It was thirty-three years ago, when they both were young. After the dancing had ended and the bar was closing down, they drove to the wind-swept open beach where, hand in hand, they climbed the rocks jutting out into the ocean. Was there a moon or was it just the stars? He couldn’t remember, but there had been enough light for them to see a lone dolphin suddenly flash through the dark water, then disappear, leaving a trail of phosphorescence in its wake. An apparition, a message from a benevolent universe. He pulled her close against the nighttime chill. How lucky they had been to see that emissary. They exchanged a kiss.

Then they went to his bungalow on the lagoon. She already in bed, he brushing his teeth. Then, snapping off the bathroom light, he turned eagerly for the bed. She was lying there, a lovely dark offering beneath the white sheet. He was about to slip in beside her, when he noticed that she looked frozen, that her teeth were chattering.

“Are you feeling sick, Claudia?” he asked. She shook her head.

“Is it too cold, should I get a blanket?” Again, she shook her head.

“Well, what’s wrong, honey?” he persisted. She shook her head again, mouth clamped shut.

“Oh, no, I can’t believe it.  You’re not a virgin, sweetie, are you?” Her eyes grew wide as she nodded tragic affirmation. He stood stunned, a few feet from the bed. She was educated, articulate, a social worker, a sexy dancer, filled with grace. She was twenty-six and Brazilian. It had never entered his head. “Here Claudia, let me help you get dressed,” he said, with an embarrassed briskness, holding out her smooth, white skirt. “Oh, sweetie.” He didn’t know what else to say. In silence he helped her get back into her clothes, walked her out to his Karmann-Ghia, and drove her to the young ladies residence in town. He squeezed her hand, those long, delicate fingers, those innocent fingernails, gave her a gentle kiss on her satin-smooth cheek, then walked around to open the door. She got out, they exchanged another kiss, and, seeming relieved, she hurried into the silent lady’s residency.

He had understood, immediately, the significance of her condition. She was middle-class, she was proper, and traditional Brazil, despite discos, booze and marijuana, was still lingering on. If he had accepted her sacrifice and then not married her, her life here in the provinces would have been ruined. She was both idealistic and practical, had already been working to help impoverished natives suffering from the invasion of the Amazon. Her goodness was deeply entwined with her country’s history and its current sufferings. He couldn’t imagine her living in his own brutally materialistic, utterly commercialized country, where money was everything. But he already knew he wouldn’t be able to stay here, to adjust to her country, with its easy flow, its insouciance, imprecision, unreliability, and its casual macho hedonism, linked to a deeply embedded double-standard. So, the moment she nodded her head, he had known he could not sleep with her. He may have been frustrated, but he wasn’t angry. There had been no deception, just a serious misunderstanding, In any case, there was no point in going on.

And now, after all that time, twenty pounds heavier, his remaining hair gone grey, James was back in her city as a distinguished guest lecturer, wondering what had happened to the lovely Claudia, so sexy and so good. He made a few inquiries and discovered that she had married a left-leaning politician and former athlete. Her husband had become mayor of the city just after the dictatorship finally ceded power. But many years later, apparently there had been a divorce, under murky circumstances. That’s all they would tell him. But then someone came up with a phone number and he thought he might at least have a chat with the past. So he called.

And now she was taking him on a little tour, as they headed towards the interior, the unfamiliar backlands of the state. It was, however, a strange time of year to be a tourist, for the fallow fields were coated with a thin layer of frost, almost unknown in Brazil. They both wore insulated winter jackets. She drove and talked. She told him, balancing embarrassment and irony, of her last thirty years: the happy beginning, her husband’s political success as he rose from wrestling star to communist mayor of a provincial capital, the long hours at work, the two children gracing their marriage, the husband’s exhaustion when he would finally come home, the dwindling away of their sexual relationship, the growing of the two boys, the adjustments she made to her husband’s increasing absence and his replacement of affection with politeness; and then, after more than twenty-five years of what seemed a normal, if not deeply romantic, marriage, the unknown phone number that appeared on the cell phone he had left on the table at lunchtime. And that explained it all.

