VIRGINITY
Scott Garson
My girlfriend serves dinner in a retirement home and gets me a job washing dishes. She has to wear a white dress, heavy and unfashionable but all right with her body inside it. I can wear whatever, the clothes that I've gone to school in. It doesn't matter. I won't be seen.
"I used to come here a few years ago," I tell her.
We're out in the alley. She leans to my hands for a light.
"They let me out of fourth and fifth periods on Wednesdays if I would come read to this old lady."
My girlfriend stares at me. "Is she still here?"
I remember the name on the plaque on the door, Mrs. Sierra Cook. But I can't remember which floor. Fifth, maybe? I think it was the fifth floor. My girlfriend's dress is a white glow in the hallway as we creep along, reading names.
I say, "Maybe fourth."
Mrs. Sierra Cook, we learn, isn't living on the fourth floor either.
Later, we peer through the kitchen-door glass at the residents, who are taking their seats. They look faded, like plants in closets. Dried. Some are speaking, but we can't hear.
That night in the loft above her mother's garage, my girlfriend asks if I want to. The words are a surprise. As we take position, she's looking at me. She's looking up carefully into my eyes, as if she is going to see the exact color of the change in me as it happens.