The Old Man in the Club

by Curtis Bunn

  Her body felt achy-good in the morning, and over breakfast—orange juice, coffee, oatmeal, turkey bacon and English muffin—Tamara told Elliott how pleasantly pleased she was with their session. “I just had to cook for you this morning. I had to do something.”

  He smiled and actually blushed. Her recollection of the night jarred his memory, and the events started to come together in his head. He remembered thinking as they entered his bedroom that he was going to go for it.

  Elliott had twenty-somethings before; two others, in fact, and a pair of ladies in their early thirties. He kept a ledger in his iPhone. Tamara was No. 5. He liked her, and yet he knew there was no real future with her—not that he was seeking a future with anyone. Although sixty-one, Elliott considered himself twelve years younger for the time he was locked away.

  “What are your plans for the rest of the day?” she asked Elliott as she cleared the table.

  “I’m going to walk and come back home to watch the NBA playoffs; the Lakers and Kobe Bryant play today. Gotta see the closest thing to Michael Jordan,” he said. “But mostly relaxing until tonight. I have a party to attend tonight at Compound.”

  “Compound?” Tamara said. “I haven’t even been there yet. So you really are the old man in the club? I watched you last night. You were in your element. This is what you do? Go out and chase young girls?”

  There was outrage in her voice but mostly disappointment.

  “Don’t get righteous on me,” he said. “I’m just living my life.”

  “But you don’t think it’s a little strange that you’re sixty-one with kids twenty-one and yet you’re seeking women their age?” she asked. “There’s nothing strange about that to you?”

  “I’m doing what any or most men my age wish they could,” he said. “One of my friends who is my age—actually, he’s two years younger than me—said I’m living the dream. And I told him, ‘I’m just living my life.’ And that’s how I look at it, no matter how strange it is for you or other people. You’ve heard this before but it might not resonate with you because you’re so young, but here goes anyway: Life is short. I prefer to live mine doing the things that fulfill me.”

  Tamara flopped down in her chair and laid her head in her hands, exasperated.

  “I have a question for you,” Elliott said. “It’s an innocent question, so don’t take it the wrong way.”

  Tamara raised her head to look at him.

  “If it’s strange that I like young women,” he said, “isn’t it strange that you are here with me when I’m thirty-six years older than you?”

  “It’s different,” she said after a moment of contemplation. “I didn’t seek you out; you approached me. I don’t, as a rule, date senior citizens. I just don’t. Being here right now is freaking me out. It’s not what I expected but I admit that I was curious about you. But I was only curious about you because of the person you are. Other older men have hit on me before but they seemed creepy.

  “I’m comfortable with you and I feel confident that you’re a good person. And learning a little about your life and the arrest and everything…it made me feel closer to you.”

  “You mean sorry for me?” he asked.

  “In a way, at first, yes,” she said. “But I looked at how you carry yourself, where you live, how happy you seem to be. I feel like you overcame it all. There’s no reason to feel sorry for you. I feel sorry it happened to you. But you’re still standing, with your head up. When I processed all that, it was a turn-on.”

  “I appreciate you being honest,” Elliott said. “That’s one thing I have to have in a friend—honesty. At the same time, I’m not judging you, so it would be nice if you didn’t judge me. Going to a party or liking young women doesn’t make me a bad man. It doesn’t make me a dirty old man. It makes me a man who knows what he likes and who lives the life he wants to live. After what has happened to me, that’s exactly what I’m going to do because I know probably better than most that life is a gift.

  “What I told you last night about my past, I haven’t told many people. I told you because you deserve to know and I didn’t believe you would judge me or hold it against me. But I told you about it because I wanted you to get a look into my head and see why it’s important that I live the life I do—not the way anyone else believes I should live because of my age.”

  Tamara wanted to ask Elliott more questions, but she was cutting it close for a shopping spree with her mom at the Premium Outlets up north off of Highway 400. So, she headed to the bedroom to put on her dress and make her way home so she would not keep her mom waiting.

  Elliott took a quick shower and threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and took her home to her townhouse in Avondale Estates, a small, mixed community a few minutes east of Atlanta. The conversation was light on the ride there.

  “Should I write down my sizes?” he said. “Just in case you get an urge to buy something for me.”

  “If I get an urge for you,” she said, getting out of the car, “it won’t be about buying you something.”

  She smiled and winked and was on her way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Party Over Here

  Elliott walked almost every day—to stay youthful, to build his stamina, to stay healthy, to feel free. Three of his friends around his age had died in the previous five years, two of a heart attack, one from a stroke. In either case, it was about an unhealthy lifestyle. He committed to himself that he would not have an avoidable demise.

  At the first funeral, he was especially shaken because Danette Patterson was a close friend and former lover who looked and seemed healthy. Her heart valves were clogged from terrible eating habits; although strong genes gave her the appearance of a healthy, fit woman.

  He traveled to Chicago for her services that spring. Witnessing her lay in her coffin sparked remembrances of many conversations they had about love and life. Danette spoke often about living without regrets, how she married a man she hoped would be good for her but who turned out to be exactly who he showed himself to be.

