About two years ago:

Ann asked me to buy bug spray.

See the little gnat things? They keep waking me up when they go in my ears, she said. Her house smelled terrible. A little garbage bin held stained tissues, a half-eaten apple, and food wrappers and lids. Steeped in the drool of afternoon naps and oily skin, of perspiration and sleep, her couch sat squashed in the living room. She slept there, ate there, and brooded there through the summer and winter while fruit flies swarmed in her trash.

Her TV was static and she refused to call a repairman to come take a look. The sonsabitches steal, she said. I saw one guy at the door. He was standing there watching me sleep, she said.

Ann rocked until she had enough momentum to stand. Wobbling around the cluttered room on ski poles used as canes, she stabbed a pointed tip through yellowing heaps looking for a wad of envelopes strapped in rubber bands.

I have so much paper work to look through, she said.

This month:

An envelope from Florida arrived a few days before my birthday addressed to Kendra ? Despite the question mark, I received the card wishing me a happy birthday, love Ann.

A few days later I came home to a phone message from Ann's daughter. Please call mother. She really wants to talk to you. Later today would be good.

So terse. I played the message for Jerry and said, I hope she is OK.

I called and found out she was bored, vulgar, loving, and an old woman with poor eyesight and unsteady legs trapped in her daughter's Florida home.

You look on the streets and there is no one, she told me. Nothing, all the way down the road, and it's a big neighborhood she said.

I hate the heat. It's always in the 90s and you go outside and it's sticky. I am always soaked.

She said, I have a three-wheel bike and I ride that around the streets. But we're all old people. I am 87. An old woman. And there are no children here. I love to hear them playing. I miss the children.

She asked, are you gonna get a proposal? It's Jerry right? He's a good looking guy. Did his hair grow back?

I stepped into the living room where Jerry sat listening and answered, nope. Still no proposal and still no hair. You said good looking?

I exercise every day to keep strength in my arms and legs, she said. How is my house?

Still there, I told her. Still quiet. Nobody has been around.

You sure? The other neighbor, she said she chased off two hunters that walked out of the woods. And someone stole my things. Clothes. Old lady clothes! And jewelry.

Ann, your daughter cleaned out your house. She emptied all the rooms and closets, remember?

Well, I was in a nursing home then, she said.

Remember the night the police had their lights in my face and you sat with me? They took me in the ambulance to the hospital and I had nothing. I had no clothes to wear, she said.

That was almost two years ago Ann…

She talked about the war. Poor Ann -- afraid of repairmen, towel heads, and becoming marooned in her daughter's house. I promised to send her a letter and use black marker so she could see it.

Does she really think she can move back to her house, Jerry asked.

She is hoping.

There is just no way.

She needs to hold on to something, I said.

She must really be blind if she thought I was good looking, Jerry said.

Ann and I talked about the dogs and the winter while she briefly lived her old life sitting next-door on the phone and talking to me. Her house sits on a rocky ledge above ours, dark and quiet.