Page 31 of Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness

He couldn’t ask her. She’d probably blister his skin off with blue words, which she would immediately amend with half-baked clean substitutes, or kick him in his nuts, or tell him to mind his own fucking—uh, bleepin’ business.

Which would be a silly thing for Merrill to do, anyhow, considering that there wasn’t anything Merrill didn’t know about computers. With a few clicks of the keyboard, he could find out everything there was to know about Delilah Jones of Atlantic City, right down to her medical and dental records. Hell, he could probably even get her kindergarten report card. But he’d chosen not to do a search, so far. Somehow, it felt like the worst kind of privacy invasion, like rooting through her underwear drawer. Yeah, guys and girls on the dating scene did it all the time, a little Google search even before a first date, just in case the person was an ax murderer, or a catfish looking to scam someone. Once F.U. got matched on one of the Internet dating sites with a lingerie model with Barbie-like dimensions, who turned out, with a little computer sleuthing, to be a three-hundred-pound inmate. Which was about right for F.U.

Nope, Merrill was old school. He still wanted the mystery of finding out about a potential mate through personal interaction. Does that make me a geek? Probably. So sue me!

And, whoo-boy, did he need some personal interaction in his life! He couldn’t recall the last time he’d gotten laid. Well, yes, he could. That ballerina turned Navy WEALS newbie he’d met at the Wet and Wild last January. The things she could do with a plié! But then she’d dropped out of the program and moved back to D.C. Long-distance relationships were the pits, and one-night stands did not a relationship make.

Like I have any relationship now!

Or the prospect of one.

Well, there was the kiss.

Promising.

Shit! I’m going to bust my ass for promises now?

Aaarrgh!

Six months of celibacy is beginning to wear on me.

If sex was all he was interested in, he would have given up on Delilah by now. But what did he want? That was the question. An affair? A committed relationship? Marriage?

Holy crap! He didn’t even know her. Was she right- or left-handed? Where did she go to school? College? Did she sleep on her back, or her side, or her belly? Was she a morning person, or a night owl? What was her favorite movie, or TV show? Did she like music? What kind? Who was her baby’s father? Was he still in the picture? And why wasn’t her daughter with her now?

So many questions, and yet none of them mattered. There was just something about her that drew him. He couldn’t explain the attraction. It was overwhelming, like an unending g-force attack on his body, and on his emotions, as well. That was the scary part.

And, dammit to hell, he felt like such a fool. Chasing after her like one of Elvis’s old hound dogs.

When he got to the Patterson house, he tried to make as little noise as possible. The seniors were probably all asleep by now, even though they were an active group. Currently in residence, aside from himself on the third floor—Please, God, not for much longer. Little does Delilah know, but I’m going to be occupying one of those motel units—were Mildred Patterson and her boyfriend, Raul Arias, who was Bonita’s father, an academic from Spain who was writing a book on dance through the ages.

Then there was Harry Carder, who’d moved in after his house had sold quicker than expected following the death of his wife, a beloved Bell Cove dentist. Harry’s stay had been intended to be short-term, but was looking longer term by the day. Like Merrill’s.

There was also Elmer Judd, a former veterinarian who shared a room with his menagerie of dogs. Elmer’s cooking hobby kept them all in fine meals, different every night. The little garden he’d started this spring out back now produced a bonanza of heirloom tomatoes, vegetables, and every herb imaginable.

Mike and Ike Dorset, twin professors emeriti of psychiatry from Auburn, “escaped” recently from Sunset Shores retirement home where they’d been besieged by femme fatales whose freckles had long since turned to liver spots. Not that they didn’t have plenty of their own, despite having full heads of Phil Donohue white hair. The two brothers, who finished each other’s sentences, were always psychoanalyzing everyone, to the point where Elmer had a T-shirt made up that read, “Shrinks Stink.”

On the female side, there was Claudette Devereaux, a former deb from New Orleans with a mysterious past. And the most recent addition, Joanna Horton, an actress who’d played the family matriarch Gloria Carstairs for thirty years on the soap opera, “As the Stars Shine,” until its demise last year. Gloria was presumably waiting for her Millionaire’s Row bungalow on Nags Head to be renovated, but Merrill suspected that she was just lonely after being dumped by her husband of twenty years for a younger model.

Mildred and Raul hosted dance parties for older folks here at the house several days each week, and not just for those in residence. Tuesday Tango. Wednesday Waltz. Flamenco Friday, Saturday Salsa. Intermixed with those alliterative titles for day of the week parties were some others: the Bounce, the Jive, the Electric Boogaloo, the Swing, and the ever-popular regional favorite, the Carolina Shag. Last week he’d even witnessed, and would forever have the image imprinted on his eyeballs, Raul teaching the crowd how to twerk.

The thing was, they were good. All of them. Really good! Even Harry in his wheelchair, which he was sometimes able to replace with a walker.

And they had fun.

Good to know that, at an advanced age, men and women could still get it on.

Especially since he was thirty years younger and not getting anything on, dancing or otherwise.

There was a light in the kitchen, he saw. Maybe someone forgot to turn it off. Usually a night-light in the hall was all that was left on.

He walked down the hallway to find a pj’s-clad Harry sitting in his wheelchair at the kitchen table, playing solitaire. A bottle of wine and a half-full glass sat within reach.

“Hey, Harry? You’re up late.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Usually, a little wine does the trick.”

Not inclined to break his pattern of the evening, Merrill grabbed a can of beer from the fridge and sat down wearily across from the old man.