
"I know what you mean."
"Do you, though?"
"Yes."
"Because I want to be specific —"
"Oh, God, please kill me now." It came out of me on the wrong half of a breath. I put both hands over my belly because something had pulled there. I put my forehead down on the porch table, and laughed into the wood until I lost the sound of it entirely.
Above me, unbothered, she carried on. I could hear that she was not smiling. That was the genius of her. She delivered the whole thing flat, like a coroner reading findings.
"— so that you understand. I have been alive for eighty-four years. I have seen many things. I have, in fact, seen many of those things up very close. And in the long catalogue of beautiful members I have been privileged to know personally, Noah was the gold standard. The platinum standard. The one against which all subsequent —"
"I am begging you."
"— members were measured, and most of them found wanting. Two husbands. One fiancé. A summer in San Francisco in '67 that I have never found a comfortable way to describe in mixed company. And Noah. And I am telling you now that the man across the road has the look of Noah about him. That is all I am saying. That is the entire content of my report."
My face was still on the table. My ribs hurt. I could not get a clean breath, and every time I thought I had one, she would be there in the dark behind my eyes, six-foot-three, dinner-plate hands, reading her coroner's report, and it would go again.
"Get up, girl."
"I can't."
