Research has shown that even old people don’t care to be around the aged. He had read about a study that said so, maybe in the Times. Perhaps that is why he had just been eased out. Let go by another man his age—a friend, or so he had believed. The friend had said his job as a vice president was being eliminated. He knew with certainty that after a month, the company would create a new position lower down the ladder that was half his pay, for someone half his age.

His first reaction when given the news was disbelief, and then rage. After all he had done for the company, to be turned out like a stray cat. He had promised to sue as they ushered him out. But he knew age discrimination would be almost impossible to prove. There was no chance of finding another job, not at age sixty-two. He wasn’t actually elderly, just an “older man” and overqualified.

He had been sitting in his condo for an hour, the day after he was let go, trying to read a book, becoming increasingly depressed. He needed to get out, to be around people, and wanted a drink in the worst way. But he had sworn it off a few years ago after the head of personnel had warned him of an alcohol dependency. A visit to the coffee shop then.

He put the book under his arm, headed out the door, took the elevator down, and walked a half block to the coffee shop, where he waited in line. He liked the place. It wasn’t a Starbucks—outsider art on the walls, old furniture from the Salvation Army, not overly clean. The young woman in front of him had purple hair, a tattoo of a serpent on her neck, and at least a dozen piercings in her nose, lips, eyelids, and ears. He decided that Miss Piercings must be the young woman’s name. She was perhaps twenty and also carried a book under her arm.

Miss Piercings finally reached the cashier and fumbled in her backpack. “Fuck, I left my wallet at home.”

“I’ll pay for it,” he said, hoping to strike up a conversation.

Miss Piercings looked at him with suspicion. “If you’re trying to pick me up, grandpa, forget about it. I’m not a hooker if that’s what you think.”

“No, no. That’s not it at all.”

“Fine with me then. But don’t expect anything for it.” She shrugged, the cashier gave her a knowing smirk, and Miss Piercings ordered a nonfat macchiato. She moved down and waited for the barista to make her drink.

He decided on a nonfat macchiato himself. He had never had one and thought it would be a novelty, something in common with the young woman. The nonfat was a plus—his doctor had told him to avoid cholesterol and put him on Lipitor for his heart.

The cashier took his order with studied indifference, inscribed hieroglyphics on a paper cup, and pushed it down to the barista. He moved along next to Miss Piercings, who ignored him. She picked up her cup, went to an empty table, and began reading her book.

In the fullness of time, the barista handed him a steaming cup of white frothiness and espresso. He looked around. The place was full of people, sitting in twos and threes, everyone young and trying their best to avoid his gaze—no free tables. Miss Piercings glanced up and shrugged again. “You can sit here if you want,” she said, pointing at the chair with her book.

“Thanks.” He put his book down on the table. “Do you use sweetener? In the macchiato, I mean.”

“Nothing artificial,” she said, not looking up from her book. “Sometimes honey, but they don’t have any here.”

He took a sip. “Not bad.” Miss Piercings was attractive, as young people often are to those who are old. Why the tattoos and piercings, he wondered? But it would be impolite to ask. He could see the roots of her hair, a nice brown under the purple. She would find it painful and expensive to get the tattoo removed when she was older and needed a job. Perhaps the piercings wouldn’t be noticed with the right makeup. When he was younger, he might have asked her out, even with the hair, the piercings, and the tattoos.

Miss Piercings continued reading. He could see the cover—The First Bad Man by Miranda July. “What’s the book about?” he asked.

Miss Piercings sighed, turned down the page, and put the book on the table. “You wouldn’t understand.”

He looked down at the cover. “You know that the first bad man was actually Adam. So that would make the first bad person Eve.”

“Very deep. But I don’t think that’s what Miranda July had in mind.” Miss Piercings reached across the table and turned his book around. “The Hidden Eisenhower—are you kidding me?”

“I’m reading it for my book club,” he said. “I prefer fiction, but the others like biographies and history—mostly politicians and generals. Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill, George Washington, Eisenhower.”

“Dead white males,” said Miss Piercings.

“Are you referring to the members or the books we read?” Miss Piercings laughed. “Is your book for school?”

“Hardly. The English department is still obsessed with Harold Bloom. As it happens, it’s for my book club, as well.”

It struck him as odd that this young woman, a veritable child, could be in a book club. Reading groups were for people in middle age and older. “You’re in a book club?” he asked.

“Me and about a million others. It’s online.” She mentioned a famous actress he had seen on HBO. “You sign up and get her recommendation every month. You can post comments—I do it all the time. Pretty standard book club. You could join.”

“Really?”

“Anyone can join. If your AirDrop is on, I’ll share a link.” He hesitated, having no idea what she was talking about. Miss Piercings sighed. “Give me your phone and I’ll turn it on. You have to put in your passcode,” which he did and handed it to her. Miss Piercings punched the screen three times and gave him the phone.

The screen was alive with colorful images. He looked down at the cover of his book—a black and white photo of Eisenhower sitting at his desk in the Oval Office signing papers. This was the third book on Ike the club had read.

