16. Frog Restarts
It all happens so quickly. She wakes up, complains of pains. He says “We all have them now and then and mostly early morning or late evening. Just take a couple of aspirins,” which she does. The pains continue. Then trouble walking. First she almost trips, then she trips. She calls it an accident. Then she almost trips and trips again and the pains get worse and in more places. He tells her it’s the body getting used to its age. “Growing pains when you’re a kid? Growing-old pains when you’re approaching middle age. I had them; I’m sure that’s what they were. You remember my back and shoulder pains and the one that made my right arm, every three months or so, and all the way down to the fingertips, feel as if it were being ripped off. And those lasted two to three weeks sometimes and this went on for years. I didn’t trip or anything like that, or not that I can remember, but I think the pain was equal to even being a little worse than yours. Only thing that helped then was lots of aspirins spaced out during the day. And a visit to the osteopath when the pain really got bad. They know the body like no one else and their prices are fair. I could probably do a little of that manipulation myself,” and he gives her a massage in bed. She says it makes her body feel much better. Then, because he’s still behind her and her rear end’s raised and she’s nude, he starts playing with her down there and they make love. In the morning she says she hasn’t felt so good in weeks. “Maybe the combination of those two in the order we did them is exactly what I needed.” “I will be glad to cooperate,” he says. “Fully, frequently, probably not repeatedly, but to the best of my agility or something — in the future, I’m saying — if all that doesn’t sound too juvenile and silly.”