5.

The inside of the pizza shop hums with florescent light, a gentle yellow radiance emanating down over the orange plasticene booths. In a back booth, far away from the register and pizza oven (which is set in plain sight behind the counter, spitting warmth and greasy odors into the small dining room), a group of young kids are laughing furtively amongst themselves. They are red faced and have long, greasy hair. They look tired from a long day of treachery in town. Or perhaps just skateboarding.

Behind the counter, a kid who can be no older than fifteen is at the register. He stands awkwardly with his arms crossed over his chest. His hair is unkempt and too long, and his face is dotted in fading acne.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

“I believe we are number twenty four,” Erin says. “A medium veggie pizza.”

“Twenty four?” he calls in the direction of the oven, though presently no one is there.

A spindly, skinny man with spiked black hair steps out from a small opening into a backroom of the restaurant. His skin is a deep tan color, his face wrinkled with an exhausted warmth. He smiles jokingly.

“Oh, hello there tarantinas! What can I do for you?”

Erin smiles back, feigning flirtation. “Aw, Jorge, I’m so glad you are here. How are you?”

“I’m very good. How are you?”

“I’m ok. Hungry.”

“Well let me see what I can do for that,” he says. “You have the usual, the tarantina special?”

“Of course,” Erin says.

Jorge smiles, his small black eyes watery from some activity in the backroom. He grabs their pizza from atop the hulking, metallic oven and passes it over the counter to them.

“Fungulo,” Jorge says to the kid at the counter. “Only ten dollars for the nice tarantinas here, ok?” The kid nods. Jorge meets eyes with Erin, and half smiles, throwing up three fingers in a sort of wave.

“Thank you, Jorge. It was nice to see you.”

“Yes, until next time,” he says. “You two be good tonight-ay.” Then, he disappears into the back room again, where Claire can hear another voice. Jorge starts conversing with it, his high pitched tone muffled through the wall and the buzz of the lights. Erin pays, and as they are leaving, someone in back lets out a loud, shrieking yell that sounds like “uh huh,” with considerably emphasis on the last syllable. Erin laughs at the door.

Outside, there is another group of adolescents milling around on the sidewalk. Some of the boys hold limp slices of pizza, paying them half attention while trying to laugh and flirt with the young girls that idle near the curb, their arms crossed in defiance of the cold. A few of the faces are vaguely familiar to Claire, and she is sure she’s seen many of them in similar poses before.

She only recognizes with any certainty one skinny brunette girl who is birth marked quite distinctly by a large freckle on the nexus of her chin, just below the left corner of her mouth.

“George is wonderful,” Erin says as they step through the oblivious kids.

“He’s bizarre. And kind of a pervert.”

“Not really. He’s very nice.”

They turn down the alley way, out of sight from the teenagers, and Claire throws Erin a suspicious sideways glance. She only holds it for a moment before losing herself into laughter.

~

Back inside, they eat on the couch while watching a recorded episode of “Jeopardy” that neither one has yet seen. Claire has two pieces of pizza and feels she has absolutely eaten enough to last her for a few days. Erin devours four pieces, and has enough room left to finish Claire’s crusts, too. They both have a glass of Merlot that neither one much likes.

After “Jeopardy,” Erin pours them both another glass. While Claire sits reclined on the couch, feeling her body begin its slow descent into sleepiness, Erin moves about the room lightly, nibbling at the two remaining pieces of pizza, organizing her books and cd’s, readjusting a vase of drying pink roses from the kitchen table to the top of a book case.

“I really envy your body,” Claire says while Erin bends over to touch the floor with the palms of her hands. She looks between her legs and gives her a devilish, deadly smile. Her legs are visibly taught beneath her spandex. Ten years after buying the studio, she still has the sturdy muscularity of a dancer, the spry felinity in her motions. She is forcefully full of grace, Claire once told her, kind of like a horse. It is a simile Erin will not let her escape from.

“You looked this good at forty-six, dear.”

“I absolutely did not.”

“Well I remember you looking this good at forty-six.”

Claire laughs and Erin stands back up with a little bounce. Once more, she begins to cover the room, shuffling magazines and fiddling with the flowers again.

“Oh,” Claire says as she watches Erin glide across the room. “David wanted me to invite you over for Thanksgiving. And, he added, feel free to bring any significant other.” She can’t help herself giggling through the last few words.

Erin looks over her shoulder.

“Really?” Erin asks, moving to the kitchen and pouring more wine. At the base of her neck, spidery veins criss-cross the pale skin, one of the few concessions her body has made to being nearly fifty. The light, which is dimmed, accentuates a dimpled scar in the corner of her right eye, the casualty of a hockey accident some years before she met Claire.

“Really,” Claire says.

Erin smiles as she walks back. She lifts Claire’s legs with a tap of her hand, and slides under them. Claire feels Erin’s knobby legs beneath her calves, the hotness from Erin warming her bare, cold skin.

