Free My Favorite Midlife Crisis by Toby Devens Page B

she said. “Is not your fault. Is not you are ape. Just shadow above lip. From not much hormones like when you were girl. I can zip off in four minutes.”
    Fleur stared at her, then dropped back to whisper, “How do you say fuck you in Russian?”
    “Kat,” I said, touching my friend’s cheek so she turned it to me, “if it’s Ethan you’re worried about, betraying him I mean, one of these days you’re going to need to let go.”
    “Maybe we’re just friends, Lee and I. Soul mates. We have similar interests.”
    “What happened to the fling? A minute ago you were flinging, now only your souls are mating?” Fleur had her hand on the doorknob, eyeing the Russian lady warily.
    “Why is everyone pushing me to have sex with this man? If I want to I will, but when I’m ready and I’m not ready. Anyway, I have to lose ten pounds first. My stomach is disgustingly flabby. And I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to ask him to take an HIV test. These days, you’ve got to plan for these things.”
    She was right, but she sounded so prim I thought I was hallucinating. Where was the braless beauty who used to write poetry about the joyous abandoned sex she played out in a sweet haze of marijuana on tie-dyed sheets? What happened to my rapturous flower child of yesterdecade? Turned conventional by time, it seemed.
    More than flab, this made me sad.

Chapter 9
    On Saturday night, with nothing better to do, I went online to check out Fleur as brighteyes on Lovingmatch.com, sweetstuff on Largeandluscious, and Xshiksa at Jewlove. Gavin at GlamourGal had worked his final computer magic on her photo and the result was a knockout Fleur with cut-glass cheekbones and the jawline of a twenty-year-old. To check out the competition, I browsed the ads of other females fifty to sixty. Everyone was peppy, chipper, trim, fit, emotionally strengthened by life’s adversities, and eager to start over. The courage of these women exhilarated me. Their numbers depressed me.
    As I prowled among the lonely hearts, I was stopped by a banner headline offering a free two-month membership on the website Ivydate.com. My Barnard diploma qualified me. All I had to do was fill out a profile.
    Not me.
    Woman in search of man. Between fifty and death. I slugged in my preferences. Just for the hell of it, because it was this or actually watching Larry King, who droned on in the background.
    HighIQutie. That’s the name I entered for my nom d’Internet . Then I wrote a profile in five minutes flat. Love Bach and Telemann, Italian art, Thai food. Looking for honest, trustworthy, cultured man who’s passionate about work and life. Accent—French, Italian, British, Southern—a bonus. Sense of humor/wit essential.
    Then I scrambled through the boxes of photographs I’d promised for a decade to sort, and found one to use with my profile. My neighbor Jean Coogan had taken the picture a few weeks before The Treachery. The boys were gone all that July; Drew in Cape Cod as a counselor at an arts and crafts camp, Whit hiking through Bulgaria with a group of like-minded overindulged college kids. I thought I had it made. Everything stretched infinitely ahead. The beach, the ocean, the day, my appreciated life. I was at its sweet center, a pearl layering gorgeous time. Soon Jean would walk on to her own blanket and book and I would be left to the temporary isolation I loved, facing the sheet of linen afternoon hemmed by prospects of sunset with Stan, sipping pinot grigio, watching the sea, and listening to him talk about his day spent hunting down vintage wicker with Brad, the decorator. He failed to mention that he was getting buggered in the new eighteenth-century Italian provincial bed while I was focused on the waves. That detail would emerge in the divorce interrogatories.
    The woman in the photo looked blissfully unaware. On the beach under a floppy straw hat, oversized Jackie Kennedy sunglasses hiding my eyes, nose pinked by the sun, I smiled with