Is There Still Sex in the City?

He glanced over. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because I think I’ve been robbed.”

That got his attention. He strolled over, grasping the intercom on his shoulder and bringing it closer to his mouth, as if ready to report the crime. “What’d they take?” he asked.

“Some mail.”

“Mail?”

“Bills.”

He put down the walkie-talkie. “Why would anyone take someone’s bills?”

I struggled to explain. “They weren’t really bills. They were checks. You know. When you pay bills? They had stamps on them.”

“Why would anyone take that?”

I could see how I looked to him: a confused middle-aged woman with frazzled hair and a neon green safety vest on an orange bike insisting that someone stole her bills.

I don’t think so.

“Maybe I forgot them at my house,” I whispered as I edged away.

I got back on the bike. Panting my way towards home, I went over this strange series of events again and again. They felt connected by a force field of unstable, chaotic energy. And with a plunge, I realized I’d had this feeling before—on the day that Tucco died.

I got to my house, threw down my bike and checked my phone. I’d gotten a call from Stacey, one of Marilyn’s Miami friends.

For a second I thought, Why is Stacey calling me?

And then I knew.

* * *

Marilyn took her life sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

She left no note, but she did leave a will.

She wanted to be cremated.

And that was it. No ceremony. No nothing. Just a box full of gritty ashes.

At first, some of Marilyn’s close friends and family from out of town rushed in and there was a poignant and naturally awkward memorial, but then they left and it was just Sassy and Kitty and me and sometimes Queenie. We felt Marilyn’s loss everywhere and especially in the day-to-day. As Kitty said, she couldn’t believe that Marilyn wasn’t going to come walking through the door at any second, her laptop computer under her arm and the large leather sack containing her purse and files slung over her shoulder. Marilyn had moved to the country but a part of her would always be a schlepper.

We felt encased in our grief, trapped under a perpetual low-hanging cloud. We couldn’t move. We couldn’t breathe. We were exhausted. We’d go to each other’s houses and sit at the kitchen table and stare.

We’d ask why.

We pointed out that she was in love and about to get married. That she and her MNB would have had a great life together. She was doing so well. Feeling so good. Maybe she was feeling too good and she’d stopped taking her medication? It was the only explanation we could come up with.

There had been a spate of deaths and suicides that month. Mostly women in their fifties, women like Marilyn who’d appeared to have had it all. Like everyone else, they didn’t. Lurking in the background were financial issues or relationship issues or health issues. But mostly, what you sensed was the fear. The pure terror of the unknown future.

The fear that you were a failure. That no one would love you ever or again. That you were truly alone. That no one cared and it was only going to get worse. That there was no imaginary bright future to hide behind when it came to the truth.

These were the fears that crept into our bones like the cold, damp weather during that long winter. And so we worried. About ourselves and each other. When you’re a single, child-free woman like Marilyn, the world wonders what’s going to happen to you, and so you wonder yourself. As a single, child-free woman, there really is no script for you.