Mrs. Fletcher(92)

The post-lecture receptions never lasted long. Most of the seniors just grabbed a cookie or two on their way out the door; only a handful stuck around to chat with the speaker. By eight thirty the room was empty, and Russett was on his way back to New Hampshire.

Eve tidied up a bit—she decided to leave the folding chairs for the morning—and went to check on the plumbing situation.

“All set,” George told her, drying his hands on a paper towel. “You’re good to go.”

“What was the problem?”

“Adult diaper.” He tossed the crumpled towels in the trash can and wiped his hands on his pants. “Someone must have shoved it down, really wedged it in good. Maybe with a coat hanger or a stick or something. I don’t know. It’s way too big to flush.”

“They get confused sometimes,” Eve said. “Or maybe just embarrassed.”

“Poor bastards.” George shook his head. “That’s gonna be us one day.”

*

Eve locked up and walked across the parking lot to her minivan. The sight of it annoyed her—the bulging, shapeless body, the cavernous interior, all those seats that never got used.

I need a new car, she thought. A tiny one.

She sat in the driver’s seat for a minute or two and tried to compose herself, wondering why her nerves were so jangled. The lecture had been a success, the toilet was fixed, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock.

Everything’s fine, she told herself. Right on schedule.

It was just hard to switch gears, to make the superhero transition from her responsible, professional self to the beautiful older woman in the foreign movie, the one with the lacy red underwear beneath her sensible outfit.

What she really needed was a drink. Just a quick one to clear her head, to get herself into a more relaxed and open frame of mind. She thought about stopping at the Lamplighter for a martini, but a detour seemed like a bad idea.

Just go, she told herself. He’s been waiting all week.

Maybe his parents had some alcohol on hand. It was probably good quality, too, given the neighborhood they lived in and the car the father drove. She could pour herself a tall glass of vodka over ice, Absolut or Grey Goose. They could sit at the kitchen table and talk for a while before heading upstairs.

Nice, she thought. Raid their liquor cabinet before you sleep with their son . . .

It was a bad idea to think about the parents. Mr. and Mrs. Spitzer, enjoying themselves in St. Barts, not a clue about what was happening in their lovely home.

This had nothing to do with them.

It was between her and Julian, and it was their last chance.

She turned the key. The engine hesitated for a moment—it was long overdue for a tune-up—and then sputtered erratically to life. She shifted into reverse and started moving.

*

She circled his house twice—the first time she got spooked by a passing dog walker, the second by nothing at all—before finally working up the nerve to pull into the driveway. She sat there for a while with her foot on the brake, staring straight ahead, gathering her courage.

An overhead light was on inside the garage, which made her a little uneasy. She was pretty sure it had been dark in there on Sunday night when she’d dropped off the cooler. But then it struck her that Julian was being polite, welcoming her into his home, rolling out the red carpet.

The garage in Eve’s house was a disaster area, a jumble of broken and rusted and outgrown objects, the relics of Brendan’s childhood and her life with Ted. The Spitzers’ garage was enviably clean and well organized by comparison—bare cement floor, assorted tools hanging from a peg board, wall-mounted bicycles, shop vac and lawnmower, water heater with shining copper pipes.

Julian’s skateboard, wheels-up on a workbench.

The famous string with the key on it.

Just reach up and give it a tug.

The interior was spacious, the entrance wide. You could just glide right in, no worries about clipping your side mirrors or pulling up far enough for the door to close behind you.

She would have done it, too, except that something smelled a little off inside the van, and she’d begun to wonder about the source of the odor. She brought the back of her hand to her nose and gave it a quick sniff, but all that registered was the sweet chemical tang of liquid soap—not a great smell, but nothing to worry about.

Continuing her investigation, she tucked her chin and tugged at her shirt collar, sampling the air trapped between her skin and her blouse. A familiar, dispiriting fragrance wafted up, a distinctive compound of sweat and worry mixed with sadness and decay.

Ugh, she thought. I smell like the Senior Center.

Of course she did. That was where she’d spent the past twelve hours. It was always on her skin at the end of the workday, trapped in the fabric of her clothes. But today there was something else on top of it, the subtle but unmistakable scent of a plumbing emergency, a rotten cherry on the sundae.

*

She told herself she was just stopping at home for a quick shower, that she’d return to Julian clean and refreshed in fifteen or twenty minutes, smelling the way a seductive older woman was meant to smell. But this conviction faded as she drove across town. By the time she walked through her own front door and saw Brendan playing a video game on the couch, she knew she was defeated. All her courage was gone, replaced by a sudden wave of anger.

“Don’t you have any homework?” she asked.