“And how is David?” Erin asks.

Claire takes a sip of her wine. “I have no idea,” she says, laughing, her face feeling flush with alcohol. She wants to lay back and nap. “I keep thinking he’ll get easier, you know? People are supposed to be easier to understand as they get older, right? Less bizarre and complex?”

“I don’t know,” Erin says. “Though I’m not a geezer like you and David.”

Claire tries not to smile, and smacks Erin’s thigh.

“I’m kidding,” Erin says.

“I’m serious. He’s going golfing in Scotland next summer. And he’s talking of hiking the Appalachian trail after that! I have no idea what to even make of him half the time. What do I say to that? He had a heart attack four years ago!”

“David never has been one for pragmatism, has he?”

Claire laughs giddily. She is strangely elated.

“I think that’s it. Most people become pragmatic once they have families. David just stayed an idealist.” Claire pauses and sips more of her wine. She feels a kind of drunken clarity, which she cannot imagine putting into words. Her body is blurry, but she sees what is around her with an uncanny clearness of purpose. “I kind of admire him for it. I mean, it frustrates the hell out of me. And yes, he’s convinced our children that it’s ok to be poor and irresponsible their whole lives if they’re artists. But he’s so passionate at times that I can’t help but hand it to him.”

Erin smiles and looks down at Claire’s feet, wrapping her fingers around Claire’s ankle, which is knotted with cists and spurs and usually aches like hell. “He’s a good man,” she says.

“He is.”

Claire smiles down her legs at Erin, and they sit in a warm silence. Claire reclines and closes her eyes. The room is quiet but for their rustling on the couch, and the almost inaudible, high pitch hum that permeates Claire’s hearing when everything else falls silent. She wonders if other people hear this, if it is some earthly emission that keeps an unseen equilibrium. She feels the unexpected nervous tingle of Erin’s fingers tracing her feet again, and her body reflexively jumps. She looks across the couch at Erin, whose eyes are still closed. How strange all this is, how insular. Ten years from now, no one will know that they drank wine and rubbed feet in this room. It will still smell of pizza, most likely. She lets out a heaving breath. Matters of this sort are beyond her comprehension, but she wishes she could leave a token of this night that would endure in its simplicity. Such moments of ease are rarer than they should be.

“What about you, dear?” Erin asks without opening her eyes. “Are you easier to understand?”

“I don’t know. Am I?”

Erin smiles wryly, her lips burnt red with Pinot Noir.

“What?”

She opens her eyes. “I’ve never found you easy to understand, but I feel that way about most people. I think you’ve softened, though.”

Claire laughs and drinks more of her wine. Her glass is nearly empty. Erin opens her eyes and pinches Claire’s thigh, which has, sadly, softened.

“You know I don’t mean it like that.”

“Well I have softened a bit,” Claire says.

“Perhaps a bit. But I like soft women.”

They laugh together, and again Claire’s weight falls limp and she practically collapses into the couch, sighing loudly.

“You’re more forgiving of impracticality, for sure,” Erin says. “Admiring David is a new one. I think you’ve expanded the things you find valuable, too. Which is a good expansion to undergo.”

“Well thank you.”

“Of course.” Erin leans forward, slipping her body sideways against Claire like a fault in the earth. The cushion sags beneath their combined weight, and Claire is lurched deeper into the couch. Erin kisses her, tasting vinegary. With some difficulty, she extracts herself from the couch without spilling her wine. Her knee digs into Claire’s stomach, which spasms in pain.

Once more, Erin moves across the room. This time, she is sliding indiscriminately, directionless, in some impromptu dance. Claire manages to sit herself up. Her head pulses with the slightest hint of a coming hangover. She watches her sometimes lover sort of dance about the room, more amused than before at their evening. It has such little weight to anyone but her.

“What is the point of this for you?” Claire asks. “I’ve never stopped to think about it. What can you possibly get from this?”

Erin smiles and sets her glass down on a bookshelf filled with books by Alice Munro, and about yoga.

“I mean, it’s not like you can have a family with me. You’ve never asked me to leave David, or have children with you. But this is so much like, I don’t know. It’s like being married,” she says, laughing.

“Well would you leave David?”

Claire opens her mouth, but closes it around her last gulp of wine. She narrows her face. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ve thought about it a lot. Some days I think I might.”

Again, Erin smiles, but she is looking down at the books. Claire can make out the binding for The Moons of Jupiter. “I suppose I’ve never thought there was any reason to ask. What would we do? Buy a cabin up in Vermont and be those lesbians who own an art store or something?”

They both laugh.

“That’s been done, believe me old lady, and most of them end up stir crazy and fucking miserable,” Erin says.

“No. I know.”

