The Cohabitants 5

At Silver Falls State Park they hit the trail with Moon on a leash. It was their first time going for a walk together, just the three of them in an act of physical collaboration that didn’t require touching. Good practice. She had to slow her speed to align with the man who didn’t seem very athletic for someone who had been a high school athlete. When she asked if he was limping, he revealed he’d had a hip replacement several years back after an accident. Now he was a bionic man. Titanium held his bones together. The main thing she knew about joint replacement was that she quit farming to avoid it. Thinking about healthcare and moving in her body beside his, she saw his extra girth as a liability. She had to choose her investments wisely. Technically she was a widow and that was a role she didn’t relish stepping into again. She could always do it if she had to, but she was hoping for happier times. Even in the pandemic. Especially in the pandemic. 

The atmosphere in the park on a summer Saturday was festive. Families were celebrating their release from isolation in the fresh socially distanced forest air. Kids swarmed. Couples lounged on picnic blankets in the shade. After an hour walking dirt paths and swapping stories, they sat on a bench under the trees to people watch. Moon put himself down in the shade and their conversation continued. 

Music was the subject that linked them. They had the same elementary school music teacher who had organized an extracurricular choir of her most talented students, including the two of them. The group was named Illinois Youth Chorale and performed a repertoire of classical choral music and Broadway shows. Fifty years later, they remembered their favorite melodies, lyrics and lines from the stage plays. They each had the choir’s holiday album on their bookshelf with the cover photo of boys wearing red-and-white striped Oxford shirts with white pants, and girls wearing white turtlenecks under red jumpers with white stockings and kitten heels.

He had been one of the troublemakers in the boys’ section. She remembered wishing he would stop joking and behave himself. He admitted wishing he could get his hands on her. She laughed and conceded thinking he was cute, too. It was easy to fluff off the turmoil of puberty now that they both had grey hair.

When they stood from the park bench, she let the man take the leash and walk Moon, curious about his animal handling skill. Once again man and dog were in synch. Minutes later a cool breeze came up; she got chilly and realized she’d left her jacket on the bench. “Here.” He handed it to her. He’d picked it up when he saw her forget it and carried it for her until she needed it. She hadn’t noticed. His attentiveness impressed her.

By the time they got back to her car in the parking lot to get water for Moon, they had caught up from the events of their youth to the present. He had lived in Oregon for thirty-five years, worked in the spa business, no kids, married for fifteen years and single for just as long.

“You’re a handsome man,” she said with skepticism in her voice. “You must have women all over you like flies.” 

His face lit up and he was clearly amused.

“Really,” she pressed him. “It’s a small town. You’re handsome and you’re single. They know where you work. Women must be throwing themselves at you. I bet they’re after you all the time.”

He side-eyed the trees. “I choose,” he said with a sharp elbow in his voice. “I choose the woman I’m with. I choose you.”

Interesting. Maybe sexist. Definitely flattering. 

“But you’ve been single all this time. More than a decade. Why?”

“Why are you single?” There was an undercurrent of snark in his voice.

“I’m in my man-hater phase,” she admitted.

“Well, there you go.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“What do you mean? You’re in your woman-hater phase?”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“Seriously, you hate women?”

“You hate men.”

“Men are assholes.”

“So, we agree.”

“You think women are assholes?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that.”

“But that’s what you think?”

“Yes.”

“You’re single because you hate women?”

“It’s just easier.”

She knew exactly what he meant. Being single was easier. Blame was easier. She had learned from her own marriage that commitment was a process of negotiation and compromise. If you couldn’t do that, you weren’t committed. Or you could just lie about it, which a lot of people did. Truth was the elephant on the trail with them. He took the risk of being truthful when he admitted it was easier to avoid women than be tangled in their net.

The morning’s conversation had proceeded like a job interview. As they poked around the perimeter of their emotions, they slowly showed themselves. Her edges were cutting. She had yet to find his edges. It had been a few hours of conversation without a hint of criticism or condescension from him. She could feel herself calmed by that evenness. They were role playing a friendship that didn’t exist yet, and in her mind he passed the audition, the qualifying event for further investment. A fact he was obviously aware of by the way he leaned against her car and how close he stood beside her. The air between them sizzled. 

But the pandemic presented obstacles. She wanted to know if he posed a threat to her health. Mainly, she had kissing on her mind. Kissing in the time of the pandemic was dangerous. She wanted a review of the social history of his lungs. So, she peppered him with questions about his job and his friends. Who’s in your bubble? Where have you been breathing? Who have you been sharing air with? Do you wear your mask? Do they? Do you know anyone who’s been sick? How do you feel? 

They had talked on the phone weeks ago about the HIV-AIDS crisis and the similarities between that public health emergency and the COVID pandemic. In the 1980s, HIV-AIDS had changed the dating conversation. Promiscuous people and their partners died. Sexually transmitted disease bombed the zeitgeist. The sexual history of a partner was added to one’s own sexual history. Sleeping around wasn’t as much fun as it had been in the 1970s. They both knew people who had died of AIDS. So, it was understood between them that a pre-contact conversation was about ethics. 

He seemed to enjoy the unspoken ultimatum in this very thorough invasion of his privacy. If you want to kiss me, I need to know these things. Because once I kiss you, I’m in your bubble and you are in mine. There was no whispering, no sudden gush of feelings, no skin, no steamy logistics, not what they had experienced as teenagers. This wasn’t going to be a flash in the pan hook-up. They both knew at this stage in their lives there was no time for those kind of mistakes. And thus their pairing had the tedious pace of a Jane Austen novel, more like an arranged marriage than a lusty affair. The steady pursuit of their intentions was a signal of seriousness. They were face to face, eye to eye, talking biology, establishing ground rules that don’t usually precede kissing, that usually aren’t necessary just for a kiss, that more often occur the morning after, or the week after, or the month after, if ever. But they both knew for them a kiss could be a life changing event. So they kept their distance.