Hello darling, my hair is freshly colored & trimmed, I look nice. Trying to decide which fragrance I like better -- Miss Dior on my wrists and behind my ears (I hope to solicit a verbal opinion regarding that sometime soon), or that of heavenly hyacinth in full exuberant bloom. Fortunately, I don't have to choose -- I can have both, and do -- pots of hyacinth here & there downstairs, giving off their heady scent, it is like the hanging gardens of Babylon here, inside this dark folk-Victorian that needs work -- flowers all over the place.

I don't really care where we stay. I won't be looking at the furnishings. Which is entirely true. God knows I certainly didn't register the make of van or car or truck or whatever that was, not while I was instantly rapt, beneath a generous exposed moonroof lighting us, not that I was noting that, not while I was otherwise entirely differently, intensely, intently enmeshed, entwined, and occupied. Oh don't get excited -- it was just a 'goodbye' kiss -- oh but -- who knew that a bit of hairpulling, a big tugging handful at my scalp - would, as it drew me closer, have the effect on me of - goodbye? are you kidding?

I just about fell out of the cab of that whatever it was, so wobbly was I from that awesome distraction...

And suddenly there I was on a busy main street, in my - for all anyone would ever know - 'good' spring casual outfit, cream cardigan, over pink-striped blouse, jeans... No, nothing electric on, really -- but who cares --- do kisses care - when they're as fusingly amazing, souls smashing into souls, as that?

So I don't care where we go, I don't. It's the 21st century, and we're over 50. It's not because of any infirmities - though he & I have, in our separate ways, vision issues - that I won't care what the place looks like. And yet as I sit here, up in the aerie, warm - no, I take that back - cool gray light seeping in between the slats of the off-white venetian blinds -- I picture the motel room that we are (if I'm not dreaming this whole thing) likely to wind up in, for our first time, and I find myself trying to redecorate it. I mean, I've stayed in one of these motels before, once, that night in Amherst, for the E.D. 181st birthday soiree. So I know very well, firsthand, how quite abysmal such a room can be.

So now, I picture a very similar room, only 100 miles west, and now with very exciting & welcome & spirited & warm company. But if I arrive first - now anticipating - him -- am I so insensate? I imagine myself, for a 'hot sheets' afternoon, sprucing up the place for us -- oh what do I mean? Well, maybe not potted hyacinths. And maybe not even fresh sheets of my own, from home, or a quilt whose provenance I'm comfortable with, unlike those horrible shiny dubious bedspreads such rooms, with their two queen-size beds side by side, dispiritingly sport --- and it's always the first thing I do whenever I'm in such a motel room -- strip that bedspread off first thing, for sure. I always figure that the sheets are clean, though I'm less confident about any blankets --- which are necessary -- though the other thing I've always done, upon entering such a space, is to find the individual room heat/AC controls in the metal grating beneath the double-row of heavy draperies, that can be pulled open either manually - well, I don't know if there's some other way -- and as much as I love daylight, and fresh air -- I definitely wish to keep these drapes closed, against any weird peeping toms, even though this motel could hardly be sited in a more forsaken place, inhospitable to live inquiring eyes (in this age of all sorts of sights to be seen on the internet), and besides the view out the window is simply of empty - completely bleakly obliteratingly empty - asphalt

Oh right -- so I probably won't redecorate -- and if I were a braver woman I wouldn't pull-to the drapes, so as to let in, at the very least - chinks of daylight

and I won't bring in hyacinths
or my own sheets
or towels
or soap -- well -- maybe that
or quilts

no we'll make do in that nest, 'starting at $51 a night' - just as it's presented to us, hoping for a nonsmoking, maybe end room so that -- as he joyfully noted -- we can make noise!

because -- as in the cab of whatever his car was, once I was completely lost in his kisses -- do you think I'm going to care, once I'm lost, going from zero to 90 --

but I will make sure to be beautifully freshly bathed.... and if there are no hyacinths about in bloom... there will be, about and in and surrounding me... a hint - that he can't name, but will inhale -- of Miss Dior