LIBIDO IMMORTELLE

He brings her presents. Diamond earrings, mink capes, one time a stuffed pheasant. She's grateful in her aged way. But what their relationship exactly is she cannot say, this old girl from the burlesque circuits of yesterday.

Once a month on a Saturday evening, they dine between a candle's flame on her Queen Anne dining table. "I love you," he'll say, raising his glass in a toast from a wine of rare vintage label. She smiles amusedly, can't say "It's only a fable," so he says it again, "I love you." She nods automatically, they clink glasses, drink up, as the Mozartian cadences strengthening and gentling from the stereo in the den instill a slightly ruminative mood again.

One evening, at such a juncture, she grew pensively philosophical, blurting out, "Yes, perhaps at the end, love is all there is. All there is for everybody." She took another sip of wine, set the glass down, turning it this way and that, till in sudden self-reproach , said aloud to herself, "What the hell, Terri, get rid of this dark study." He chuckled, took her hand, placed one of his over it, searched her eyes, spoke softly, "We nonagenarians are allowed to complain once in a while about life's horrors. After all, none of us asked to be here." She thought about that for a long minute, then dug into the chicken marsala with succoring gusto.

Having finished dessert and a second cup of coffee, she was in a mellow mood. She squirmed up coquettishly in her chair and cooed, "Take me to our pleasure lair, sir. The room of many wished for 'next times,' as you call it." "It is! It is!" he laughed joyously , grabbing her hand for them to begin sauntering towards her bedroom. A moment that always makes her feel her lost beauty returning in resurrected appeal.

They halt along the bedroom hallway for him to comment on the photos there. Sometimes he'll compulsively straighten a frame that is a little off center, just like he'll adjust an errant drape of his tie or shoot his cuffs if they're improperly hiding--a habit of fastidiousness,always abiding.  

"How old are you in this one?" he asks, beginning a kind of verbal foreplay, memorized dialogue from their own made-up play.
"Mmm. Let's see. That was in 1950 when I was receiving the Best Stripper of the Year Award at Palisades Park."
"Yes, oh yes."
"26"
"26," he says slowly and distinctly, lost for awhile in his memories.
(He attended the shows every year, whenever the studios gave him time off. She was his favorite stripper. She didn't know he existed. He was shy, never asked for her autograph, always hustled for a front row seat, dreamed of whisking her away to Paris, to Rome, to the Isle of Capri.)
" And this one. So sexy in your ostrich outfit"
" I was barely out of my teens."
"How 'barely'?"
"Oh Leonard, I was just 20."
"Ouch!" he cries, envisioning her then, the pristine terrain of her body. He shoots a hand under her dress, gooses her, then immediately removes it like a shame-faced suitor in an old Blue Movie.
"Naughty boy! Naughty boy!" she scolds, and flounces off in a huff towards her bedroom.
A sumptuous room, almost in total darkness save for the moonlight streaming through the half-open window and casting soft purple and yellow hues from the walls and carpet. She ducks under the high lacy canopy of her bed to stretch out on her back. She hikes her dress up to her thighs, confident the darkness helps hide her varicose veins, her saggy, wrinkled flesh, her age blotches--all the damaged goods she can pretend don't exist because she can't see them.

He  enters, removes his shoes and socks, feels his feet immediately sink into the plush yellow shag carpet, whose soft fibers  soothe the chronic nerve pain he's had since his 80's. He lingers thusly awhile (aware she knows how age must take it slow) as his eyes become accustomed to the room's lambent rays touching the tops of her old steamer trunks standing in corners and how shadows cross-hatch across her dressing table laden with tossed clothes and lotions --woman's classic shrine whose mirror is the first to tattle on her aging signs. And sometimes he'll feel a cooling California breeze slipping through the window from across the rose garden; he watches how it shimmies the silken curtains into what he can only call a tiny burlesque motion. Every day he's grateful for having found her--from an old transvestite friend, a silent movie actor who always wore too much Max Factor.

