Sid #2
When the Hot Jew finishes, he walks over to the water fountain near us and takes a long drink. He suddenly rips off his tank top, tucks it into the back of his shorts and proceeds to splash himself with water.
“I think I’m going to pass out,” I whisper to Esther.
“I haven’t seen anything this hot since I threw my panties at Tom Jones in Vegas.” Esther grabs my leg. “Give me your panties,
Barry. I can’t throw my Depends.”
We cover our mouths and laugh.
When we look up again, the man walks toward us and begins to stretch.
He is tan and fit. A fountain of thick hair falls in his face as he bends.
“He doesn’t even schvitz,” I whisper. “He shimmers.”
“Go talk to him,” Esther says. “Ask him out.”
“Do you have eyes?” I ask, hand covering my mouth, as if the man might be able to lip-read. “He’s out of my league. I mean,
there isn’t even a league.” I glance quickly at him and lower my voice even more. “I mean, he can touch the ground and get
back up without a medevac.”
Esther giggles in her throaty way, as if she’s just smoked a pack of Pall Malls.
“Stop it!” she says. “You know nothing about him.”
“He may not even be gay,” I add.
“No man that pretty is straight in Palm Springs.”
“He may not even be Jewish.”
“Really, Sid?” Esther says. “You’re going to be picky at eighty-one? You need to get laid before you die. You already have
three husbands at home.”
“And what exactly is my pickup line to a man who looks like that?” I ask. “‘I see we have so much in common! You have plantar
fasciitis, too?’”
“Stop it,” she says, taking a big drink from her water bottle.
“Or what about, ‘Didn’t I see you at PT?’” I ask. “Oh, and this always turns the boys on: ‘New knee?’”
Esther spits like a geyser, her water spraying onto the man’s leg.
“Consider it a mikvah,” she yells.
The man laughs.
“This is Sid,” Esther continues. “He’s nice. He’s Jewish. Attorney. Single. Very successful. Very lonely.” Esther stands and
claps her hands together. “My work here is done.”
I feel my eyes grow absurdly large and my face turn the color of borscht. I look at the man and smile as if to say, I don’t know her.
Esther heads toward the parking lot just beyond the track. “I’m meeting Talia Goldfarb at Sherman’s for lunch. I’ve earned
a pastrami on rye. Go get laid, Sid!”
I want to crawl under the bleachers.
The man watches all five feet of Esther crawl into her mammoth Mercedes SUV, pull on a pair of sunglasses that engulfs her
head and pull onto busy Sunrise Way without slowing to look for oncoming traffic.
“She reminds me of my bubbe,” the man finally says. He walks over and extends his hand. “I’m Leo. Leo Levy.”
“How alliterative.”
Why did I say that? I’m an idiot.
Leo laughs.
I shake his hand. “Sid,” I say.
“I gathered that from your friend. Do you have a last name, Sid?”
“Silverstein. Sid Silverstein.”
“How alliterative.”
Is he making fun of me? Flirting? Why am I staring at his chest? Why does he have that sexy little trail of hair? And that
cute cluster of freckles off to the side of his six-pack that looks like the Milky Way?
Stop it, Sid. You’re an eighty-one-year-old man.
“Are you new to Palm Springs?” I ask. “I haven’t seen you around here.”
“I’m staying with friends,” Leo says. “And looking at houses in the area.” He stops. “Actually, I’m interviewing for a job in the area. Don’t know if I’ll get it, but . . .”
“What is it you do?”
“I’d rather not say. Don’t want to jinx it.”
He hates me.
And he’s still working. Not even close to using the words IRA or Medicare Part B in every other sentence.
“And you?” Leo asks.
“I was a lawyer.” I stop to correct myself. “Am a lawyer. I still practice.” I stop again. “And Esther already told you that,
so I’m just repeating myself now.”
“How long have you lived in Palm Springs?”
“A very long time now,” I say.
Leo looks at me, waiting for more.
Say something else, Sid.
I try to open my mouth, but it’s rusted shut.
For a moment, there is that uncomfortable silence that has always filled me with guilt, made me feel unworthy, wholly transparent.
I fidget with the sleeve of my ridiculous workout shirt, which, by the way, Esther said looked good with my hair.
I resemble an aged aubergine.
“You should definitely look in south Palm Springs,” I finally add, my voice tinged with nerves as if I’m speaking into a box
fan. “No wind. Twin Palms is centrally located and filled with mid-century beauties. Oh! And there’s The Movie Colony, Old
Las Palmas, Deepwell Estates . . .”
I realize I am babbling, but I cannot stop now. My mouth, like Sophia’s, is a runaway train.
“And make sure to eat at Copley’s or Eight4Nine. Copley’s is a must. It is Cary Grant’s former guesthouse. So romantic. I
mean, I don’t know if you’re seeing someone . . .”
A resounding honk pierces the humidity-free air. In the parking lot, a hand motions.
“I gotta go,” Leo says apologetically. “Jack dropped me off here while he ran errands.”
Of course, there’s a Jack.
“It was nice to meet you, Sid,” Leo continues, extending his hand once more. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“I’m here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Oh, and a seated workout class every Tuesday and Thursday. But I stand for much
of the class. I mean, I can stand. You saw me walk!”
Oy vey! I sound like a complete idiot.
Leo takes off jogging, his perfect torso glistening in the sun.
“And wear sunscreen!” I yell. “I think you might have a suspicious mole!”
He doesn’t turn back and still I stand there, smiling and waving, as if my grandchildren were pulling out of the driveway.
It’s better than weeping into my hideously colored cover-up.
As the car leaves, I hear the popular Palm Springs radio station K-Gay blast from the windows.
I stand motionless, watching Leo fade into the mountain. My cell hums.
How did it go with Hot Jew? Did you blow it?
Esther has wasted no time.
What I want to text is:
I’m an old man, and nothing has changed.
My wife has remarried. My kids have children. Yes, I have dear friends, but I also still have my old BFFs, Guilt and Shame.
I can dish out advice and pearls of wisdom like your favorite bubbe, but what gay Jewish man wants to date his grandmother?
I am exactly the same as that day long ago when I went to Seder at your house. Utterly, completely alone.
Instead, I reply to Esther:
Yes, I blew it. I told him he had a suspicious mole.
I watch the bubbles dance on my cell. I brace myself. I know this is going to be good.
You just made me spit out my decaf. I can’t leave you alone with a man. Every time I do, you turn into Albert Brooks from
Broadcast News. Come to Sherman’s. I’m ordering you a slice of cheesecake the size of Talia’s new ring to bury the pain.
More bubbles. Esther sums up my thoughts exactly:
I miss Hot Jew already.