(Ed note-Gotta live dangerously. Here we go with another fresh one during this month of reruns. Enjoy-Leila)

Looking Back

Ellison stood in her lavish garden, staring across the expanse of hydrangea, bougainvillea and sundry other plants, at her husband of 20 years. He was standing over the BBQ grill, his usual place during the summer months. He wasn’t pretty, she thought. Nor was he tall nor particular fit, but he fit her well enough. She smiled.

Feeling himself under scrutiny, Dewey glanced back at his wife. Dewey thought, not for the first time, how lucky he had been to lock onto such a foxy lady as Ellison. Even now, more than two decades after they met, she was a sight for sore eyes. What was that smile about, he wondered. But then, Ellison often seemed to be lost within herself, tickled by what she saw. He turned back to the pork steaks.

The next thing Dewey knew, Ellison was at his side, doing provocative things to his backside.

“Hey, sailor,” she whispered.

Dewey grinned. “Can I interest you in some…grilled meat?” he said, then thought, wow, what an original line. “You wanna pork steak, Babe?”

“Um,” she murmured. “I’d prefer a wiener.”

“I’ll need to put some on,” said Dewey.

“I’ll take care of it,” she told him, and led him into the house.

Later, after they’d done unspeakable things to the other, they lay atop the mattress, talking.

“Are you happy with me, Ellison?” asked Dewey. “With us, I mean? Is there anything we’re missing?”

“Well, I’d prefer $10 million in our IRAs, but no, I’m happy enough. You?”

Dewey could have played it cool, but he decided to come clean. “Baby, I’m over the moon happy with you. In fact, happy doesn’t even touch the way I feel.”

“Aw,” said Ellison, leaning in for a kiss.

“Really,” he said. “You gave me two beautiful kids,” meaning Vin and Sugar, who were in their first year of college, half way across the country.”

“Well,” she said, “I do have a case of empty nest syndrome, you know? Seems the kids were always under foot, but now that they’re gone, I miss the hell out of them.”

They lay in silence for some time before Dewey said, “Do you wanna have another kid?”

Ellison said nothing.

Dewey shrugged, felt a little rejection, but decided to put the issue off until later. Then he heard Ellison’s soft snoring and realized she had not dismissed the idea after all. He smiled and thought back to where it all started…

Get Her Number, First

Dewey Mercer looked up at the new barista in his favorite Starbucks and noted with appreciation her slender hips, her cute face and the gorgeous auburn hair spilling down her back and shoulders. He had noticed her the last two times he’d been here, but had been too afraid to approach her. He wanted to ask her out; what to do? He thought for a second; his older brothers, Huey and Louie, always told him, “Either dazzle them with brilliance or baffle them with bullshit, man.” Nodding to himself, Dewey stared into her pale green eyes and stalked forward and stood before the pretty young woman. She looked to be about his age — 19. She glanced up, smiled, and asked, “Yes, how can I help you?”

Dewey’s mind spun. Brilliance or bullshit? he wondered wildly, momentarily at a loss. Then he gave it to her with both barrels: “The Double Ristretto Venti Half-Soy Nonfat Decaf Organic Chocolate Brownie Iced Vanilla Double-Shot Gingerbread Frappuccino Extra Hot With Foam Whipped Cream Upside Down double blended, One Sweet’N Low and One Nutrasweet, and Ice.” He gasped for breath.

She stared at him blankly for a moment, then blinked. “Would you like a cookie with that?” she asked. He shook his head no and she went about the process of preparing his Frankenstein drink. Dewey scowled; that hadn’t gone well; she took it in her stride and now he was on the hook for an expensive libation. After some minutes, the cute barista set the drink atop the counter and said, “$149.99 please.” It was Dewey’s turn to stare blankly and blink.

“Put it on my card,” he muttered, pushing his debit card forward. His Visa, of course, was stretched beyond its limit. She told him so. He hung his head. Now there was a crowd growing at the busy coffee shop. Deprived of their caffeine, they were turning ugly.

