The everyday lives of two reclusive socialites.

We were sitting at the bar. I was on my second prosecco potion, her, a lovely albarino. 

"You don't ask me questions."
A look aghast.
"But, I'm here, and you can tell me anything! I don't want to pry."
"But, I want to bury everything, and I like the specificity of you asking me particular questions. It helps pull me out."
"Well fine. I'll ask you questions."
"I don't know what I'm going to do without you."
"Stop. I can't even look at you right now"
"I can't look at you. I'm going to look over here..."
"Stop."
"I just can't."

Owner of Vinostrology enters.

"What are you two up to tonight?"
"We're going to have another one of these, and then I'm thinking of taking her for tapas at Copper. She wants light fare --"
"--then, we'll end up in our bed, watching real housewives with cake and ice cream."
"Yep."

She laughs.

"Yeah, we're like Grey Gardens - you know what I'm talking about?"
"No?"
"The mother-daughter duo, both named Edith?"

We laugh.

See: Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale or "Big Edie" and her daughter Edith Bouvier Beale, "Little Edie," lived together at Grey Gardens for decades with limited funds, increasing squalor, entirely isolated. The house was designed in 1897 by Joseph Greenleaf Thorpe and purchased in 1923 by Big Edie and her husband Phelan Beale. After Phelan left his wife, Big Edie and Little Edie lived there for more than 50 years. The house was called Grey Gardens because of the color of the dunes, the cement garden walls, and the sea mist. Throughout the fall of 1971 and into 1972, their living conditions--their house was infested by fleas, inhabited by numerous cats and raccoons, deprived of running water, and filled with garbage and decay--were exposed as the result of an article in the National Enquirer and a cover story in New York Magazine after a series of inspections (which the Beales called "raids") by the Suffolk County Health Department. With the Beale women facing eviction and the razing of their home, in the summer of 1972 Jacqueline Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill provided the necessary funds to stabilize and repair the dilapidated house so that it would meet village codes. (excerpt from Wiki)

Mads J. has been my live-in friend for the last couple months. Her PT rotation is complete. She's got a pocket full of ideas about Bellingham, canadians, aging, death, the between. She fell in love with deep brown eyes, mustaches, calls people's husbands "foxes," not out of tempestuous or inappropriate advances, but to say something out loud you can feel might have gone missing; a call again, to a lost anecdote, a lost compliment. She didn't like to be tickled, but she loved my bed. I had a lot of anxiety upon her arrival - I was afraid I'd see the flatirons on her skin, memories from her mouth, calling to attention what I did not have through what she did. And, somehow, these things were alive, they weren't of detriment, but of total nowness, totally in the moment & I was totally capable to cope.

This morning I woke with the light to find her sleeping beside me, having crawled in at some point. I couldn't fall back asleep; consumed by the idea that her body wouldn't be a surprise to wake up to in the morning, probably ever again.

To celebrate her last day at work we went out for dinner, for yellowtail and curry-fried fish & chips accompanied by ciders and IPA's. A lump of Mallards coconut ice. A bloody mary and whiskeyginger's at Bayou.

When we did get out of bed this morning, she made me a salmon and cream cheese rice cake. She stood with her mug of coffee on the front porch and I felt the goodbye in her quietly.

She's packing her car & I'm getting through Friday's patients; we'll meet in the middle for coffee before heading to Seattle for a last she-day of shopping, meeting Z. Mavis for dinner, picking up Conrad, Farley, Davis at the airport for the happiest of reunions.

I feel like little Edie saved me.