Terri lies somewhat rigid on her back, eyes closed, feeling Leonard's hand sliding stealthily along her leg till it reaches her pink bloomers where he slips a few fingers under the crotch closure to enjoy the titillation again of her wispy salt and pepper hairs. Then in one swift motion he pulls the bloomers all the way off, through her red velvet slippers of renowned stage wear and tear and looking like survivors of 4 or 5 downpours. Yet their sequins still glitter, launching memories to soar. He kneels between those dangling icons he insists she wear, and begins a light tongue staccato on her clit. This is soon interrupted  by the need to remove his tie, something he always forgets to do. After which he lowers his head again to her mons with hungry groans, flicking his tongue diligently and patiently,surfacing only to wipe his mouth or grab a good breath. She is humming in a kind of monotone which occasionally rises to squeals of pleasure each time he accelerates his vibrating pressure.

Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty, thirty, he never counted, but the big moment is what he waits for: one sharp yell, raw as a farm woman's and he feels blessed again by a woman's physical praise for a man of his amazing age.

It takes him awhile to rise, a slight dizziness pinning his movements upwards. Once he's on his feet, he feels her unbuckling his pants and sitting him down on the bed against a mountain of pillows. She  carefully pulls his pants and boxers all the way off. She drapes those over the back of a chair, then returns to the bed, leaning into him as her hands caress and fondle and explore his genitals. With her other hand she is opening the top of her dress and ladling out one of her breasts. He pinches the papery nipple and turns it like a gear. Her seductive murmur goads his eagerness. He touches himself, jacks a little.She takes over,pulls and tugs, pulls and tugs, knowing it will never rise beyond its 2 inch flaccid size, but she has learned how to bring him off in a soft come every time. She leans a little ways back and opens her legs wide for him to aim a good stare at the old gray mare that once was her shining pride--and voila! she feels him release into her palm his tide. No climatic summit, simply a brief high soprano hitting the syllables of her name, then quiet. She ponders:all his power gone to bring life to his penis, that once rose to awed acclaim, that once earned stiff fame. She dries with her dress the small puddle that surely long ago was more like a flooding stream, then with another portion of her dress wipes his penis and balls clean--an altruistic act like buttering someone's biscuit--this intimate gesture has become his endearing treasure.

He is tired. She also. They exchange the briefest of pecks--lips to cheek, cheek to lips, and collapse next to each other on the bed in La Petite Mort: the deep sleep that sometimes overtakes us after sex. The room is quiet, hushed, save for the serene tick tocking of the clock down the hall, and now and then a tepid gust off the rose garden sneaking through the open window.

Most times he is woken with a start by her garbled snore, leaps up to the edge of the bed, she following, both disoriented for the moment. Then, like an actress suddenly remembering her lines, yawns, smiles, chuckles, "You wore me out, baby." "Oh, they all say that" he says, right on cue. For they are enacting a couple of lines from their special play again. She gives another yawn for good measure, then rises. She improvises a brief burlesque move--arm and body flung out to one side, then a forward turn and a slap to her hip as she steps right left, right left, rolling her wrists and hips towards her dressing table. Leonard pretends not to notice, but can't help smiling every time he sees her feeling her oats again. He has begun tidying himself up, announcing, while he does so, next month's gifts--be it black   truffles from the Perigord region in France or a wheel of raclette from the Valais region of Switzerland, or some such delicacies imported from prestigious mail-order firms across Europe.

Immaculately groomed with every notch and button secure, he leaves with a gallant gesture rarely the custom anymore anywhere. He lifts her hand up in a bow to his lips, plants a kiss, lets it linger just so for effect, after which he releases it and lets himself out the door. An exit he has made many times before in his silent movies--the debonair ladies' man, the gentleman caller of romantic lore.

Long after he has gone, she hears the wind chimes jingling so sweetly above the door, as if celebrating this very special amour.