Gold Pinky Ring

My grandmother has a new beau. His name is Bob and he has wiry chest hair and a gold pinky ring. I like Bob. I like his wry Jewish humor and his suspenders and his outdated masculinity though these are just my first impressions. My mother has sent me to do reconnaissance and so I'm sitting on my grandmother's couch, for a little Q & A. Grandmother is immaculate as usual, with hair curled under and a Chanel jacket. Her coffee cup is precarious on the edge of the table, and smudged with the faintest hint of lipstick. She takes a sip of black coffee and looks to me.

“What are your intentions with my grandmother?” I ask. Bob coughs and laughs simultaneously. I can almost see his chest hair curling in discomfort. “Intentions? Well. I'm not sure.” He twists the gold pinky ring. I look into my own coffee cup and involuntarily imagine these two in bed. Oh God. Do old people have sex? How does it work? Does my grandmother gingerly peel off her clothes, letting her matronly brassiere fall to the floor? Does Bob light a Cuban cigar afterwards, and recount his afternoons spent with Allen Ginsburg in the hood?

Maybe it's more beautiful than my embarrassed daydream, maybe their romance is a strange rose, a color I couldn't understand. They have each scaled their own paper maiche mountains, and erected monuments—those particular golden structures built upon childbirth and filed taxes and accumulated life experience. They are old, and this has to mean something.

I realize that I've been dreaming coffee dreams and look up. I see into Bob's gray eyes and then past them. I see myself in a spaceship, propelled through endless seasons and stars. In some future age, I'll grow swollen with babies and braid my hair long and move to an unknown city and taste forbidden fruits and wake up one day with wrinkled skin. I'll be old like this. “You know, Bob, I love your pinky ring,” I say, eager to share myself with him. He takes it off and presses it into my palm, about to tell a story.