  “You can say what you want, but you have a second chance at life, Elliott,” he recalled her saying. “If you want to ride jet skis or try out for the Chicago Bears, do it. I spent twenty-seven years in a marriage that wasn’t meant for me. That’s a lot of time wasted. The worst part is that I could have done something about it a long time ago. So, I say don’t live with regrets. Do the things that make you happy.”

  Those words and seeing Danette lying in a casket pushed Elliott face-to-face with his mortality. And his life. He and Danette were the same age, fifty-five, when she died. If ever there was a singular time he chose to live on his own terms, that was it. That’s when the idea of sucking in as much youthful air as he could emerged. Danette’s death charged him to change his life, starting with keeping his health up to par.

  So, after dropping off Tamara, he switched into shorts and went for a walk that took him down Ivan Allen Boulevard, up toward and through Centennial Olympic Park, past CNN and down Spring Street, passing the Apparel Mart and the American Cancer Society before arriving back to the W. It was one of the routes he took to get in his exercise, to keep his heart valves clear, to maintain his weight and, above all, to express his freedom.

  And almost every time he walked, he thought of Danette. His relationship with her was the last one he had had with a woman in his age range before his ex-wife. Had she not died, he would not have made the turn he did to maintaining good health and eventually seeking younger women. She was special to him.

  Danette pulled him through the hard-to-describe phase of being free after nearly a dozen years in prison for crimes he did not commit. He shared with her the extremes he went through to prevent from being raped; the constant fear that hovered above him for four thousand, two hundred and six days; the immense fear of freedom after so many years of incarceration.

  They met, as it would happen, at a traffic light. She almost hit Elliott as he stepped into the crosswalk in downtown D.C. less t
han three months after DNA evidence showed he was not the criminal the jury convicted. Family and friends had turned on him and the wicked system had not provided him with any resources to reemerge into society. So he did what he knew, which was to search tirelessly for a job.

  He was walking, head down, reading The Washington Post Jobs section when he heard Danette’s horn at the corner of F and Twelfth streets. She stopped about two feet from hitting him. He was so alarmed by the horn and sight of the car so close to him that he threw the paper into the air as he jumped back.

  Danette was alarmed, too, and thought she had hit him. She jumped out of the car and ran to his side. She grabbed him by the arm and he looked down at her hand. A woman had not touched him in twelve years.

  “Did I hit you? Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” Elliott said. “I was reading…trying to find a job. I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

  “What kind of job are you looking for?”

  “One that pays.”

  “Let me pull my car out of the street. I might be able to help you.”

  “What? Are you serious? If that’s true, then it would have been okay for you to run me over. I would take getting hit by a car if it meant a job.”

  Danette smiled and moved her car into a loading zone on 12th Street.

  “I gotta tell you,” Elliott said, “I haven’t worked in twelve years. I have a bad story.”

  “Even better—if you’re okay now,” she said. “What’s your story?”

  He explained his wrongful conviction. He didn’t mean to get in to so much detail, but he found talking to her easy. She was attentive and interested and mortified, all at the same time. But she also felt a need to help.

  “I started my own headhunting firm, a job-placement company,” she said.

  “I know what a headhunter is,” Elliott interjected. “Before all this I was a good student in college. And I read everything I could get my hands on in prison, to stay sharp.”

  “I wasn’t trying to offend you. There two ways I could likely help. In the three years since I started this business, I’ve built relationships with companies that might hire you on my recommendation, despite your lack of experience. Also, there is this pilot program they started at the Georgetown University Law School that offers a handful of jobs to paroled inmates. I’m not sure if you qualify because you technically were not paroled. But it’s worth a try.”

  “I have one question,” Elliott said. “Why would you do this for me? You don’t know me.”

  Danette smiled. She was waiting for that question. “Three years ago,” she began, “when I quit my safe job I hated with the Interior Department, I struggled to make ends meet. I didn’t do it as some people do it—save up a lot of money and have a nest egg to fall back on. I just went for it. I’m spontaneous like that a lot of times. One day I decided that Friday would be my last day, and that was that.

  “I love a good steak and I sat at the bar at Ruth’s Chris one night after a bad day. I was on the phone with my mom, telling her I was going to get a salad because I was too afraid to spend the money on the rib eye that I wanted, that I needed. I needed some comfort food in the worst way. But I ordered a salad and water with lemon and I looked around at all the people there talking and laughing and eating and it made me depressed.

  “So, about ten, fifteen minutes later, my order comes. The guy has a rib eye with baked potato and the salad. I said, ‘No, this isn’t mine. I just ordered the salad.’ He said, ‘The gentleman who was standing right here ordered this for you and already paid for it.’

  “I was shocked. I looked over to where he pointed, but the man was gone. I vaguely recalled someone next to me, but I was in my own pitiful world, talking to my mother. But he heard my conversation and ordered the meal I needed. Can you believe that?

  “The waiter said, ‘He ordered it medium well. I hope that’s okay.’ It was exactly how I would have ordered it. How did he know that? Who was he? It was an act of kindness that I carry with me every day. He had no clue who I was and yet he did something for me—a stranger—to make me feel better.

