“How old is it?”
“Old as the Pyramids.”
“You’re kidding. It’s been alive all these thousands of years? How sad. Living that long, a thousand years older than your last friend.”
“Which one is it?”
“They won’t say. They have to protect it.”
“So we’re just supposed to guess?”
“Probably for the best. I’d be too tempted to put that son of a bitch out of its misery.”
* * *
There lived a woman up the street who I never knew was widowed. She collapsed and called 911 on a corded, white phone with bright, green digits. When we arrived, the house was so quiet we thought she had died, but she merely lay still on the bathroom floor, waiting for what must have seemed an eternity. When we got closer, she appeared to be humming softly, her eyes bloodshot and clouded. She saw that I was a man and asked the other EMT, a woman, to dress her. She made no real effort to cover herself, other than to quicken the pace of her breathing. I waited outside by a corner cabinet and touched the glass of the picture frames of the photos trapped inside. I couldn’t tell which of these ancient men had been her husband, or how many of these children she had come to outlive in her 97 years.