Erin walks back across the room, sans wine glass. She sits down, then bends forward and kisses Claire’s shin bone. “You’re a good friend, and you happen to be very good in bed, too. So I keep you around. And I suppose it is kind of like being married, but without all the actual hassle of a shared mortgage, or kids that we have to worry about fucking up.”

“Thank you,” Claire says. Erin smiles at her and bends across her body for a kiss. Like the kiss to Claire’s shin, it is quick and polite, and almost so gentle that it leaves Claire wondering whether it happened at all. She thinks she will remember it for a long time. It’s funny to her that something so slight can linger in such a way.

With that, Erin is back on her feet. She still has the antsy mobility of a dancer. Her body has always rued stillness.

“We could move into Philly, you know.” Erin says, seemingly as an afterthought, like it has been floating about her tongue for a bit and she finally felt compelled to get it out.

“Me and you?”

“Sure. Why not?” She shrugs, lightly. “You’d have to leave David, I suppose.”

Claire laughs. “It might be tough to do otherwise.”

Erin smiles. “We could move into Philly,” she says introspectively. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I know.”

“Then why don’t we?”

Now, Claire shrugs. “You’re serious, right?”

“It wouldn’t be all that difficult. We just find a place, pack up and go.”

Claire watches her for sarcasm, but she can’t find any. She’s still not sure how serious Erin is. This could be something spontaneous and ill thought out that, next time they meet up, will drift away like so many inspired plans pulled rashly out of the subconscious. She might mean it, though.

“I’ll give it a thought,” Claire says, her voice rising in pitch with the last syllable. Erin laughs, and Claire is quite sure it is at her. “Really. I will.”

Erin smiles blithely, still meandering about the room. She hums herself an anonymous, personal melody, which she twirls on her toes to, and then she lands, gracelessly with a thud. “I’m going to have to kick you out. I need to go to bed. Unless, of course, you would like to sleep over again?”

“Not this time.”

“Oh we could have so much fun. We’ve got plenty more wine.”

“Some other night.”

For the first time, Erin looks at her with a genuine sense of calmness, her body still and balanced like a wine bottle, her hands still balanced at her sides.

“Do you know that I love you, old lady?” she says.

“Sure,” Claire says.

They watch the other in a hollow silence until Erin tilts her head back and arches her back into the slender shape of a heron. This movement lifts Claire from the couch. She finds her shoes, and gathers her jacket and purse. Feeling drunker now that she is on her feet, her peripheral vision has abandoned her, and she moves stiffly about the room.

“Have you seen my keys?” she asks Erin, who is now sipping wine and on her knees in front of the book case.

“No.”

Claire screws her face up. “This is the second time today I’ve done this.”

Erin stands and glances about the room. She smiles in a shimmering sort of way at Claire. “You really are getting old, aren’t you?”

Claire scowls back.

“They’re on the couch, dear. Right where you were sitting.”

Claire retrieves her keys. She crosses the room to Erin, who hooks her left leg around Claire and pulls her in with almost alarming force. Claire laughs, and they kiss, first with the politeness of old lovers, but then Claire kisses her again, bracing Erin’s neck with her hands and allowing herself to hang onto her friend well past the point of being comfortable. Their lips dry out with alcohol, and finally Erin pushes Claire away.

“Ok,” she says. “Get out.”

Claire kisses her on the forehead, laughs, and walks back across the room. She turns to say one more good bye, but Erin is once more on her knees, fingering the spine of a book Claire cannot make out. She unlocks the door and lets herself out.

A thin layer of snow coats the porch and stairwell. It crunches beneath her feet, and at the bottom of the stairs, she looks back up to where she has ruined the new snow. Her path is clearly marked, and the evidence of her passing causes her lower body to seize in an unexpected nostalgic manner. At some point, she will do everything in her life for the last time. What scares her is that she will almost certainly have no idea when those last times will be until those moments have passed, too.

She walks down an alley between buildings and comes out in front of the pizza shop. On the curb, there is a girl sitting down, leaning into a boy, her head pressed into the indent of his neck. It is the girl Claire recognized earlier, the one with the freckle on her chin. She is a lithe little beauty with slender hips and a compact, gentle face that belies an uncomfortable desperation. This girl broods with quiet maturity. She throws it about her with dark eye shadow, weighed down shoulders, and lips that seem to frown ironically. But tonight, she is relaxed, her long, narrow mouth smiling laconically. She is light, childish even, in the softness of winter. The pronounced freckle just below the left corner of her lips moves Claire in some deep way. She imagines that some day, someone will fall deeply and perilously in love with this freckle.

Standing in front of the pizza shop window, Claire watches this young couple. A few, lingering flurries are falling still, and the girl’s straight, dark hair is dappled in snow. She laughs at something, and the boy kisses her on the forehead. Their bodies are folded into one other. They are propping each other up in the cold.