An old man hobbled by.  Held up by an invisible fishing line connecting his belt buckle to the ceiling.  One foot - scuff - the other - scuff.  Small-boned.  Eyebrows like an abandoned lot.  As old as he was, he spoke without confusion.  No extra words.  Right to the point and back to silence.

The wife preceded him.  Quicker on the feet.  A marble of a head between boney shoulders.  Salt and pepper for hair.  Good hair for a woman of her age.  Plenty of vitamin E.  The wife wasn’t stingy with her words.  No point, just an unending line of dialogue, aimed at her husband, aimed at the empty space around them, aimed at nothing.  Blah.  Blah.  Blah.

I was minding my own business.  Not really.  I was pretending to mind my own business, watching this old pair.  Watching her lips move.  Watching the wrinkles in his cheeks erode by the minute.  I looked at their wrists.  Both of them, as thin as shoelace.  I looked down at mine, not much better.  Despite a hundred and fifty years, we were more or less the same.  Scary thought.

I couldn’t smell them.  I imagined they smelled fresh, baby powder, ointment, fabric softener.  They were held together well. No old-people shakes.  No off-color real estate on their wrinkled skin.  No scabs. They had their wits about them.  The old man was tuning the wife out.  At least that’s what it looked like.  The sun was directly in his eyes.  It didn’t faze him.

When i'm people watching, sometimes I know exactly what’s going on, other times I’m throwing darts in the dark.  At the time, I would have told you I knew what they were talking about.  The wife was making a verbal Christmas list.  Naming off children, grandchildren, neighbors, mail carriers, garbage men.  The old man was staring at the sun, praying, hoping it would explode.  Then he could finally get some peace and quiet.

Then, the old man looked over at me. Well, he turned his head in my direction.  I don’t think he saw anything.  Not after staring into the sun for so long.  He gave an over the shoulder glance, right-left.  The wife did the same.  She had a miniature head and no neck, her surveillance was more obvious.  Their sudden reconnaissance put me on my heels.  Maybe they felt me watching.  Maybe they thought I was looking to mug someone, easy targets.

The invisible string tugged the old man by his belt, closer to his wife.  He leaned in and whispered something.  Her old ears missed the message.  They both leaned in again and clashed heads.  No concussions.  They shook it off, but the knock must have done something, shaken up some dusty memories.  The wife’s bean-head perked up.  The old man starts to get a little feely.

I’m engaged again.  Not aroused.  Certainly not aroused by two old birds pecking at one another.  But the scene progressed.  He starts giving her little pokes and squeezes.  She pretends not to enjoy it, still yammering.  Then this old rail of a man grabs his wife’s hand and puts it right on his old junk box.  That was the move that did the trick.  In an instant, she reverse-aged twenty-five years.  With the sudden surge of youth, she forgot to keep yapping.

The wife gave the old man a few discrete pats, the way you’d reward an old dog for standing up without pissing on the rug.  I watched, not out of perversion, out of curiosity.  I knew the fire in that area goes out at some point, but the little crotch maneuver caught me off guard.  The wife gave another little rub, up, down.  Then a half-squeeze, like she was testing an avocado for ripeness.  That put some color in the old man’s face.  I don’t know if the blood would have ever made it beyond that tight belt, but he was giving it hell.

It didn’t go much further than that.  Sorry to end the magic for you perverts.  Somewhere between the pats and the squeezes, the wife remembered her insatiable need to babble.  Maybe she remembered someone she’d left off of her Christmas list.  After sixty seconds of her talking, the old man’s eyes drifted back toward the sun.  He gently removed her hand from his crotch and set it on the table.  She didn’t seem offended.

It wasn’t exactly my flavor of eroticism, but I respected the effort.  I know there was a life lesson in there, somewhere.  Whatever it was, it worked.  Not for long, but for a solid minute and a half, that move bought the old man some well-deserved silence.