“Can you believe it, Jimmy?” she said. “I called the number and a woman’s voice, filled with joy, answered the phone. I hung up. You know who it was, Jimmy? It was his girlfriend from thirty years ago. He had been in love with her, but she had married someone else, someone with more money. Frustrated and ashamed, he proposed to me on the rebound, as we say, and I foolishly accepted. Well, turns out that after a week she realized she had made a big mistake. She called him up and said that, after all, he was the one she really loved. So, without a word, he went back to her. Both of them were locked into their marriages, but she was the love of his life. And that was where his passion flowed for the next thirty years. I had no idea. I stayed home, raised the kids and pitied my husband his long hours at the mayor’s office. And that’s the story of my life,” she concluded, with a little laugh.

Time had not been kind to Claudia. Her long, slim fingers were now puffy with age, and, although she had managed to soap and pull off her wedding band after the debacle, the many other rings looked as if they were embedded in her flesh for the duration. Her slender neck was swollen with the years. Her flat stomach sagged; her waist was bordered now by a roll of fat. Her face had thickened and looked care-worn. But her eyes had not changed: chestnut brown, full of light, humor, irony, and goodness. She was still Claudia, and, having accumulated the inevitable losses of a lifetime, his first love to drowning, another love to cancer, faithful Shep to old age, and finally his mother, who he thought would live forever since she had been there from the beginning, with all that had vanished, he felt fortunate to have found her again. As for the body housing the soul, he knew about that. He hadn’t looked in a mirror for years.

It was after midnight when they pulled into a quiet, cold town in a rural valley. Even in the dark, they could see the darker black of the mountains rising above them. They had to ring the outside bell, for no one was in attendance and the door was locked. After several minutes, a sleepy man appeared and opened the door. They went to the desk and it was only then that James discovered Claudia’s intentions. “Quarto de casal,” she said in a deep, confident voice, like someone who had said that countless times before. So now, after thirty-three years, they were going to consummate what usually is consummated in one’s youth. James felt nervous, but he also felt he was in the presence of an old friend.

They trudged upstairs with their overnight bags. He favored his left knee, already bone-on-bone. He heard her wince when she shifted her day bag. Even that light weight, it seemed, was enough to provoke the rheumatism in her wrist. They entered an ordinary room with white walls, an overhead light, and a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There was also a sagging double bed. They took off their winter jackets, hung them up, and took turns in the bathroom. As he brushed his teeth, he remembered the other time in his bungalow long ago, just before discovering Claudia’s virginity. This time there was no virgin in the room, just old age. The insistence of youth, hormonal, needy, exigent, was gone. He stood in the room filled with doubt, unsure what to say, how to act. Did their bodies know what they wanted to do? Did they know what they wanted to do? Wasn’t it too late for eros?

They turned their backs to each other as they slipped into sweats, the modern substitute for pajamas. They stretched out in the bed, under three layers of blankets, and he switched off the light.  After their fumbling efforts ended, she gave an embarrassed laugh and said in her husky voice: “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. The truth is I’m a virgin all over again. It’s been years since my husband slept with me, I really don’t remember how to do this.”  “Don’t worry,” he mumbled, “don’t worry,” as he caressed her arm and gave her a comforting hug. At least we are friends, good old friends, fellow human beings, he thought, as they drifted from embarrassment into sleep.

He awoke shortly before dawn and lay still, thinking. Here was this good creature, Claudia, once so beautiful, so slender, so utterly charming in her looks and ways, and now, how transformed by cynical time. He reached for her pudgy hand in the dark and held it. And as he did so, he began to feel that perhaps this woman, who had suffered and aged, who had lost her youth and her promise, who had discovered that her thirty-year marriage had been an illusion, was quietly and deeply desirable, after all. He did not feel the inexorable rising of passion as in youth. Instead he felt a sympathy, an understanding, a compassion for her. After all, they both had aged, they both had lost their youth, they both were well along the road to vanishing. And here they lay, side by side in the dark, linked by a common fate. He felt pity growing in him, pity for her, for himself, for all flesh and its fading power. Slowly, gently, he slipped back into her half-sleeping body, and this time they traveled together smoothly and naturally, two ephemeral creatures abandoned by the cravings of youth, facing together the inevitable. As the indifferent beauty of morning’s first grey touch filtered into their room, he was flooded by the pathos of the human condition, the vanity of the animal self and its ever-aspiring soul, its utter helplessness beneath the arc of mortality. And there rose within him, like the freshness of a mountain spring, a love limpid and deeper than youthful desire.

 How happy he was that he and Claudia had taken this brief journey to the interior. Even if life would draw him inexorably back to New York next week and, as way leads on to way, he might never see her again, he would carry with him always this glimpse of possibility, of something unforeseen and bewildering, this touch of unexpected grace.