The dog seemed to come from nowhere as I was walking. Tangling my leg in the retractable leash, I overbalanced and fell, skinning my knee.
A tall willowy woman followed the dog. Eyes full of concern behind her mask, she took one look at my knee, took my elbow to right me, and guided me toward her porch. "Let me get some disinfectant and ice for that." I nodded, following with a trace of a limp. She came out with first aid after letting the dog in.
The sting of the disinfectant actually eased the pain, and the ice felt great. We sat at opposite ends of her porch table. She poured a little white wine into disposable cups as we slipped our masks off.
"So sorry about Buster. He's so excited to see anyone these days." After a sip of wine she added, "I'm Helen, by the way."
"It's all right, no real harm done." I looked around. "I love walking in this neighborhood. It's only a half mile from us but so nice. And I'm Charlotte. I've been walking off my cabin fever and too-much-time-with-family ennui."
"So nice to meet you even under these circumstances. The virus has put a crimp in all social activities. And I have not really adjusted to teaching online."
"Oh? What do you teach?"
"Applied math. In the engineering school. Signal processing this semester"
"Oh! I used to be able to write out the Fast Fourier Transform algorithm, but that was 20 years ago."
She appraised me for a moment. Her eyes smiled into mine. Perhaps looked at my figure a bit longer than I might have expected, then she smiled. "Be still my beating heart. I would not have expected someone as beautiful as you to know about FFT."
I must have looked a bit confused, but then brightened as I looked at her. "You're quite lovely as well."
"Oh, thank you. It's been a long time since I've been complimented on my looks."
I blushed a moment, trying to think of what else to talk about. "Your dogwoods and azaleas are really quite exquisite."
She smiled. "Yes, and nobody to share them. My husband got stuck in New York and is in isolation there for another week."
"No neighbors?"
"Well, my girlfriend went to their cabin with her husband."
I glanced at her. "Girlfriend?"
She grinned a little sheepishly. "Well, yes. We used to console one another every few weeks when our husbands were at sea." She watched the surprise show on my face. "Kind of a private Officers' Wives' Club."
"Oh!" I considered for a long moment. "Did your husbands know?"
She paused, studied me quietly, possibly deciding what to tell me. "Of course. We have all swung together sometimes."
Now it was my turn to hesitate and study her. I was, quite frankly, stunned at this turn of conversation. She appeared to be older than I, perhaps over 60, and very smartly if casually dressed. Her slim figure was complimented by a lovely floral print dress. Her slightly greying dark hair casually put up in a chignon. Her sky-blue eyes danced, fine lines showing the genuine happiness in her smile.
I hesitated. "I haven't been with anyone except my husband since a couple of years after we got married. An ex-boyfriend. Jon knew about it, in fact reminded me to take condoms." I smiled a bit ruefully, remembering. "I wasn't even sure I was going to have sex with him. He just needed someone to talk to and I had a house on Cape Cod that needed closing up for the season, so we went there."