“So, I can join this club,” he said, “just by putting in my name and a passcode?”

“Yes, but no one uses their real name. You can make something up. You could be Old Dude.”

“I would rather be someone younger.”

“Sure. Anything you want. But I’m going to call you Old Dude.”

“So, what’s your book club name?”

 “Emily Brontë’s Granddaughter. I’m a Brontë fan, but I would never have let Heathcliff behave the way he did.”

“Brontë didn’t have any children, so you couldn’t be her granddaughter.”

“It’s intended to be ironic,” she said. “You know about irony, don’t you?”

“I’ve heard of it. Should I call you Miss Brontë?”

“You can call me whatever you please, my good man.” This she said with a lilting voice and an English accent.

“I’ve been thinking you should be called Miss Piercings, because of the facial jewelry.”

She reached her hand to her face. “I rather like the name, Miss Piercings,” again with an English accent. “I’ve needed a new name, and Miss Emily Piercings it is. It could be from a Jane Austen novel.”

 “I have a fondness for Jane Austen,” said the Old Dude.

“Of course. Everyone loves her. But she is rather old fashioned.”

“Do you have a Mr. Darcy?”

“No, I have a Miss Darcy.”

“Very modern indeed,” he said. “I’ve never had coffee with a lesbian.”

“How do you know you haven’t? You shouldn’t stereotype people, you know. I’m what you would call transgender, as a matter of fact.”

The Old Dude looked at Miss Piercings carefully. She was tall for a woman but slender. She could be a model, he decided, except for the tattoos and piercings. He supposed there must be a telltale sign somewhere of her birth gender. Her voice was a little deep, her wrists larger than average. But there was nothing obvious.

“You must be kidding,” he finally said, then hesitated. “Sorry, that was rude of me.”

“I’ll take it as a compliment. It’s comforting that you can’t tell.”

“Has it been difficult?”

“It hasn’t been a walk in the park, but it’s behind me now. My girlfriend has been understanding, but we’ll probably break up. She thought it was a heterosexual relationship when it started. She’s pretty confused at the moment.”

“I can relate.” He fell silent trying to figure out what he had just heard.

“You remind me of my grandfather,” said Miss Piercings. “He died.”

“I’m only sixty-two.”

“That was about his age. I miss him.” She paused. “I shouldn’t have mentioned death, you being old and all.”

“No need to apologize,” said the Old Dude. “Mortality comes up a lot nowadays. When I was your age, I couldn’t imagine dying. But it happens to everyone.”

“I suppose so.” Miss Piercings gave a skeptical shrug. She took a drink of her macchiato. “My parents won’t talk to me anymore. They don’t approve. My grandfather would have, I’m sure. Not that he could have understood why I did it, but it wouldn’t have made any difference to him. He wrote me little poems when I was growing up—little funny rhymes.”

The two fell silent and sipped their drinks. Miss Piercings suddenly looked down at her watch. “Got to catch my bus.” She drained the macchiato, rose from the table, and hoisted the backpack. “See you.” She walked out the door.

 The Old Dude sat sipping his macchiato, thinking of his encounter with Miss Piercings. He had read about the modern phenomena of changing one’s gender and had followed the controversy about bathrooms, of course. But Emily Piercings was unimaginable. The Old Dude got up, forgetting Eisenhower lying on the table, and walked out the door.

It was a brutal August day, and the heat took his breath away as he left the air-conditioning. He saw Miss Piercings at the bus stop down the block, rummaging in the bottom of the backpack. He felt in his pocket for change. Did they even take change on the bus now, or did you need a card of some sort? He walked toward the bus stop.

The bus arrived, Emily Piercings got on, and the Old Dude followed, having run the last twenty yards. He rested for a few seconds after climbing into the bus, trying to catch his breath. His heart was racing. He dumped a handful of quarters into the machine by the driver. Miss Piercings was reading her book, sitting in the last row. He took a seat in the front.

The bus moved haltingly, stopping every two blocks, working its way toward the university side of town. A black woman got on the bus and sat next to him. He wondered if he should smile and decided he should not. He kept looking back to check on Miss Piercings; the woman moved to a seat across the aisle.  

Emily Piercings got off the bus through the middle door in front of a rundown duplex. The Old Dude followed through the front. They were the only two at the stop, which was awkward. Emily Piercings shook her head, rolled her eyes, and walked down to where he was standing.

“You are my first stalker,” she said. “Perhaps you should get a medal, some sort of recognition.”

“I’m not really a stalker,” said the Old Dude. “I just wanted to talk.” His heart began racing again and he touched his chest.

“When a man follows a woman to her home unasked, he is, by definition, a stalker. You are an unusually bad one, though. I saw you leave the coffee shop and get on the bus, for Christ’s sake. I could call the cops—that would be an old school thing to do. But I haven’t had the name and sex on my driver’s license changed, and the police sometimes don’t understand. Why don’t you cross the street and get on the next bus downtown?”

