Page 50 of The Late Bloomer’s Playlist

Simon & Garfunkel

BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER

I elbowed my way through the crowd of mourners with a neat gin in one hand and a neat whisky in the other. David was somewhere on the other side of the room, and I made it my mission to get to him without having to engage in any more idle conversation with strangers beforehand. Though, of course, they weren’t strangers; only people I hadn’t seen for years, which felt a little like the same thing. Martie Crouch had been a friend from mine and David’s university days. He was always the life and soul – through to the end, as it turned out, given that his poor heart gave out while he was refreshing drinks at a party – and we’d kept in touch loosely over the years, enough to know that Martie had done well for himself. In part evidenced by the fact that the room was full of people ready to celebrate his life, and in part evidenced by the twenty-years-his-junior widow who’d spent much of the afternoon weeping in a corner and graciously accepting sympathies from people. Including me and David.

‘Excuse me, sorry, can I just… Right through there, yes, thank you.’ I squeezed past a group of women and on the other side found my husband.

‘Ah, here she is,’ David said, turning to me. ‘Thanks, sweetheart.’ He took his drink and span around to face the man he’d been talking to: short; balding; a grey suit that he likely saved for occasions such as these. ‘Been lovely catching up, hasn’t it? Shame about the circumstance, of course, but you’ll keep in touch?’

‘Of course, of course,’ the man answered. ‘You take care, the two of you.’

At that he turned back into the crowd and made his own way across the sea of grief.

‘Who was that?’ I asked.

David sipped his drink and winced. ‘No idea.’

‘I think we can probably slip away soon.’

‘Patti, there are so many people here we haven’t seen in years,’ David said, though it didn’t feel altogether like an answer to what I’d said. ‘Christ, what a shitshow it is that after so many years this is what’s brought us all into the same room again.’

It was something David and I had talked about endlessly in the week that had passed between the death and the funeral: the harsh reality that we’d reached a point in our lives where it was a wake rather than a birthday party that brought us into the company of old friends. I was fairly certain both of us had lost sleep over it, in fact. There had been two nights at Sheila’s where I’d tried to have similar conversations with her, too, but somehow they’d wound up with us having sex instead. I was treating a shared climax like an escape valve. ‘Welcome to my world,’ David had said when I mentioned it over breakfast one morning. But I didn’t think it was necessarily a place I was looking to inhabit long-term.

‘Is life actually too short, David, or have we tricked ourselves into thinking it is?’

‘I don’t think I understand the question.’

‘Well, Martie. He was, what, three, four years older than we are?’

‘Mhm.’

‘Can a man complain at–’

‘Yes,’ he snapped.

‘I didn’t finish the question.’

‘You didn’t need to. He died young, and now you’re being morose.’

‘I’m at a funeral.’

‘It’s no excuse.’ He sipped his drink again; winced, again. ‘Have you seen the legs on that widow of his?’ He gestured with his drink and I hoped to God that no one had heard the question. ‘Martie was well within his rights to expect to at least live long enough to get divorced from that good woman. He was robbed, Patti, absolutely bloody robbed. It’s no age.’

There was too much bite in his protest, too many angry teeth. I couldn’t help but be suspicious of what David was actually talking about. ‘What’s really grinding your goat?’

‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘I just think that it’s a crime for a man to be robbed of a beautiful woman.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘You’re talking about Eudora.’

‘I could be talking about– Ow!’

I’d slapped his arm before he could finish the lie. ‘You’re bloody relentless, David. We’re at a funeral and all you’re thinking about is sex, still!’

‘You’re right, Miss I’ve-Used-My-Girlfriend-Twice-For-Sex-This-Week, I should be more respectful.’ He rolled his eyes as he spoke. ‘People find comfort in all sorts of distractions during times like these, Patti. All I’m trying to do is keep my mind busy and in truth, it’s helping me an awful lot. So if you could just be a supportive wife about the whole thing–’

‘Oh, don’t you play the supportive wife card.’

‘It’s one of the few bonuses of having a wife, and I have to use it while I still can.’