It’s taking her forever to figure out her life. Rosemary is more than half-way through her expected span. She likes to think she has been paying attention. Most of the time she feels like she’s making her way with her eyes round and her mouth open. Yokel-like. Astounded.

When she was younger she was sure she’d have a handle on it by 50. She was always a people person and quick to read others. It was a useful skill in business and at parties, being able to separate the rats from the rabbits. But it didn’t help her get herself.

Now Rosemary is 51. She is five and a half feet tall and weighs 150 pounds. She exercises regularly because it helps her manage stress and it keeps her muscles firm. She has her curly hair professionally colored and cut, but she hasn’t yet signed up for the facelift.

She has a quick mind and a fast mouth. She grew up in an articulate household, where debates were polysyllabic and loud. She early learned to organize her argument and deliver it with decibels. She sometimes makes what sound like bigoted comments, but her insertions of ethnic or other descriptions are really just fast speech from a large vocabulary; she grabs adjectives for emphasis, and blurts them before considering.

Taken all together, she’s attractive and interesting. She would have no trouble finding a boyfriend if she got out in the evenings, but she likes to stay home. As it is, she has recently re-attracted the attentions of an old married lover, and she is about to decide whether to do it with Rick, or not.

She had drinks with him last night. Rosemary normally doesn’t drink; alcohol makes her want a cigarette or a man, and she gave up one five years ago and the other two. She meant to give up tobacco. She didn’t mean to give up men, but she hasn’t been with one since she broke up with Stephen, weird Stephen. He was brilliant, tall, slim, with good teeth and deep blue eyes. He had a very nice penis. But he tended to be unfocused, and he was an acolyte in search of a guru. She stopped seeing him when she lost all respect for him when he joined a cult, and she hasn’t really missed him. She meant to find another man. But at her age two years flew by, and now here she is, considering sex again at last.

She had drinks with Rick from 3:45 to 7 PM. Five wheat ales and two shots of tequila. She didn’t get drunk, but she got warm. When Rick drove her home she let him kiss her. She kissed him back. He put her hand on his crotch outside his pants. She didn’t stop him until he slipped his hand into her jeans, between the denim and her panties. She squirmed her bottom away from him but leaned her face toward his. She kissed him goodbye. He looked at her with his warm brown eyes crinkled in the corners, smiling. He showed her the face she loved 20 years ago, older but still his. “Am I going to get lucky?” he asked. She told him she’d talk to him next week.

She didn’t feel drunk after that, but she also didn’t feel hungry. She skipped dinner, skipped her customary joint, removed her makeup and her contact lenses, and got into her bed. She drowsed from 8 PM to 8 AM and because she didn’t smoke dope, and because with that much down-time a lot of her sleep was light, she remembered some of her dreams.

Stairs. She dreamt of stairs. Her house has a single pine staircase, but in her dream there was a short half-set of stairs in addition to the main flight. She has no idea where the half-set went (in her mind’s eye the day after, it seems to her that there were only four steps and they led to a large window), but she knows that in the dream there was a tread missing from the half-set, and another tread missing from the full flight. Missing pieces. Missing steps. That part of the dream was easy to interpret. But the other part, the part with Stephen walking toward her up the entry steps (what entry steps? her house doesn’t have entry steps): what did that mean? He wore a turquoise T- shirt, a bit tight on his firm chest, and a pair of soft corduroy pants, too loose on his thin body, hanging beltless from his narrow hips, showing the plaid waistband of his boxers. Stephen walking toward her, shabby as ever, gray-haired, gray-faced, with those deep gray-blue eyes, smiling warmly.