“C’mon, move the line,” someone behind Dewey groused.

“He ordered some freakin’ bogus drink and now can’t pay for it,” hissed another.

“Deadbeat!” seethed a third.

Feeling belabored and outnumbered, Dewey went for broke. “Could I…uh…have your number?”

She surprised him and smiled. “Are you asking me out?”

He smiled too. “Uh huh. I’m Dewey,” he said.

“I’m Ellison,” she confessed.

“I know, I read it on your name tag.” They both tittered.

“C’mon, get a room!” someone in line barked. “I want my latte!”

Ellison scratched out her number on a paper napkin and handed it over.

“I’ll call you, Ellison,” he promised, shoving the napkin in his pocket and turning away. That went well, he thought, smiling.

First Date

They met at Clarke’s Pub. Ellison’s expression indicating she was slumming. Dewey understood and asked “I can see you aren’t overwhelmed by where I took you. Why did you agree to this date?” He took a big drink of his beer.

“You aren’t good looking, you clearly don’t have money, so the only reason I could think of that you were so confident was that you were a great lover or stoned.”

Dewey turned red and blew beer out of his nose.

Ellison said “Maybe I said that wrong. Is it that you’ve got something great in your pants?”

Dewey had no more beer to expel out his nose, so he gathered his thoughts and said “Yes, I do have great taste in pants. I have ten pairs of great pants.”

Dewey and Ellison stared at each other and then broke out laughing. This time Ellison blew beer out her nose.

Coda

Dewey stood at the foot of the hospital bed, regarding the science experiment that was his wife. Tubes and wires and monitors and all the surreal accoutrements of hospice were onerous in their intensity.

Ellison’s oncologist entered the private room and walked up to the bed, tablet in hand. He had done his due diligence, thought Dewey, and even now, at the end, was playing his part. Finally he looked at Dewey.

“Is it the end, Doctor?” he asked, his voice coarse and scratchy.

“Ellison’s living will compels us to forgo heroic measures,” he replied.

Dewey nodded. “She didn’t want to lie on display, dying with no hope.”

“As of yesterday, we discontinued the meds, aside from the morphine. We still give her water, of course, and do what we can to make her comfortable, but the late stage medicines, the Belzutifan and the Welireg and the others, were withdrawn. It’s up to God now, Mr. Mercer.”

Dewey nodded. He cast his thoughts back two weeks, to just before Ellison entered hospice, to the last cogent conversation he’d had with his wife of 60 years.

. . . . .

“I want you to meet someone new, Dewey,” she said.

Dewey frowned. “Ellison, I’m 80 years old. I’m not interested in dating.”

“You know you’ll go crazy if you have to live in that big house by yourself,” said Ellison. “I…I don’t want you to be lonely, is all.”

Dewey heard her softly sobbing and quickly sat by her side on the bed. “You’ll be with my always, Ellison; I’ll never be alone.”

Ellison, obviously in pain, looked at her husband with a little smile and said, “You always knew what to say. You were never pretty, but you had a way with words. I want to sleep, Baby,” she said, and crawled under the covers.

. . . . .

As the heart monitor signaled Ellison’s flatlining, Dewey gave a start. The room was suddenly flooded with hospital workers. As Dewey stared helplessly at his wife’s corpse, a strong hand folded fingers over his bicep and a voice said,

“C’mon, Dad, let’s go home.” Dewey recognized his son’s voice and went with him from the room. Since his diagnosis of dementia, Dewey’s son, Vin, had bought a home on the same block as he and kept close tabs on his father.

That first night, alone in his strangely empty bed, Dewey thought back to his favorite Starbuck’s and the monster drink he’d ordered in order to score points with the woman he loved with all his heart for the next half century and more.

Ellison was hovering over the drink and contemplating Dewey’s rejected credit card. She asked him with a crooked half smile, “Do you want a cookie with that?”