at any other party. She asked, “What’s your name, sweetie?” and “How old are you?”—a question that bore no stigma in this room. The oldest, Betty Jean, had turned ninety-nine the previous week.
Dini saved The Lovers trick for the last of the show, bringing Lorraine up (on Quin’s arm) as her participant. She walked through the story as she had with Quin, but didn’t dare risk even a glance his way. It was hard enough to control her hands, remembering how he’d looked at her. How—according to the weight she felt on her skin—he looked at her now. At the final reveal, the ladies emitted their now-familiar gasp and applauded generously. Afterward Dini stood for photos, knowing her face was going to be posted on a dozen different Facebook profiles and Red Hat group pages.
“Just remember to hashtag Dini Blackstone,” she said, handing out her card as a reminder.
When all had dwindled down to Lorraine settling up with the waitstaff, and Dini had packed up her case, Quin took her hand and led her to a secluded, dark corner saying, “I want to show you something. Look.” It was a narrow phone booth, lit by a single, bare bulb. Inside, a green rotary dial phone, represented by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, presided like something from a time machine. “Just think, kids wouldn’t even know what to do with that.”
“Okay, Grandpa Irvin,” Dini said. “Maybe you spent a little too much time with the old girls today?”
“That Betty Jean, she kind of stole my heart.”
“Want me to run outside and see if I can catch her?” Dini took a step.
“Nah,” Quin said, reaching out to stop her with a touch to her forearm. “I think I might have something else going on. I don’t want to break her heart.”
“You’re a good man, Quin Carmichael. Now, have we seen enough of the phone? Or is there a fax machine somewhere you want to show me?”
“Would you take my picture? In the booth? My sister collects phone booths. I mean, not actual phone booths, because that would be insane. But pictures of phone booths. She has a thing.”
“Like with the notebooks?”
“Different sister.”
“I don’t know if you’re supposed to go in there.”
He held his finger to his lips and opened the door. “See? Not locked.”
Dini took his phone and snapped a variety of poses—Quin looking serious, Quin holding the green handset and miming conversation, Quin taking off his glasses, gripping his shirt as if any second Superman would appear. Then he held out his hand. “Come here.” She did, and he maneuvered her against him, the two of them pressed together as he held his phone out for a selfie. “We want to be sure to get the phone in,” he said, working for a better angle.
“We want to get the squirrel in too,” Dini said, referring to the head mounted on the wall above the phone. It wasn’t easy to make the joke, given the closeness of him, the way his chest pressed against her spine, his beard close enough to tickle the exposed skin on her shoulder.
“Hey!” The intrusive voice came from around the corner, attached to the bartender. She was expecting some kind of chastisement, but he merely offered to take a picture of the two of them.
“Thanks, man,” Quin said, stretching past Dini to hand him the phone. He was still behind her, but he put his hand on the curve of her waist and brought her somehow closer. Dini’s mind raged at her body’s pliability. She wasn’t one to mold against another person and yet the rigidity that would grip her in the most accidental of brushes didn’t reach past her lungs. They froze, their duty of breathing in and out temporarily halted.
Once the bartender said he’d gotten some “good ones,” he returned to his duty while Quin scrolled through. “I’m sending these to you,” he said before picking up her bag. “Ready to go?”
Dini, not having uttered a single word since pointing out the squirrel, nodded. Not until they got to the stairs did she say, “Wait there. Ten steps.”
“So if you fall I have time to brace myself and stop you?”
“Exactly.”
The late afternoon—nearly four o’clock—air was cool and gray. While Quin got the car, she leaned against the beveled newel and opened her phone to the camera. It took a bit to find the right angle for her face and the red door behind her, but once she got it, she posted to her Instagram,