“I’ll help you,” she says. “Come on.”
“You’re going the other way.”
“Nonsense. Let’s go.”
Brooklyn B. puts down her pillowcase. She gets behind him and gently pushes Coop up the stairs.
The pressure of her palm against his spine keeps him from tumbling backwards. She is no more powerful than he is, but together they have just enough strength. At the top, he drops the bundle of linens and chases his breath. He is never quite able to catch it. He supposes he is grateful for Brooklyn B.’s assistance. It’s only right for him to warn her about the rogue dactyl below, so she is not startled in the laundry room, as he was.
She speaks first. “Sit with me at dinner tonight, okay?”
Her smile is too pitying, her tone too syrupy, as though she’s doing him a big favor, as though he’s a pathetic loser. He has no interest in sitting with her at dinner. She doesn’t understand—none of them do—how little he wants company. Hasn’t he earned the right to quiet in his old age? Or will he have to keep up the façade of civility forever? He can picture it. On his deathbed, wasting his final gasps on small talk with a nurse who won’t shut up. Will he ever have peace?
He says nothing to Brooklyn B. about the dactyl. He says nothing to her at all. He turns around and staggers to his room, where the door has no wreath and no name tag and no welcome sign. The shunk of the lock sounds like paradise.
He fights with his fitted sheet. The elastic slides off the mattress again and again, each floppy corner a reminder that some things are easier with two people. His wife would have found it hysterical, watching him flail. She’d have laughed at his stubbornness, she’d have reminded him it wasn’t that serious, she’d have told him to get a grip already. She’d have kissed him and asked him, what happened to the man I married, who ran away with all his joy? He gives up and lies down, wincing, adjusting and readjusting his body, trying to find comfort that hasn’t come in years. Thank God for his ElderScreen. He scrolls and scrolls, his index finger permanently curled like a frozen shrimp. Photos of made-up families. Talking heads railing against the new generation. Artificially generated video clips of his daughter and his grandkids, his deceased wife. Pellets of hope. Junk food memories.