“I’m really sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay. But some women wouldn’t understand.” Miss Piercings turned, walked up the sidewalk, and into the duplex.

The Old Dude pulled out his phone and called a cab. He supposed there weren’t many left now that everyone used Uber, but he didn’t have the app. The dispatcher said it would take fifteen minutes before he could get a ride.

The cab hadn’t come after twenty minutes. He was sweating in the sun and thought about moving down the block to the shade of a tree. But he thought he saw the cab, and waited, then it passed by. His breath grew short and his heart raced uncontrollably. His head felt light; his left arm began to ache; he fell to the sidewalk and hit his head; blood dripped from his forehead, clouding his vision. It felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest. He cried out, “Help me. I’m dying.”

The last thing he remembered was Emily Piercings leaning over him, saying, “Are you okay?”

                                                            ******

He awoke in a pale green room, hooked up to a half dozen beeping monitors. Bags of fluids led to a needle in his arm, and a tube fed oxygen into his nose. I had a heart attack, he thought. He realized that his chest was wrapped in bandages.

He looked over and saw Emily Piercings sitting in a chair reading her book. “What happened?”

“They cracked open your chest and did a quadruple bypass,” said Miss Piercings, looking up. “Ninety-five percent blockage, they said.”

“I feel pretty good.”

“I would feel pretty good too if I had that much oxycodone in my veins. You will have to quit the drugs, so don’t get hooked.”

“I guess I’m lucky they did the operation in time.”

“Yeah. I signed for it.”

“You did what?”

“They didn’t want to do the operation without permission from the next of kin. Would have done it eventually anyway, but they were screwing around making phone calls. The way the doctors talked, it sounded like you might die.”

“You said you were my next of kin, and they believed you?”

“I told them I was your granddaughter, and my mother was on safari in Kenya. They just wanted someone to sign the form so they wouldn’t get sued if you died. I signed it Emily Piercings.”

“I don’t even know if I have insurance. I lost my job.”

“Glad I didn’t give them my credit card,” said Miss Piercings with a shrug.

“I owe you my life, I guess,” said the Old Dude. “When I was a boy, in cowboy movies, if an Indian saved a person’s life, the Indian was responsible from then on for the person he saved.”

Miss Piercings shook her head. “They are called indigenous peoples now. In any event, I can’t be responsible for you. I’ve got my own problems. I just didn’t want to see you die in front of my duplex.”

“Thanks anyway.”

“No problem,” said Miss Piercings with another shrug.

A pretty young nurse in a pink uniform came into the room. “You woke up,” she said with a smile. “Welcome back to the land of the living. How’re you feeling, sweetie?”

Sweetie—an epithet the young reserve for the old, infirm, and helpless—one of the minor indignities of age. If he were the nurse’s age, she would have never called him that. But at least I’m alive. “Okay, I guess. Do you know what’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

“You can leave in a few days, a week maybe. You’ll need someone to take care of you for a month after you get out of the hospital.” The nurse looked skeptically at Emily Piercings. “Is there someone we can call?”

The Old Dude considered his options. Two grown children, one in LA and the other in London; both blamed him for the divorce and rarely called. A boy from his second marriage was still receiving child support. “No close relatives,” he finally said.

“So, could you call someone from work or a friend?” asked the nurse. “They won’t let you out of here unless you have someone to take care of you.”

“Maybe I can hire somebody.”

“You can if you have to,” said the nurse, “but it’s expensive.”

The nurse busied herself with her stethoscope, listening to the pulse in his neck, then his chest. “Still ticking,” she said brightly, then looked at the monitors. “Blood oxygen fine. The doctor will be in shortly.” She patted the Old Dude’s hand, smiled, and left the room.

“Bummer about you not having anyone to take care of you,” said Miss Piercings. “Wish I could help, but I can’t take you home with me. It’s tense right now with my girlfriend.” She got up from the chair. “I’ve been here all night. I’ve got to go.”

The Old Dude could tell he was making Miss Piercings uncomfortable. Young people hate the feel of hospitals, the sick, and the dying. Who could blame them?

“Thanks again for saving my life,” he said.

“I said no problem, really.” Miss Piercings began edging toward the door. “See you at the book club. I’m going to change my online name to Emily Piercings, so you’ll know when I post something.”

“I’ll be the Old Dude.”

Miss Piercings hesitated, turned back, and came over to his bed. “Take care of yourself, Old Dude.” She kissed his forehead. “I get coffee at that place we met. It’s near my job.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there,” he said.

“Maybe so.”

Miss Piercings looked around the room. “Where’s your book?”

“I must have left it at the coffee shop,” said the Old Dude.

“You’re going to need something to read.” She handed him The Last Bad Man. “You can have it. I know how it ends.”

H. S. May began writing fiction four years ago and received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s 2019 Short Story Award for New Writers. He lives and works in Houston, Texas, and has recently completed his first novel. Set in 1896, it reflects the revolution in social norms that presaged the modern era.