Polk couldn’t talk about Larry. It was overwhelming enough to be here in his home, with Larry’s widow. Over the decades, Polk had gotten used to being the leftover in their little group. Absorbing the gentle jibes about the bachelor life he surely led. The occasional setup. It seemed clear he was destined to be a solitary bird, hopping and pecking on the periphery of things.
Now, in his friends’ kitchen, he regarded his plate. The small discs of potato seemed waxy and overly separate. His hands were cold. He wedged them under his thighs.
“Are these real potatoes? They don’t seem real to me. Heh heh.”
Nola, cool, gave him a smile. “It’s us alone together that’s unreal, Polk. Without him.” Just as mildly: “You know, I don’t want you to feel like we can’t talk about Larry.”
“Oh! I am. I mean, I certainly am thinking of him.”
“And someone brought this potato thing for his memorial. Au gratin, I think it’s supposed to be. Sorry you had to leave early.”
“Nola Bright Eyes,” Polk said. “I’ve always thought of you as that. Even back in freshman year.”
“You asked me out once, and then never again,” Nola said.
“You canceled an hour before I was due to pick you up. My dad sure teased me about that.”
“I know, I know. I was timid then. I lost my nerve.”
Larry must’ve been good and shnockered that night at Talley’s, there with Polk, all those years ago. The thing Larry said before he excused himself and headed for the Gents. That he and Nola had lost another one, this time in Nola’s fourth month. If Nola knew anything about what had occurred between the two men, she’d never mentioned it. Their liaison died with Larry. But the memory of it hummed inside Polk.
“Come upstairs with me, Polk.”
“All right.”
When they were growing up, you used to hear jokes about wife swapping. His father claimed a couple in the next town had done this. Not temporarily. They’d gone through all the proper channels. Divorced and remarried. He seemed to recall one party had come with a goat or a tractor or something. And Polk had had a college friend with a great-grandmother who’d been won in a poker game. But that was in far-off Nevada.
The room was overheated, the bed neatly made. Just outside the curtainless window, black birds gathered and squawked in the dying light. The nightstand table on Larry’s side was nearly bare. Just a lamp and an amber-colored oval glass tray. His breath came shallow. Larry’s pillow, so close. He’d lain his head there every night for decades, beside Nola. Did they still sleep together in those last few years? He tried imagining Nola, arching and moaning. But what aroused him was the image of Larry, open, manly. Eager to please her.
Polk followed him into the men’s room at Talley’s. Saw Larry’s expression of relief in the mirror. He, Polk, walked up to the urinal and started to do his business and Larry’d pressed up behind him and—well it was more tender than it sounds—taken Polk’s penis into his hand and helped him finish. Pretty mild, compared to what was out there. What Polk dreamed of happening.
Polk started to say something about the birds, but Nola was stepping from her skirt—the kind with elastic at the waist; no button or zipper. Maybe this was impossible to believe, but it was definitely happening. Just as incredible, Polk unbuttoned his shirt and removed it, then dropped his pants. It seemed fussy to fold them, so he left them crumpled on the floor.
He gave Nola a kiss, chaste but lingering. One on the mouth and another on the forehead and one more between her brows. It was Larry he was kissing, and he had the idea Nola knew that and that this was something she was giving him and, in a way, giving Larry.
But what did he, Polk, know about their married life, or anyone’s?
“It’s all right now, Polk, it’s okay,” Nola murmured, gathering him into her tanned arms. “Let’s get used to each other before any of that.”
She had the flannel sheet nearly to her chin. Polk rested his head on her chest, heard her heart pulsing strong and even through the soft fabric. The birds had quieted, but he didn’t get up to see if they’d flown off.
In the men’s room at Talley’s, Polk had turned and placed a hand on Larry’s chest. Felt Larry’s small crucifix beneath his palm. It was an exquisite moment, Polk returned to over and over. It sustained him.
“I’m just so ready to rest,” Nola was saying, her voice breaking at the end. “It’s hard to do this alone.”
Polk had to steel himself to keep from crying. “I understand that, believe me,” he managed.
“Oh! Of course. I’m sorry.”
“No need.”
She asked if he’d like to sleep there and he said yes. He touched her cheek. She said she knew it was a strange situation, but that she trusted him and needed a friend there with her. He got up to open the window a crack. No birds. The bedroom faced the bathroom window of the neighbors’ place, the Hennums. Clay Hennum was regarding himself in the mirror. Polk backed off before Clay could see.
They slept. Their worn bodies a monument to the lives they and their parents and grandparents had built and led in the town, right up until this night. Touchstones of love and marriage and life and death pinning them against the sky. Their hands found each other’s in sleep.
The sun glowed in and Nola let him see her rise and go into the bathroom. Polk rose then, stood there naked before their full-length mirror. He took stock of himself: old man legs, his privates in their shadow. Knobby knees. Old man arms. Chest.
Where close to his heart lay the little gold cross on the chain that she had to have seen and not mentioned, the one thing he never took off.
Patricia Quintana Bidar is a Port of Los Angeles area native and working-class elder. Her work has appeared in Waxwing, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, The Pinch, Atticus Review, and Moon City Review, and has been widely anthologized including in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions 2023 and 2024, and Best Microfiction 2023. Patricia is the author of Wild Plums (ELJ Press) and Pardon Me For Moonwalking (Unsolicited Press). She lives with her family and unusual dog outside of Oakland, CA. Visit patriciaqbidar.com
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