Chapter 1 1 FLORIDA 2067 The residents of Palm Meridian Retirement Resort were retired only in name. Though they were formally unemployed, nothing--no force of nature, no act of God--could stop these elderly women from attacking their days with a kind of energy that would make a working person quake. Already, at 8 a.m., the resort was a microcosm of life in all its brightness and its rowdiness, its hurry and its pain. Some residents were roiling with orgasm, while others were fifteen minutes beyond, licking the orange, sated dust of postcoital Cheetos from their fingertips. Some residents were waxing, others ruminating, some stricken by grief and others by IBS. One woman drank her coffee at the window, a bit of loose boob hanging from her robe. Diarrhea threatened at the fringe, adding an element of danger. On the main lawn, a troupe of Hula-Hoopers shimmied and stepped, their hips and hearts hot with the motion of swirling. Nearby, the podcasters sat in the grass, headphones puffy with soundproof feeling, sharpening their anecdotes and loosening their rapport. Some were still awake from the night before, nursing hangovers by the edge of the pool, the chlorinated water lapping at their legs. Enjoying a cigarette, they tipped their heads back and returned to memories of the previous night: a tryst in the badminton clubhouse, the birdies bristling against bare shoulder blades. One resident was in the bathtub, redrafting her will. She'd leave everything she owned to Esmerelda, her new dentist, who she'd met yesterday. A woman fifty years her junior. Through the suck and squelch of gums and fluoride, how could she ignore the tender care and intoxicating scent of this woman--who, it must be said, was smoking hot? She'd only gone in for a filling but had come home with a mouth full of porcelain and a heart sunk deeply in love. Some at the resort were in decades-long marriages, their love as soft and dependable as their complementary pajamas. They sometimes argued at the breakfast buffet about flavors of toothpaste, or their adult children, their words as hot as the soybean bacon. But at night they pressed their silent affection, with their noses, into the sleeping backs of their loves. Others were widowed, some of them recently. Their partner's scent was preserved on a pillowcase, kept safe in a Ziploc bag. At night, their strength wavered like the palm trees in the darkness. Some were actively single, magnetic and boastful. At the pool, they spread their bodies across the lounge chairs, laying their charm on as thick as their SPF. They sauntered and suggested, did their best to land a breakfast date--a stack of pancakes at the diner down the interstate, the maple syrup dripping erotically. There were tap-dance recitals and dildo debriefs, tuba lesbians, tennis lesbians, and elite croquet teams. There were scheduling conflicts, too, like the en plein air painters who, due to allergies, were forced inside. They displaced the women of Remedial Bingo, who now dabbed with hesitance at their B4s and G39s on the lawn, in the bright of the sun. There were unexpected changes in self-conception. One woman stepped out of the shower and considered her naked, wrinkled body in the mirror. She decided she looked like a hash brown that had been through a washing machine. Then she amended this quickly: she was a glamorous hash brown with a daring sense of fun. There were the marinating scents of sunscreen and humidity, the peppermint stink of pain ointment. Old age had turned their knuckles to lumps of hardened lava, aching and volcanic. They used their arthritic hands to care for their dying friends and, at other times, to drink poolside tequila from jazzy plastic cups. It was the second half of the twenty-first century and everything was flavored with apocalypse. And yet--this gelato-colored place, its rolling lawns riddled joyfully with lesbians, flush with bisexual women, blessed by a bevy of trans and non-binary people--how could you leave a home like this? This was what Hannah was thinking as she sped along the path in a twice-refurbished golf cart, her windbreaker rippling. The engine groaned and she pressed her sneaker on the pedal, felt the air lift her ponytail, silver and shining. She tugged her baseball cap tight to her head. Hannah took a hard left at the food hall. How familiar was all of this? The looping paths, the leaning palms, lizards dashing across pebbled landscaping. At night, the gurgle of the swamps, hot and eternal. The gators snapping their worried teeth. The distant thundering of trucks down the interstate. As Hannah hurried her cart toward the main lawn, the wind picking tears from her eyes, she thought how unlikely it was to be alive. It was a feeling dramatically sharpened by the knowledge that, by this time tomorrow, she wouldn't be. Excerpted from Palm Meridian: A Novel by Grace Flahive All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
