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so glumly mum now, and we have two. When it rings, we vie for it. How to write this side-by-side libretto, all of whose roles only one of us sings?
    Approach it as a poem must be. It was never written before. My old age has no antecedent. No one’s has. Just as each one’s childhood is brewed fresh for the small, breathless sipper, and to any youth on his first river-haunted night, youth was never down by the river with a lover before, so age must sing its own voluntary, in a chorus of one.
    Who speaks for me, sings for me, except this almanac—to an audience of one?

O LD PEOPLE LIKE US are the gardeners of the streets. Old male shoppers like Rupert especially, carrying home eggs as if they were also walking on them, their shoulder bags tremoring. Under the jaunty cap the face is its own beacon. Or sometimes there is an assistant presence, like me. These days I watch Rupert as if he is already alone. In a kind of gymnastic he is not aware of I practice being his companion ghost. Although I don’t believe in ghosts—or perhaps because of that—I feel reduced in size, almost Rupert’s child. Or perhaps because I cannot carry.
    I note that the greengrocer is still kind, allowing Rupert to hover over the apples to pick out an especially cheeky flame, the mound of McIntoshes crumbling as he does so. Or to forefinger a scallion bulb with a secret rub, like a lover feeling a vulva. At that I giggle—I’m still alive. Mr Raso, the vegetable man, doesn’t watch us for stealing, as he tells us he has to do now with some senior pensioners. We are long-term customers who he knows shop at the supermarket only for soap powder and other neutrally packaged goods. And he knows I’m Italian, though he doesn’t see me at his church. But one day, when I pass there alone, I may hint to him, as I buy a lemon or so, that Rupert suffers from a slight nervous affliction of the hands. Which is true enough—ever since that day in the gallery.
    ‘Poor Raso,’ my husband says as we leave. ‘We’re his status now.’
    ‘Whatever do you mean?’
    ‘Once he was vegetable king of the neighbourhood, don’t you remember? To have him pick a honeydew for you was like an award. And now he’s only the last non-Oriental vegetable stand on the block. And the young don’t go to him.’
    We pass one of those Korean stalls with a salad-bar electric down its center. Neon pimientos, lime and orange melon balls arranged like savory junk, the green fuss of chicory at the ready, sliced mushrooms jigsawed on pillows of bean curd. And at every other barrow of more ordinary produce, one of the anonymous artists of the clan is bent over some lesser nurturing.
    We pass without buying anything. Yes, Raso needs us. He too is old. ‘Why did you giggle back there?’ Rupert says.
    I tell him, doing it again. He joins me.
    Can older people giggle like that and not be obscene? To that girl just passing for instance, in a swing of marigold hair blowing straight out behind her. It’s not the hair but her jointless ease that I envy.
    ‘See her?’ Rupert murmurs. And the whole windy street? Ah, I love the Village. You can have your twig-and-sand twiddlers. This— is environment.’
    He says Greenwich Village is like parts of Paris, where over and over youth is the crop. But in Europe, much less Paris—I think—is it the only one?
    Am I jealous? No—I have been ‘youth,’ and could not be so again, certainly not from within. Possibly not even in the joints, now that I am used to their familiar, even sophisticated grumbling. What youth does is to make me uncertain that I am still in the world. This world.
    When we stop at the butcher’s I choose a brisket, savoring the experienced red of that well-salted meat, and I myself carry it home.

W OMEN GET THEIR PAST earlier than we do. And keep it longer. In spite of which they answer the world more from the flesh than we do. And are always answering themselves there.
    I have known this almost forever—or since I