  “So that’s why I’m willing to help you, even as we have only just met. I know what it felt like to be helped by a stranger. I know what it means. That, to this day, was the best steak I have ever had. And it was not all about how it tasted. It went down good. And guess what: The next day—the very next day—I placed three clients in jobs and I have not had that feeling of desperation I had before that man did that for me. Coincidence? Maybe. I like to think it was way more than that.”

  Elliott shook his head. He almost got emotional. “Whatever comes of this, this is the best day I have had since I got out of Lorton Reformatory,” he said. “To know there is someone out here like you—and that man who helped you—gives me hope.”

  By the end of the week, Elliott had a job at Georgetown University. And his friendship with Danette continued over the years and lasted through his marriage to his children’s mom and heightened the last years of her life.

  She was as influential over him as anyone, and her words of living the life he desired brought him to live the life he missed out on when he was locked up. That was a reason he sought younger women; he didn’t get to do it when he was their age.

  “I understand the motivation, as you explain it,” Dr. Nottingham, his therapist, said when he told her of his intentions. “But you cannot get back the years lost in prison, no matter how unjust your conviction was. Life goes on and you have to travel with it.”

  “Are you saying, doctor, that I’m wrong for wanting to live the life that was taken away from me?”

  “I’m saying you can’t live the life that was taken away from you,” she answered. “It’s gone. No matter what you do, how many young women you have relationships with, it does not mitigate the fact that those years are gone and that you cannot get them back.”

  Elliott trusted his therapist—she kept him sane when he struggled to regain his life—but he was not so sure about her position.

  “Elliott,” she said, “could this all be about feeding your ego? In many cases when men feel the need to spread themselves among many women, they are nourishing an insecurity or an ego that they believe needs that kind of attention.”

  “I don’t know, Dr. Nottingham; maybe so,” he answered. “But what I do know is that it feels good. I feel younger. I feel like I’m getting back on the system that ruined my life. I’m not living in the past. But I’m capturing a piece of it that was lost. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

  “I’ll leave it at that for today,” she said. “As long as you’re trying to get back at the system that ruined your life, you’re not completely letting go and moving on with your life. And that’s my concern, that you go on and live a productive life. I’m so proud of you. You’ve shown amazing strength to persevere over the years. I don’t want you to sabotage your gains by trying to live a bygone time of your life.”

  Dr. Nottingham’s points were taken into serious consideration. In Elliott’s quiet moments, he contemplated what he was doing. He remained doused in anger and bitterness about his conviction. It was not overwhelming—Dr. Nottingham and others before her talked him through that phase—but it was there, it was real. He knew it would always be there. But he felt something when engaging young women like Tamara. He felt outside of his body and away from his recent past, and he could see himself as a twenty-something sitting there in the scene. That’s what kept him on course, despite Dr. Nottingham’s cogent perspective.

  That’s what he needed to feel like his time in prison was not a total waste.

  “Thank you for a nice time, Mr. Thomas. #SuperSeniorCitizen”

  That was the text message Tamara sent to Elliott’s cell phone not long after he returned from his walk. He smiled and texted her back: “4 years before I’m a senior citizen. So get me while I’m young.”

  It was Tamara’s time to smile. She was smitten and surprised: A man older than her fath
er would have been was her new lover. She never would have expected that, but she felt more at ease and comfortable with him than she ever had with a man in her age range.

  After shopping with her mom and while watching recorded episodes of Love & Hip Hop, Tamara tried to figure out how she went out with Elliott, let alone bedded him. The answers did not come easy and, really, only added to her confusion.

  “What does this say about me?” she said aloud.

  Family members had told her growing up that she was an “old soul,” that she had “been here before” and that she was “ahead of her time.” At family reunions, instead of hanging with the preteens when she was twelve or with the young adults when she was a teenager, she always lingered with her much older aunts and uncles. And they allowed her to hang with them because she was comfortable and contributed interesting elements to conversations.

  Tamara never told anyone about her attraction to teachers in school or professors in college. She played along when her friends talked admirably about the school’s athletes or the cute guys. But she never fully bought in. The man with a little gray hair and a lot of experiences piqued her curiosity. A lot.

  Around 9 p.m., when Elliott had just awakened from a nap before going to the club, Tamara sent him a text message. Inadvertently, her mom influenced her to contact him. While shopping, Tamara told her mother about Elliott. Tamara did not share that Elliott was older than her mom, but she did say enough for her mom to endorse him.

  “His name is Elliott and I feel much more mature when I’m with him,” she said as they looked at dresses in the DKNY store. “His energy is different. He’s not all over the place like guys I have dated. He’s calm and assured and comforting. I’ve never felt that way with a man.”

  “I think you should focus on your career,” her mother said. “But who am I fooling? You don’t listen to me.”

  Mother and daughter laughed.

  “Really, though, when you can feel secure and like you’re growing with a man, then that’s a good thing. A rare thing,” she said. “Trust me, I know. Your father had the same effect on me when we met. Now don’t take that to mean you should marry this man. I’m just saying embrace him but take it slowly. Let everything play out naturally. Don’t go trying to force anything.”